234. The Water Episode: Why EPA Standards Fail Pets—and What To Do

0:02 Hey there, it's Jess. If you're new here, I'm a certified professional canine nutritionist, raw nutrition certified for dogs and cats, a holistic pet health coach, the founder of Wild Wellness Pet, and the host of the Pet Parenting Reset podcast that you're listening to right now, where every pet deserves the absolute best and every pet parent is welcome. Learn from the best holistic and integrative experts in veterinary medicine and nutrition every Tuesday right here on this podcast. Or get individualized help with your pet through one-on-one consultations and take a deep dive into the root cause with the Wild Wellness Bioenergetics at Home testing kit. It's time to rethink how we raise our pets.

0:46 A reset to naturally healthy dogs and cats. If you've been feeling like there has to be something more, something better, a better way to raise healthier pets, welcome to the Pet Parenting Reset. Welcome back, pet parent. Today's episode is, Oh my gosh, it is going to be so interesting, but stick with me because when I tell you we're talking about water, you're probably going to be like, Oh my gosh, no, I'm not listening to this. But seriously, it is vital for us and our pets to have access to clean water. And the number of us that probably actually have access to clean water, well, we have access to it, but are we actually getting it?

1:26 Are we providing it to our pets? That is a whole other thing. And I'm going to tell you. So today's guest, I'm going to introduce him in just a second, but I'm going to be learning right along with you guys because I have I have so many different questions. I've heard so many different things about what we actually need for water. I know our water is contaminated, period. I don't care where you are in the US, probably around the world, like our water is contaminated with so many things. We're going to learn about all of that. So I'm going to welcome today's guest city and Kaufman. Thank you. So much for being with us today. I'm so excited that you reached out because even though I've talked about clean water so many times on the podcast, I've never really had anybody to come on and be like, I actually know about this.

2:10 Let me tell you. Thank you so much for having me on. Actually, the reason I reached out to you is because of the seemingly very boring subject about the math of water and how the contaminants, the contaminants affect you based on body weight has a really direct correlation on pet health. And a lot of people don't know about that because it's not really something the Environmental Protection Agency talks about. They do all their studies based on a 154 LB adult. Every single one of their metrics is based on that. So if you've got a 15 LB dog and all of their contaminants are based on milligrams per kilogram of body weight, that literally means that that dog is 10 times more susceptible to any contaminant. Given the fact that dogs drink between two to four times as much water, a dog may be as much as 40 to 50 a hundred times if they're really teeny tiny dog more susceptible to the same contaminant because the and I know I'm jumping in the deep end of the pool and we can really expand on this. But the kill shot here is because certain contaminants are allowed above as long as they're below a legal level that it's based on 154 LB adult.

3:32 If you are a smaller human or if you are an animal who can be up to, I don't know, 5 lbs. Some animals you could be easily with the toxic with the chemicals that are allowed in the water that are not likely to affect a very big person could easily affect a dog and due to their their metabolism it will affect them faster. So some pets absolutely are dying from tap water. Wow. Well, and I mean, I think of course this is my brain. I'm thinking yes about the dogs, some about the cats only because I mean, cats aren't great for drinking water in the 1st place.

4:14 They, they're really designed to get their moisture intake from their food. But so many cats aren't fed a moist diet. So, you know, they, they kind of have to resort to water a lot of times if they will. But even children even like me, I'm, I'm 110 lbs. That means that I am close to what, 50% more susceptible to whatever is happening in the tap water. And then of course, my brain not only goes to what we're drinking, but what we're bathing in because our our skin is our biggest like organ system. Like this is just like honestly I'm overwhelmed with it is where I'm at.

4:57 I know some people it is hard to to work through it. It is easy to get overwhelmed that what the science says about skin transferred. So we can start there in humans at least. And there's no data I have about this in animals, but in humans at least it's about 1%. So what you're bathing in about 1% can transfer compared to drinking. So in certain cases that is a lot because the amount of, for example, forever chemicals P Foss, that type of stuff that you want is in the parts per trillion, which to give an example of what that means, it would be like a single drop in Lake MI.

