Well, when it comes to the safety of your tapwater here in the Washington metro area, the answer is not much! Water utilities in the city and surrounding suburbs test their product – tapwater – every day. Tapwater in this part of the country routinely meets federal safety standards for various concentrations, including lead. With the exception of a few brief and well publicized periods, tapwater in this part of the country was safe to drink when you were a kid, and it’s safe to drink now!

Here are a few things you should know about tapwater:

Tapwater Meets Stricter Standards
Public water utilities are regulated more stringently than private water bottlers. That means they have to test their water more often, open their facilities to more inspections, and meet higher standards for the water they provide your family to drink and cook with.

All tap water must meet the uniform standards set by the federal Safe Water Drinking Act (SWDA). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies enforces the SWDA and establishes minimum standards for all public water utilities. Bottled water companies know that tapwater is safe – that’s why so many of them simply take tapwater, put it in a bottle, and sell it to you for hundreds of times what they paid for it

Tapwater Problems are Publicized Better
When something goes wrong with tapwater – and it sometimes does – you know about it. Public water utilities are required to provide consumer confidence reports to their customers annually. The reports contain information on contaminants, possible health effects, and the source of the water. Also, if tap water has become contaminated with something that can cause sickness as a result of short-term exposure, water suppliers must inform consumers within 24 hours.

But with bottled water, it’s a different story. Inspectors don’t drop by very often.

We’re all counting on the bottled water companies to let us know if they uncover a problem at their bottling plant.

Tapwater is Healthier for Kids
For growing children, tapwater has a clear health benefit over bottled water: Flouride. Bottled water companies often remove the flouride so they can slap the «pure» label on their bottle – but this is one case where «pure» and «healthy» don’t necesarily go hand in hand. In children who use toothpaste while brushing their teeth, studies have indicated that cavities were reduced even further with children who drank fluoridated tapwater.

Tapwater is Healthier for the Environment
From an environmental perspective, tapwater is the superior choice. Despite brand names that all seem to include the word «spring,» many of these companies aren’t in the water business at all, they’re really in the business of selling bottles. And those bottles are an environmental problem. Even after being hauled to the landfill, plastic bottles take many centuries (between 400-1000 years) to biodegrade. A glance around a public park will confirm that many bottles don’t even make it to the landfill. Plastic bottles also cost in terms of fuel for the trucks to haul it to the stores, and electricity for storage until the consumer buys it.

Tapwater is safe and healthy choice for your family. It’s safe because it’s tested often and any problems are communicated immediately. It’s healthy for your family because it is treated with flouride and it’s healthy for the environment because it avoids the problems of plastic bottles.

If you like the taste of some brand of bottled water, then go right ahead and enjoy. But if you have been misled into thinking that you need to buy bottled water or filter your tapwater to protect your family, learn the facts about tapwater and reconsider.

About the Author:

Are you raising a family in the Washington DC metro area? Are you interested in tips about government services and other useful information for moms like you? If yes, then check out the Metro DC Mom Blog. This article was placed in this directory by the environmental awareness company Water Words That Work, LLC.

If the new power plants are built, it will make a bad situation worse. Coal burning power plants produce many different kinds of pollution, but mercury is the most dangerous for people and animals. Mercury is a heavy metal, and it is toxic to humans — particularly children, even in small amounts.

You might be surprised to learn that coal burning power plants produce more mercury pollution in Georgia than any other source – more than 60% of the total. Coal power plants release mercury in fine particles into the atmosphere. Those particles return to earth with the rain and snow, entering ground water and wells. In this way, air pollution can easily become water pollution.

Once this pollution makes its way into streams, lakes, and even the ocean, it becomes part of the food chain. Little bugs in the water eat the decaying leaf matter and take up the mercury; little fish eat bugs, larger fish eat the smaller fish. It takes a while for the fish to get rid of the mercury after they eat contaminated prey, so this dangerous pollutant is building up in the fish. Since we tend to eat the bigger fish, we’re eating the fish and seafood with the highest levels of mercury.

South Georgia freshwater streams, such as the Ogeechee and Canoochee Rivers, have special water chemistry that converts this mercury into its most toxic form.  So, even though these streams may look pristine, they are, in fact, heavily polluted with mercury from coal fired power plants.

Even low levels of mercury can cause serious nervous system damage, particularly in young children. Heavy metals can inhibit the development of the nervous system, causing learning disabilities, erratic and aggressive behavior, and lower IQ scores when they get older.

Mercury poisoning has also been linked to mental retardation, blindness, and deafness. When pregnant mothers consume these toxins through contaminated water or fish, those toxins are passed on to the fetus. These toxins can also be passed through breast milk, effecting newborns as well.

That all sounds grim, and it is, but right now, with the exception of a few areas in coastal Georgia, it’s safe and healthy for adults and children to eat crabs, shrimp, flounder, and other seafood a few times a month. But if we want to keep it that way, we need to stop the spread of coal burning power plants in south Georgia.

