Jim McMahon, Environmentalist Shares Well Water and Steps to Cleaner Water

In this article, Jim McMahon shares about well water and steps to cleaner water. Jim McMahon is an environmentalist and founder of Sweetwater LLC.

Kevin: Now, we haven’t talked about well water and a lot of people I talk to about water and I don’t know as much as you do, but I tell them some of these things and they say, “Well, I’m on well water and that’s okay.” “. So why not talk a little about some of the things you can find in your well water and how you can protect yourself from them?

James: Well water is a reflection of the earth around the well. So well water can be terrible or it can be horrible. The Midwest of this country is known as the lymphoma belt due to the application of herbicides. Very soon, in a couple of months, we’ll see those farmers out in the fields and they’ll be spraying, spraying, spraying. Then it’s going to rain. That water will go down to the ground and carry all those herbicides and pesticides into those wells.

So it all depends and then I have people in the Rocky Mountains. People test their well water and there’s arsenic, there’s lead, there’s fluoride, and guess what? How did we settle in the Rocky Mountains? Miners came here looking for minerals. So whatever happens in the landscape around you will be reflected in the water. Remember, water is a universal solvent. It will be dissolving the soils or rocks that are around you.

Now lots of well water is really wonderful. A large amount of well water is not. Taste is not a good indicator. You really should get a thorough test. I sell a test called The Water Check. You test 75 parameters for $137 and can add herbicides and pesticides for another $30. Get a good profile of your well and then you’ll know how to treat it.

Kevin: Right.

James: The other thing that happens is that people can have a well and then they will buy a water softener. They say I have a well, so I need a water softener. Until you taste that water, you have no way of knowing if you need something or not. It’s not unlike the guy who goes to the store and buys one of these little pitcher filters and realizes they’re covered. You should test your water and then apply treatments that address the contaminants you find.

Kevin: With well water, should I test it once every five years, ten years, or something like that?

James: It’s really not a matter of time. People like to think in time and maybe five years, but really, I would look for changes in the watershed. You have a farming community that suddenly turns suburban.

Kevin: It’s okay.

James: That is a common transition. While you can go from one set of problems to another, from herbicides to nitrate septic tank leaks, or lawns are a very common source of herbicides, because like Chemlawn, who even thought of calling that company, Chemlawn. They come and spray, so you have this green lawn with nothing but blue grass. Those chemicals are creeping into your well.

So I would look for changes in the landscape. New developments can affect your water. Is there a new industry around? Anything that happens that can affect the water table.

Kevin: I remember you once told me about a family that had very high uranium levels.

James: Yes. I shouldn’t laugh. I never heard from that guy again, but his family found this out after many years of not testing their well and people had been dying in the family. The family had grown up with this pit and they had been dropping like flies and no one knew why and they finally tested the pit and it had very high levels of uranium.

Kevin: wow.

James: So this guy needed, and sometimes I tell people and of course they don’t take me seriously, but I tell people to move.

Kevin: Really?

James: There are certain things you can’t fix.

Kevin: Right, because that’s not just in the water, but it’s causing reactions with everything else.

James: Yes. Radon is another. There are certain things and I have a library on my website at http://www.cleanairpurewater.com/resource_library.html. I just have links to all these articles on different contaminants. One of them is a study by a group of scientists about the things you shouldn’t get.

Kevin: Brilliant.

James: One of them is radon. I remember when the radon came out, everyone was reacting. Here is the EPA. One more telling us that now we can’t breathe radon. Where does this come from? Well, radon can be in the water as well as in its base. If it’s in your basement, chances are it’s in your water, and just breathing in small bits of radon can be very dangerous.

Kevin: Yes, and in the Northeast I think it is very common.

James: Yes, and again, it’s easy to remove with a good whole house carbon filter, or you can air it out. Another problem is this hydrogen sulfide, that rotten egg smell. For years people thought it was just a cosmetic concern and I got great clients. I had a boy whose daughters insisted that he do something because he would smell like going to school.

