Reynolds Water Conditioning

  The following is an excerpt taken from the Wall Street Journal by Dave Weinstein on Feb 26, 2021. “I first saw the inside of a water-treatment plant in 2015. I was conducting a site visit at a municipal facility in New Jersey, where I was the state’s director of cybersecurity. It wasn’t an inspection; the plant manager had asked me to visit. Analog machinery had given way to digital systems, and critical water-treatment processes were now automated. The plant required little human intervention in day-to-day operations. Thanks to remote-access technologies, more maintenance and monitoring activities were being performed off-site by a third party. All of this was great for efficiently, especially for the resource-limited operation, but what about the risk? Optimizing for cost and speed meant connecting more digital and networked technologies to the plant floor. Security was no longer simply a matter of gates, guards, and guns. It had become a matter of bits and bytes. In ea...

  The 2000 film “Erin Brockovich,” based on a true story, launched the carcinogen hexavalent chromium into the spotlight. Water supplies in California were tainted with the chemical, which caused a plethora of residents in Hinkley to succumb to cancer and all sorts of other deadly diseases. A new study is bringing this chemical back to light by analyzing the process in which it infiltrates the drinking water supply, specifically when commonly used chlorine disinfectants corrode cast iron water distribution pipes. Chromium occurs naturally and is often added to countless products. Its toxicity varies depending on its state. More than 200 million people in the United States drink tap water with chromium concentrations above .02 ppb, according to the Environmental Working Group . The state of California has set this part-per-billion level to ensure that fewer than one out of a million exposed people will get cancer in their lifetimes. The United States Environmental Protection ...

  In Oldsmar, Florida, a city of 15,000 people in the Tampa Bay area, a hacker remotely accessed the water treatment plant and adjusted the lye levels in the city’s drinking water, raising it to more than 100 times the normal level. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said, “It’s a bad act. It’s a bad actor. It’s not just a little chlorine, or a little fluoride – you’re basically talking about lye.” A remote access software program called TeamViewer was used to infiltrate the water treatment facility. The intruder entered the system twice: 8 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. It is unclear whether the hacker entered the system by the use of a password, though it is required to use the system remotely, according to the assistant city manager Felicia Donnelly. The hacker’s efforts were immediately caught by the system’s operator, who reduced the levels within the system. No significant changes were noted in the city’s water supply; the public was never in danger. The intrusion lasted between...

  In 2008, the Associated Press (AP) conducted a five-month investigation and published a three-part series documenting a wide array of pharmaceuticals (antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones) that were present in the drinking water of at least 41 million Americans. The concentrations were minuscule but left scientists concerned. How do pharmaceuticals end up in our water? When people take medicine, some gets absorbed by the body; what doesn’t gets flushed out through our urinary tract, ending up in our sewage systems. Moreover, leftover drugs are oftentimes flushed down the toilet in full-form and eventually into our water supply. Treatment facilities are not required to test for pharmaceuticals or filter them out. The AP National Investigative Team sorted through hundreds of scientific reports, meticulously filtered through federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants, interviewing over 230 officials, sci...

  After a nearly two-year-long criminal investigation, Michigan prosecutors announced 41 counts (34 felonies and seven misdemeanors) against nine high-ranking government officials, including former governor Rick Snyder, his top advisors, trusted medical officials, and two emergency managers. Two of the officials were charged with nine counts of involuntary manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Flint residents’ health and safety were left unprotected by officials. The residents were poisoned and sickened by Legionnaires’ disease. In April 2014, the city’s water supply was switched to the Flint River, which caused increased levels of lead in their drinking water. From June 2014 through October 2015, at least nine people died from Legionnaires’ disease, a form of pneumonia caused by waterborne bacteria. Michigan’s solicitor general Fadwa Hammond said, “The Flint water crisis is not some relic of the past. At this very moment, the people of Flint continue to suffer from the categ...

  Regulations on water usage have been implemented for decades due to droughts and energy efficiency (using fewer fossil fuels) in an effort to lower overall consumer costs. Higher usage drives prices up, which in turn causes non-renewable resources to diminish through time. Since 1992, federal law has stipulated the amount of water pouring out of showerheads in one minute should be no more than 2.5 gallons. In 2013, newer shower fittings with multiple nozzles caused the Obama administration to define the restrictions and apply the 2.5-gallon rule to the entire fixture. Therefore, if a showerhead is comprised of four nozzles, no more than 2.5 gallons (total) should exit the nozzles within one minute.   A new proposal enacted by the Trump administration would allow each nozzle to spray as much as 2.5 gallons, which could amount to five gallons of total water being spewed out per minute if two showerhead nozzles are installed. Multiply that by four or five, and showerheads...

  A letter addressed to Michigan State Representative Dan Kildee from Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) is “assessing the intersection between PFAS exposure and COVID-19” by investigating whether exposure to these “forever chemicals” affects potential effectiveness and duration of the COVID-19 vaccine.   Healthcare workers and first responders are first under the CDC study. ATSDR will measure PFAS levels in participants to determine a link between PFAS in their blood and the likelihood of contracting COVID-19. The connection of PFAS levels and antibody response to the coronavirus will give insight into the impact of PFAS levels and the potential duration of vaccine protection. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl fluorinated substances called PFAS are dubbed “Forever Chemicals” due to the chemical bonds that hold the compounds together (about 5,000 substances) wh...