5:42 It's a very, very minuscule amount that you do not want in your body. Forever chemicals go. So bathing in that can be a potentially we don't really know a lot about the transfer of it, but if we follow the same 1% rule, that can can be significant arsenic, though the arsenic in your water, the and arsenic is in most water in some way, shape or form about half the municipalities in let's say Washington state, which I know more about the nether areas, half the municipalities about have arsenic in it that are below the legal level but above the health level for humans. So if you're then taking that tap water and feeding it to your dog, that can be really bad. So yeah, bathing is that it's a concern, but drinking water is much more of a concern.

6:32 And then the list of contaminants are so vast. I mean, in the meadows category, we're talking about arsenic and lead and manganese. And we can get into things like uranium has been found in drinking in tap water. And then in the the other category is the volatile granite compounds. We're talking about chlorine byproducts a lot, dibromochloromethane and halocetic acids and a bunch of other very complex sounding words. And then there's man made chemicals, there's pharmaceuticals and and then there's some naturally occurring nitrates and and other forms of byproducts from factories. So all of that has been found in drinking water. Some of it is tested for, but for pets it matters way more. You cannot go into that.

7:21 I can't. I just, you know, whatever comes out of the tap. I used to drink from a garden hose. All those ideas kind of they go way out the window when it comes to the body weight size of an animal. So I definitely, I mean, I'm glad you started listing off some of the contaminants because that was going to be one of my questions. But it sounds like they're just so many people I would imagine can, if they want like a comprehensive list, they could find that where on the EPA's website. Yeah, the EPA website will show a very big list, but that is not the complete list. The complete list is in the hundreds of thousands, and we don't test for that many things. We have a strong idea that all of the levels are pretty low and the human body is a homeostasis engine.

8:06 It's incredible at taking in contaminants and getting rid of contaminants. It doesn't always. A lot of it sits in your fat and it just stays there, sits in your brain or sits around your organs or just floats in your body and it is not released always unless you sweat or go through some sort of detox, and even then it may not be. Forever chemicals are called forever chemicals because they're not going to be metabolized or broken down at all in your body. Cold plasma is currently the first idea anyone's had for how to get rid of it. And if anyone here knows what cold plasma is, we're talking about 10 to thousands of dollars just to create it for a moment.

8:47 So it's like, it's definitely not viable currently to get rid of forever chemicals. This is not to be doom and gloom. Your body, your human body is incredible at dealing with this stuff. So, and not to say that you should highly recommend people clean their water for themselves, but just know that all of the measures and all of the balances are based on 154 lbs adult human. So each state, each county, municipality, I, I remember, I don't know, not too long ago where I used to live, they the water company actually like sent out a booklet of like, this is what we found in the water.

9:31 So you can be confident or whatever. I don't know. I guess that's what the promotion was for. Can people, I, I would imagine you would recommend people testing their water for themselves for probably a number of reasons, but could they start by just looking on their county or whoever they're getting their water from's website to see like what testing they have done, what they're saying is in their water? How do you recommend people start figuring this out? That's a great question. There are two free sources for identifying what's in your tap water. The municipality will release something. It is not always some are very extensive and some are very small. So that's one thing They're required to do testing and they're required to prove that they're testing meets legal levels.

10:12 So, and then and they have to release those. The other website is called the Environmental working Group. A little warning when you go on there, some of the levels they describe are pretty extreme. They're going to they're saying multiples like you, I saw this municipality recently that had arsenic at .8 and one is the legal level. So they were really close to the legal level, right? They were 80% there, but the municipal, the environment working group said that was 2000 times the health guideline, the health guideline for arsenic 0. So I have no idea how you have a multiplier from zero. So the 2000 makes no sense to me. But the number is there, the actual contaminant level is there.

10:59 That matters. Determining that matters the the legal level is listed. The percentage of it is therefore knowable based on those results, and the Environmental Working Group will probably have a pretty extensive list of contaminants for whatever your municipality is. You just go to their tap water database. That being said, everybody's only testing for roughly 50, maybe 100 things and you are probably not going to go test for 100,000 things because it would cost $50,000 to do.