There are three ways for Georgians to make a difference and protect their families from mercury.

Step #1: Get the facts about mercury pollution. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division has published comprehensive guidelines for how to eat local seafood safely.

Step #2: Conserve energy at home. If enough of us do our part, simple steps like turning the lights off in empty rooms or when leaving the house, or using energy-efficient light bulbs, add up to make a big difference in the amount of electricity that south Georgia uses  — and how many coal burning power plants we need.  We can also reduce the amount of mercury that’s already making its way into the rivers and start to clean up mercury pollution.

Step #3: Send a message. The Ogeechee Riverkeeper, which is working to raise awareness about mercury poisoning in Georgia, has published an online energy saving pledge form. When people like us sign that pledge, we’re sending a message to electric utilities and environmental regulators that we’re going to do our part to keep local water clean and unpolluted — and we want them to do theirs and deny the permits for the new power plants.

We like to think that south Georgia is a place where we can enjoy fresh air and clean country living. We want our children to grow up catching fish and eating seafood caught fresh from local waters.

Right now, there is a threat to those things, but it’s not too late to preserve them for future generations. Make a difference today! Get the facts, conserve energy at home, and send a message to power company and environmental regulators that you don’t want any more coal burning power plants in south Georgia.

About the Author:

Eric Eckl is an environmental communication consultant who works with nature protection and pollution control organizations. Eric placed this article in this directory on behalf of the Ogeechee Riverkeeper, to help with their efforts to prevent mercury poisoning in Georgia.

As a parent, you know that disciplining children be a difficult task. And, during times of family change such as divorce, discipline can become even more challenging. The family’s structure is changing, and the children are struggling with their emotional reactions to the change. It’s not surprising that sometimes children experience increased negative behaviors during this time. Here are a few techniques that you can use to discipline your children:

Obviously you want to encourage positive or desirable behaviors. To do this, you want to increase attention on behaviors that you want to see more of.
– smile and use a friendly tone of voice.
– get down on your child’s level and make eye contact.
– provide immediate encouragement.
– describe the desirable behavior in a short message.

Next, you should establish firm limits, where “No” means “No”. No matter how much crying or whining the child does, you should still enforce the limit that you have set. Because of the difficulty in keeping such limits, you should only use this when it can realistically be enforced.

Another technique of effective disciplining involves teaching your child how to behave differently next time.
– help your child figure out what he could do differently next time.
– let your child know that you believe he can make a better choice.
– help your child understand what was wrong with his behavior.

It is also important to remove attention from the behaviors that you don’t want to see anymore. You can do this by ignoring the behavior.
– make no eye contact.
– turn away to show that you are not interested.
– focus on things other than the behavior.
– praise your child when the undesirable behavior stops.

One of your goals should be to establish reasonable consequences, and make sure that the consequence is something that you can follow through on. Children remember what the original consequence was, and if you have a habit of changing them your child will not believe in the limits that you have set. Your child will learn to ignore you and to regard your discipline as something that is easy to get out of!

Finally, you should always try to be consistent in your disciplining. In other words, you should respond in the same way every time a problem behavior occurs. Discipline will not work when the consequences are not consistent.

Single Parenting Skills

All single parents know that it can be difficult handling all of the responsibilities that are normally accomplished by two parent homes. This requires single parents to become very effective at managing their stress, finding helpful resources, organizing their time, and taking care of themselves. Children can definitely thrive in a single parent home, but it helps to develop certain skills which will enable the single parent to run a home more successfully.

One of the most important skills is to develop a budget. In order to support the home through the finances that are available a single parent should keep accurate financial records, learn budgeting skills, reduce some of the “extras”, and even learn to work creatively with the money available.

Another skill is organization. It helps to keep a family calendar and to encourage older children to list their important events on it. This can include things like homework due dates, school events, sporting events, and so on.

Next, work to keep previous traditions, or develop new ones, that center around holidays and birthdays. This helps to minimize the number of adjustments a child must make. It also provides a sense of security.

Promoting teamwork is another important skill, where parents involve children in home maintenance chores. This is done by assigning age-appropriate jobs to each member of the family. Children learn how to work together and develop feelings of pride in ownership.

Having a positive outlook is very important when it comes to establishing an effective single parent household. Parents who regard the single parent household as a positive option that will be successful help their children to adjust to the new situation that much better.

You can also develop your skill of establishing appropriate boundaries. Your children can be given opportunities to help you make decisions about the home, family activities, and even the house rules and their consequences. This helps to teach them how to solve problems and how to plan for the future. Obviously, any disciplining remains the job of the parent.

Finally, work on developing your confidence. A well-informed parent can make good decisions, and you should believe in your ability to create a good home environment for your children.

Even though your child may be accustomed to a two parent household, he can thrive and be successful when making a change to a single parent household. No matter what the living situation is, you should strive to always be reliable and responsive to your child’s needs.

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