Human beings cannot survive without clean drinking water and contaminated water can be dangerous.
We depend on clean drinking water to stay healthy, hydrated, and strong.
Just take a look at some of the health benefits associated with clean water consumption:
- Reduces the risk of disease or cancer
- Manages your body temperature
- It helps sustain the functionality of your heart, nerves, and muscles
- Flushes out dangerous waste elements and toxins from your body
- Assists the blood in delivering essential nutrients to the various cells of your body
- Cools your skin to prevent heat exhaustion
- It helps clear and clean your skin
Natural clean water used to be easy to find. Unfortunately, modern urban developments and heavy industry have caused contaminated just about every natural source of drinking water, such as rivers, lakes, and streams.
Even city and well water supplies in various parts of the country have suffered contamination due to poor purification practices and local government budget setbacks.
Drinking dirty water can have a profoundly negative effect on your physical and mental health.
Sometimes it is easy to tell if water is contaminated because it may have a strange odor, taste, or color. However, the contamination won’t always be noticeable if the water remains untested and unfiltered.
It could secretly contain any number of contaminants, including arsenic, nitrates, bacteria, chemicals, lead, fecal matter, parasites, microbial pathogens, and even pharmaceutical drugs.
If you consume even one of these contaminants, it could have devastating effects on your overall health.
Below are the top 7 harmful effects of drinking contaminated water.
1) Contaminated Water Can Cause Nausea
Consuming certain types of bacteria in your drinking water could cause you to develop gastrointestinal illnesses and symptoms.
Nausea is one of the first symptoms you will experience from consuming water contaminated with bacteria.
You may not immediately attribute your nausea to contaminated water consumption unless you haven’t consumed anything else between the time of consumption and the time you first recognized the symptom.
2) Diarrhea from Contaminated Water
If you consume too much contaminated water, your nausea could develop into dysentery and chronic diarrhea. Dysentery is an intestinal infection that causes chronic diarrhea, with mucus and blood in the feces.
You’ll need immediate medical attention to address your intestinal infection situation. Don’t let the problem persist any further, or you could become severely ill or dead.
3) Abdominal Cramps
Drinking contaminated water may cause you to develop a digestive tract disorder that will loosen your stools.
You may sometimes experience abdominal cramps after consuming contaminated drinking water. The cramps should go away on their own as long as you don’t continue consuming the contaminated water.
4) Dehydration
Drinking large amounts of contaminated drinking water can still cause you to become dehydrated.
Not only does dirty drinking water lack essential minerals and electrolytes to hydrate the body, but it can also cause you to develop diarrhea.
Excessive diarrhea causes the body to lose water. You may even lose more water than you consume if you continue drinking contaminated water. That is why dehydration is a common effect of it.
5) Vomiting
Vomiting is another effect of the gastrointestinal issues you will experience from drinking contaminated water.
Most people experience nausea and vomiting for a couple of days after drinking contaminated water. If you don’t drink it anymore, these symptoms should stop.
6) Skin or Eye Irritation
Healthy water is supposed to cleanse the skin and eyes. But if your water consumption contains harmful pollutants or bacterial elements, it could have the opposite effect on your skin and eyes by irritating them.
So if you have dry eyes and skin after consuming significant amounts of water, you might want to try a different water source next time.
7) Death
Did you know that around 3.6 million people die yearly from water-related diseases? Nearly 60% of those deaths are due to diarrheal illness from consuming unsafe drinking water.
People living in third-world countries make up most of these statistics because they don’t have sufficient access to antibiotics or proper medical facilities to seek immediate treatment.
The Solutions
Relying on bottled purified water can get expensive. You can save a lot more money if you invest in a water filtration system for your home. Then you can ensure that your local drinking water is clean and safe to consume.
Another solution is to consume alkaline water because it can boost hydration, strengthen bones, increase energy, boost immune health, and deliver anti-aging properties to your skin.
However, health experts recommend you consume alkaline water in moderation to avoid some unwanted symptoms like nausea and confusion.