11:39 It's maybe more, it would potentially cost much more than that. Actually the the like the most extensive test I know about is $2500 and that test for about 500 different things. We're not. We're just not testing for everything that can be in the water. Instead, what you want to do is just do reverse osmosis. And if you want it for your body, if you want to to get it, get it so you're not bathing in it too, which is a good idea in some cases, then you want a system that does that does kind of weak DI and is a honestly, there's not a lot of companies doing full treatment for your body. They're doing mostly softeners.

12:26 You'd have to reach out to just a few companies from our company Pure Water, Northwest Water Tech does something like that. Poseidon water system sells products like that. So there's not a lot that do significant treatment or you do whole house reverse osmosis. That is usually overkill because the amount that does skin transfer is not a lot. And if you really are interested in that, reach out to myself or someone like me and get expert advice. But for drinking water under counter, reverse osmosis is going to be an extremely good catch all. That's such a good point. Well, at first I have so many questions, but it's such a good point that I actually didn't ask you to tell people like who the heck you are and why they're listening to you. I, yeah, I'm, my name is City and Kaufman. I I own Pure Water Northwest and I'm just kind of an avid study of water.

13:17 I have a significant amount of water knowledge that I'm certainly not the smartest guy when it comes to water. I just happen to know quite a lot. Quite a lot. Well, gosh, I mean, and it's so vital. Like, you know, we still probably all know somebody who has been around long enough that they're like, I'm why are we paying for what? Like we didn't used to have to pay for what are we paying for water? Like it's abundant on the Earth. Obviously we can't drink all of that water, but it is kind of interesting how far we've come in such a short period of time relative to, you know, how long the Earth has been around, how long humans have been around. But so, OK, reverse osmosis, I mean, there are a lot of things out there.

14:00 There are a lot of water filtration systems out there. I know like I'm in a situation now where I'm in transition. So I'm between like I sold my home, I'm going to be renting for a little while. So I, you know, I was in a position where I could have done a whole and I had different whole house filters. They weren't for this necessarily. I had to have a water softener. I had a whole house filter, but it wasn't doing all the things I wanted to clean my water. I was looking at getting something else and I was just like, I don't know what else to get at this point because I'm looking at so many different things. I don't know, should I go this route? Should I go that route? And, and you know, I have veterinarians telling me we actually want structured water. And then I have people like Gary Brecca telling me that we actually want hydrogen water.

14:44 And I'm like, what do we do? What do we actually want? I don't know. Veterinarians are telling you structured water. Wow. All right, well, I'll jump into that. First of all, if you get another house, Jessica, just give me a I'll help you out, give you some free advice. No problem. I don't even even know if I could sell you anything, but I'll help you. The thing about water is it's everywhere. It scares people. It fascinates people. People have to drink it. So if you bring up to them that your water might be bad or dangerous, then they either get terrified enough to do their own research or ask you questions, or they have the ostrich effect, which is where they bury their head in the sand and keep drinking the water because it can be terrifying. You have to drink it.

15:30 If you go for a few days without it, you die. So you're going to drink the water one way or the other. And if you can't afford it, or if it seems too overwhelming, you just keep drinking the water. So that makes it a perfect environment for snake oil. It is the absolute perfect thing for someone who's an influencer or someone who's charismatic to come along and sell you something that is like the perfect thing. And structured water is a concept that was made by this. The original guy was from Japan and he like sang to water and played music to water and froze it and had this idea that there was some structure. And then this guy from the University of Washington, kind of down the street from me, and I can't remember his name, but he went a step further and he looked at the molecular bonds that are created when water rests against a hydrophilic surface.

16:25 And he postulated that if you were able to drink that it would be healthy for you there. There is no such thing as structured water that you can drink. As soon as you drink, it lose its structure because it's a fluid. There is no possible way under any circumstances that water can retain its structure in that form. There is like some thought that structured water may exist in fruit and that if you eat it, it can last in your body for a little bit, which is great. I mean, fruits good for you. And we're talking about miniscule things that really matter so little that it is absolutely snake oil. From that perspective, hydrogen water is valid. However, hydrogen is a gas that will pour out of water at an immense speed.

17:13 If you create hydrogen water, drink it immediately or it will have no effect. It'll be gone within 5 minutes. So you can't create hydrogen water and carry it around in your bottle the rest of the day. It's not possible, but hydrogen water does have health benefits if you can get it. That being said, it has nowhere near the health benefits of having water that has no volatile organic compounds, pharmaceuticals, forever chemicals, metals, that kind of stuff in it. That kind of water is much, much healthier. So the the reason why reverse osmosis is not everywhere is because reverse osmosis does such a good job of cleaning, it's actually removing some of the minerals and people want minerals in their water.

17:54 So the reality is the minerals you get from food, as long as you eat a balanced diet, exceed water by about 100 times, you will get virtually no benefit mineral wise from water compared to the food you eat. But if you want minerals in your water, do the if you're going to do all this extra work anyhow, just pour minerals into your reverse osmosis water and you're good to go. They sell packets and minerals that are really great. Just do that. Reverse osmosis water is the technology that right now is the kind of panacea the the silver bullet that everyone is looking for. It is actually just that good. Currently it is. It was designed to turn seawater into drinking water. It can turn any water you're getting out of your tap as long as you have a good RO that has good prefiltration with carbon. It will turn any tap water into good drinking water. If you don't have tap water, if you're on a well, reverse osmosis can become fouled because there can be biologics that can create a a slime bacteria that can destroy a river osmosis.

19:02 So you would want to do a test if you have a well. But that being said, our water is the silver bullet people are looking for. So if you want to to have just no confusion and just be like, look, I just want good water. I don't know how to do all the tests needed. Just get RO. So, but it does need it's. It's dead at that point, and you do need to add minerals back to it. It's dead as in it has just hydrogen bound to oxygen, which is the main thing you need from water. OK. If you add minerals back to it though, yeah, it's it's fantastic. OK, that makes sense. It does so with our pets specifically like what that's really where and, and The thing is that like I deal with animals everyday, like my clients, these animals are sick, right?

19:56 Like, and I think to some degree we're all kind of sick to in some shape form or fashion because we are constantly exposed to toxins in our environment. We're constantly exposed to toxins in our foods unless we're being very. Be very careful unless we're growing our own foods, unless we know exactly where are the animals are being raised and like all of the things like we're just exposed to so many toxins. And it, like you said, is so, so much worse for our pets because they are so much smaller that they may not be able. I mean, so many of us, I feel like are not able to, to handle the vast amount of toxins that we are exposed to every single day. So do you have, do you have anything that you tell people as far as like their pets are concerned? Is there anything that they're looking for that you're like, oh, this could be like toxin overload and you really want to look at your water?

20:54 You're right, toxins are in your environment, so that means that your water is just one of the sources. Yeah. It is absolutely a good analogy to think of it like a battlefield, for lack of a better term, for lack of a better analogy. And your body is doing a really, really good job. And that's why, you know, despite all these toxins, many people are alive and walking around with energy and relatively healthy because your body is fighting off like a wave of toxins in your food, in your water, in your environment, in the air. And then naturally created from exothermic reactions and exercise creates toxins, you know, while simultaneously getting rid of toxins.

21:41 It's a funny thing. That's what our body does. It's really good at dealing with toxins. That being said, if you get rid of sources of toxins, then your body has much more availability to deal with other toxins. Does that make sense? Yep. Identifying whether or not one thing is the source of your, your, your pet being tired or seeming to have low energy or dying early is really difficult because it could be a number of things if you've got arsenic at .8. I mean, the legal level for arsenic is, is one part per million, because the EPA thinks that that level shows is a statistically significant amount of increased health risk for somebody having the effects of arsenic organ failures or cancers or things like that. So if you have a dog that is 10 lbs, let's say 15 lbs, just so the math is easier, and they drink two times the amount of water that you do, a .8 is now is 8. It's now 16, which would be roughly 16 times the legal level.

23:02 Effectively your dog is having 16 times more than the maximum level the EPA would say you would want. That could absolutely have an effect on their lifespan. So I would say that that would be a far more important thing for vets to talk about than structured water structure. I mean constructed water. I know why they're saying that structured water has valid, valid hypothetical benefit if it was able to remain structured. So there's no, it's not like people are trying to trick people. It's that the the they're they're skipping a step from what the scientists that I still can't remember the name of at the University of Washington stated in his book the fourth Phase of water that the book he wrote there cherry picking stuff from it rather than reading the entire text.

23:55 He says right in there that it loses its structure when it goes mobile. So it's, I don't know why vets would be saying that rather than talking about metals because that for a 15 LB dog that he drinks two times times the amount of of water, you would be having roughly roughly 20 times the amount of contaminants. So is there anything other than the only reason I'm asking this is just to kind of give people an idea of like a spectrum You go from tap water, which obviously is horrible, probably regardless of where you live. And I would imagine could testing your water, what you're getting into your home may actually be different from what the municipality is, is saying just because of the delivery and the pipes that it has to go through.

24:46 And like things that are, it could be worse potentially, I would imagine. It can be for sure. So the science there and I won't spend a lot of time on this, is it has chlorine in it. 99% of municipalities have chlorine. Chlorine is going to travel through plumbing, kill bacteria, oxidize iron, oxidize, pick up plastics and that is going to create chlorine byproducts. So you'll have volatile organic compounds from that. You'll have oxidized metals, you'll have other metals. You'll have some biologics potentially, but probably probably not that many. And then you'll have some microplastics and then anything else that started in the factory that was unknown about two or not fully ameliorated and there you go.

25:32 So yes, it will be different in your home than at the municipality, but the amounts we're talking about are tiny, tiny, tiny amounts, but they can build up. So the answer is yes. Should you worry about that significantly? I don't know. Testing it in your home, if you can afford it, is always the safer bet. So is there like a spectrum that people between tap water and getting a reverse osmosis system? Is there like a spectrum of of what people can do in between there? If, if somebody like maybe can't afford a reverse osmosis system right now or because I wouldn't, can you get like, I actually don't know because I haven't looked into it. Like if you're, if you're renting, can you get a reverse osmosis system that's like a countertop system or like how you can, I don't know what's out there.

26:17 Yeah, so R OS are not as expensive as they used to be. And there are there are countertop models for 400, which can be a lot for some people. Of course, I'm not saying that's low, but there are also countertop versions for like $4000 and those are way overkill. The $400.00 one is going to be reverse osmosis still, which means it's still going to do a good job. Hello doggy. So I mean, that is better than not doing anything for sure. Middle steps carbon is pretty magical and what's in your fridge filter is carbon. It is not going to get rid of everything we're talking about, but it's going to do an amazing job. Carbon is very special. If you take this much carbon, like a gram, right? It has so many tunnels inside of it that are so small. If you take and this is this blows my mind. I said I've said this a lot before and it blows my mind every single time.

27:11 If you take the surface area inside me, the surface area inside all those thousands of tiny little tunnels and spread it out, it would cover 3 tennis courts. That is a tremendous amount of surface area for catching contaminants. It doesn't catch everything, but it is amazing. Carbon is amazing. That's why those those murky systems that are like these countertop things where you put water in the top and pour it through, that's they're fantastic. They're not getting rid of everything. I'm not getting rid of as much as people think, but they're great. They're really good. The fridge filter you have is great. It's definitely not getting rid of everything at all.

27:52 It's just carbon. It's not going to do super stuff that like a reverse osmosis would do, but it's getting rid of a lot. So though that's a middle ground, bottled water is not a good middle ground. I know you didn't mention bottled water and you probably already know this, but bottled water has about, I don't know, 100,000 particles of microplastic per liter on average. The reason is, is that it it sits in transport for so long, getting shaken up, heating up, cooling down. It is absorbing stuff from the bottle that it's in, even if it's in a glass bottle. The original source is not always the best. There are is one of the most unregulated industries.

28:34 There are very few bottles that are actually good for you. When it comes to bottle, there are a few very, very fancy ones that actually come from a spring and then are filtered well or come from a source where it's put through reverse osmosis and then put into a glass bottle. And those are so expensive that if you just get an RO, you'll save money. And does that make sense? It does. So can you tell me what reverse osmosis? Like what? What does that system do? Why does it work? Yeah. So a standard reverse osmosis will have a pre filter of carbon because carbon is going to get rid of some of the stuff, but mainly because it's going to get rid of all your chlorine.

29:17 Chlorine will destroy a reverse osmosis membrane. When I say the word membrane, that's the heart and soul of a reverse osmosis. When the water is pushed through the membrane under pressure, the membrane is like a filter that goes down to such a small level .00001 microns, meaning 10,000 times smaller than a human hairs, roughly 40,000 very very small, like 40,000 times smaller than a human hair down to the level of like where molecules actually have to push through. The water pushes through the membrane so that the water goes to one side, but it leaves behind water that's still bound to metals on the other side. Now you have water that's on two sides. You have bad water and good water. The bad water gets pushed down the drain and the good water gets delivered to you.

30:11 Interesting. OK. So obviously if you own a home and you have the means doing the the whole home, well, you said earlier that might be overkill, but it also might just give you Peace of Mind. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you can afford it, I always recommend whole home filtration. That's what I have for sure. I have it partly though because my daughter gets eczema from even a little bit of hardness and so when I put in a softener her her eczema went away. I don't know if that would be. I don't think that's true for everyone with eczema, but it definitely worked for my daughter. It made a huge difference. So see a whole home filtration is definitely recommended but under counter reverse osmosis, especially if you have pets, highly recommend.

30:54 So if you do like an under the counter system on your, I guess your primary, your kitchen sink, are you as concerned with like the water you're brushing your teeth with or in other sinks in the house or like, or is it kind of like you said earlier with with the 1% in your skin like it's kind of negligible? Yeah, it's super small. The amount of like water you get in from teeth brushing or things like that, washing your hair, bathing, all that stuff. It is pretty small. And size really does matter because the dose is really what has the effect. You can deal with things that create inflammation all day long and your body's like, this is easy until you get too much inflammation, then your body's like, hold on a second here, I can't handle this.

31:44 And that's all it is. The amount really matters. So you talked about about, I mean, I think I understand, but you talked a couple of times about like a health level and a legal level. Both of those, the health level and the legal level are both created based on 154. I think you said pound human. Is that accurate? And so the difference is going to be like the health level in my mind is like what an average person person can live with and be healthy. And the legal level is then what? Right. Lobbyists have gotten our governments to say, no, you can't do this. You have to give us more leeway.

32:26 Like, is that what it is? It's less sinister than that. I'm going to be honest with you. It's just about money. The EPA is is trying or was. I don't know what this EPA is doing. The EPA was trying to do a great job. They were trying to do the best job they can. But treating water is about size, footprint size. So if you've got a municipality that's able to get arsenic down to .05 SA, very low amount of arsenic, right? And that municipality needs a lot a physical real estate lot that is like 10,000 square feet. That's the size they need. If you want that arsenic to be 10 times lower, the size of their footprint of the land they own could be up to 10 times as much.

33:15 It may not be fully that, but it could be significantly higher. If that happens, your water bill is going to go up. So the EPA says right on their website that the health level, that the legal level is set as close to the health level as possible taking cost and other factors into consideration. I believe that's a direct quote. So they are, they're, they're basically saying, well, here's the health level, we can't achieve that. So we'll put the legal level here because that's achievable. That's it, which is scary, but that's what we're dealing with. That is scary. I mean, like, it just, it makes me sad and it makes me mad and it makes me like, but that's, I imagine because we allow so many other industries to pollute so much, right?

34:06 Like it's. It's partly that. Domino effect. It's partly that. But, and I know I'm, I know I'm Mr. Mitigator here, that's. OK. I don't. I don't want to say it's all the, the IT is absolutely DuPont and other giant companies who are poisoning our environment for sure. Like we wouldn't have forever chemicals probably with well, we might, but I don't know there would be less forever chemicals without DuPont, but just by way of example. But yeah, there are many, there's many, many contaminants that are man made, absolutely. But there is the periodic table of elements. Periodic table of elements has, I don't know half, I don't know exactly know how many of the contaminants on there are bad for you. Arsenic is on the periodic table of elements. It's one of the, it's a massively prolific metal. If you look on the Department of Agriculture website, they will do a map for arsenic and you'll see that it's just everywhere. So it's going to be in your water. So it's not just man made, there is there is a lot of this. It's just natural that we're just dealing with because we've expanded into areas where we are like, OK, let's put water here, Let's dig for water here now.

35:21 And we find water that has contaminants in it naturally, but it is definitely also man made. They did a recent study on I think 19 river knows 23 rivers. My memory is failing me. It's like 23 rivers in middle America. 19 of them had forever chemicals above the level that you would want for health. 19 out of the 20 threes and that is absolutely 100% man made. Microplastics, 100% man made factory. Most of the VOC's, not all of them. All man made pesticides. Almost all man made. Well, I guess all technically, but the pesticides have been around at some form or another by humans for a long time too, so.

36:07 So that's absolutely true that there's a lot of the blame has to do with humans and it is definitely worth being angry over, but some of it is natural too. So if all we were dealing with was natural, it would probably be a lot easier. That's true. Much, much easier. Yes, yes, you're right about that. OK, look, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm a capitalist. I'm not mad about capitalism. I'm just like, I guess, angry with greed. Yeah. Where I draw the line. But yeah, anyway, I mean, OK, so go ahead. The thing about capitalism is part of the way people get money is by shunting their externalities off onto others.

36:53 And by externalities I'm talking about the benefit they get that creates a cost that other people have to bear. So that is a contaminant that is, that is an externality as in like a carbon footprint or a a volume of waste product that is now in the supply that we just discussed would be lower and that would definitely lead to a lower water bill. If there were no human contaminants in the water, it would absolutely mean a lower water bill. So that externality that we're paying for is a profit margin for the companies that created it. So capitalism is definitely valid to bring up here.

37:36 I'm also a capitalist. But like it is, it is it is a interesting thing that if you were to capture all of the externalities for these businesses, would they be profitable? Yeah. Well, and that is another thing that I mean, I talk about a lot just in terms of like pet food formulation in general with like synthetics and pet food. Because each one of these where pet food is concerned, each one of these vitamins or minerals are tested in a vacuum to where like this is the, this is what that the amount of manganese that this pet needs is this, but it's not tested in combination with all of the others.

38:17 And I feel like that is the exact same thing that it's happening with each individual product, each individual company is making. Like yes, this is an allowable limit for what you are making in this one product. But then when we combine it with all of the products that we are using and consuming on a daily basis, it far exceeds what we should be doing. And then again, to your point, the downstream effect of how they got there in the 1st place, how they eliminated everything out like it's just, it's, it's overwhelming to start and end this podcast with overwhelm. And just to pile on, there is absolutely no requirement for them to follow a pet based standard for maximum contaminants in pet food either or in the type of water they use when they're creating the pet food.

39:07 So those are. All there aren't maximums on a lot, even if they like copper, for example, is a big one and that we're dealing with a lot lately in the past like decade is, is that there isn't a maximum on copper. And I was actually just at AFCO the past couple of years and they, they, they basically were like, yeah, no, we voted we're not putting a maximum on copper. Sorry, it's not happening. So I get it. It's, it's, it's frustrating and, and it just applies to literally everything. And like you said, the water they're using to to make it, we have no control over that. Bottled water bad. Tap water, really bad. I mean, all of it really bad. Carbon, great, you're going to get some things, but you're not going to get everything. Reverse osmosis, really good.

39:53 Reverse osmosis, adding minerals back best. OK. That's a great summary. Especially for pets. Yeah, yeah, OK. I mean, then that's my concern. Like if it's good enough for my pets, it's good enough for me. It's kind of how I feel about it. If it's good enough for me, it's still not necessarily good enough for my pets. That's exactly right. And then I don't even want to say this, but some also want to be careful about the type of bowl you're putting water in because you definitely don't want like a copper bowl. You want stainless steel is OK, but even stainless steel can begin to corrode, especially if you're having ultra pure water in it.

40:35 But glass or ceramic, those are great. That's that type of stuff is great. Plastics. Not the best, no. Yeah, definitely don't recommend plastics. I know. And stainless is is iffy to me too, but also there are different types of stainless and then like knock off stainless and like that confuses me and I'm like, I'm just stick not doing stainless. I mostly do ceramics also because like I love glass, but I, I know that there are some glass has a lot of lead in it and I'm like, I don't want to deal with that either. Yeah, a lot of them. Glass, made in the US at this point, won't have lead now. Yeah, yeah.

41:16 And I know if you're, if you're a dog owner's got a really big dog, there's no way you're putting down a glass bowl. Yeah, for a really big dog then. Probably not even ceramic. Yeah, probably not even ceramic, but luckily they have a much higher body weight, so yeah, a little bit less of a problem. Yeah. And then ceramics I replace pretty often because if it ever gets a chip in it, it's done. Yeah. I know that I hate that so much. If I go to a restaurant and I'm served a plate that has a chip in and I'm like, somebody call the health inspector like right now. Anyway, yeah, if that glaze is broken at all, then I'm not not dealing with that. I mean, there is just no perfect solution. But I appreciate your candor and how difficult something has simple that should be so simple as water really, really is for I think all of us. It's just like the world, you know, I was just talking to somebody the other day and they're like, well, you know, we say that glyphosate is ubiquitous, but what does that actually mean?

42:18 That actually means that like, how can we even guarantee an organic fruit or vegetable because of rain? Like, you know, it's just, it's just a really tough, tough place we're in right now and we have to vote with our dollars. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Yeah, well, city and thank you so much for all of this knowledge, all of this information Can people if they if they want to go get a PhD in water. You have a blog. Do you have What can people do? I'm on a lot. I mean, I don't have a blog. I should probably have a blog. You should have a sub stack. Okay, maybe you can tell me how to do that. Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm happy to learn. I'm on a lot of podcasts.

43:01 So, but I don't have my own podcasts. I don't know, I'm just if anyone can find me though, my name is so unique if they look me up they'll find a phone number. OK, yeah, I mean, I appreciate that. And a sub stack is kind of cool. It's where a lot of people went when they were censored on, you know, the big Twitter when it was Twitter and YouTube and all of the places when when they were censored, a lot of people started sub stacks, which basically are like, it's like you just write, it's a blog and and they're different like tiers where you can put out like a free blog and then you can have like a subscriber or series where like if you pay X number of dollars a month, you know, 3-5 dollars, whatever, Then you get even more information from me. It's interesting.

43:49 I only subscribe to a couple of people there, but it's definitely information that I know I wouldn't be able to get elsewhere. Kind of that. That's really cool. Yeah, it is. And I think you have a topic that is niche enough that people really would be looking for it there. OK. I'll do it. I'll figure out what you're talking about and learn about it next. Great, So Next up is sitting in on sub stuff. No, really though, I appreciate it because I'd still feel slightly overwhelmed and I feel less overwhelmed. I feel like now and I think I still feel overwhelmed because I'm in a like renting situation and I'm like, OK, how am I going to do this to where like me and my pets are still getting the benefit.

44:29 But then I'm not like, I don't know, drilling holes in the countertop or I don't and this is where I'm at. But you know, still, we'll figure it out and. You don't have to be happen to be lucky have to have a soap dispenser or anything in that. No. Well, there's a yeah, the hose thingy. That's it. You could lose that and then when you move out you could have them swap it back. That would be a way to do it. Yeah, yeah. OK, cool. Because I definitely, you know, there's so many things we need to be doing and water is just a fundamental one that it's like, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all of that information, all of your knowledge. Yeah. Look up Cydian if if you have more questions. Obviously, his profile is linked on the website thepetparentingreset.com if you want to learn more about him. And again, thank you so much for all of this wonderful knowledge. I appreciate you.

45:25 Thank you, Jessica. I appreciate you having me up. Of course guys, I will talk to you again next week. Until then, please give your pets some extra love from me and from city in this week and I will talk to you later.