Kevin: wow.

James: Yeah. This guy said, “I don’t smell anything.” So it’s having this huge societal impact on their lives, but the EPA recently came out and said that, in fact, hydrogen sulfide isn’t just an aesthetic concern, it’s actually dangerous. We learn. Over time we learn.

Kevin: It’s almost like we learned the things we knew were bad for us anyway.

James: Yes, intuitively.

Kevin: Right.

James: That’s right.

Kevin: Let’s say someone right now is hearing this call and is interested in getting better water. What is the first and second step?

James: My opinion is that the first thing you should do is write your goals in an unbiased environment. You write what you want. Do you want healthy water? Do you want water that tastes good? Worried about mineral deposits building up on shower doors? Because when you write down what your goals are, that will drive your decision making later on.

I never make decisions for my clients. If a guy calls and says, “Jim, all I care about is my wife taking care of me about the marks on the shower doors.” Then you need a water softener. So sit down with the family or with the decision makers who are deciding what it is you want to achieve. Then number two, look at your water report. Look what’s in the water. Then you can go to my guide or somewhere else and say these are the things I need to get out of the water. Here is the treatment I need and then buy that treatment.

Kevin: One thing that I always talk about and something that we did with our water is we got something that was enough for our budget at the time and then we improved it and I think that’s a good approach as well if you’re concerned about your water would you agree?

James: Yes. Many people will buy these expensive filters at the supermarket. I won’t say marks, but they get caught on the faucet, or there is a jug. Those might be a good intermediate step. They are not a good step in the long run. Filters that clip onto the faucet, much like a KDF-free carbon filter, have been shown to provide a breeding ground for bacteria. They can colonize and live on the surface. So now all of a sudden you may be removing some chlorine, but you’re actually drinking more of it in the form of bacteria. If you do that kind of thing, you have to change it very often and stay up to date. Again, it seems cheap at first, but doing it right isn’t.

Kevin: Here’s a question I wasn’t even planning on asking. What about cleaning the tubes? Is there a time when you need to rinse the tubes with chlorine or bleach or something to get things out if organic material builds up in the tubes?

James: Yeah, and what I recommend that’s in the manual for the Kitchen Defender is when you want to clean it, do it when you’re changing the filters and go to the store and buy hydrogen peroxide at the grocery store, 99 cents. Remove the boats. Fill each one with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. So you’ll have three canisters full of hydrogen peroxide and then run it over the faucet and you’ll be able to tell when the faucet is discharging hydrogen peroxide and then close it off and let it sit for an hour or two and then just empty it out and put your new filters in.

Kevin: I have you.

James: That will clean out any organic buildup. It does not have the toxic by-products that bleach does.

Kevin: Right.

Kevin: What about different companies and looking at a company that you know will be able to get a filter in five or ten years?

James: Do you mean longevity?

Kevin: Yes.

James: I think there is some validity to that. People still ask me if I’m still in business and I tell them I have kids to send to college and I don’t hide my maker from anyone so they can always go there if they can’t. Find me. We’re in an era where it’s not about filters, but Starbucks has turned around and is closing stores, because people aren’t going to pay $3.50 for a cup of coffee. I never would have imagined it six months ago.

Kevin: Right.

James: Never again. Big companies are being acquired all the time. One of the equipment suppliers I use was acquired by 3M, because 3M is looking for water. I think there is going to be a lot of consolidation in the water business. Companies can come and go. Technologies are going to change. So maybe I think you’ll be able to get filters for your system. You can probably find something locally. It won’t be as good as what you could get from me, because I use a unique set.

Kevin: Right.

James: The other thing, if you start dealing with me, in three years Kevin might be saying, I’m thinking ozone or hydroxy radicals. I think if we add this to their system, we’ll get a better level of protection and so we’re going to look at the water business, look at our knowledge, look at the technologies and see what develops. . So it’s not stagnant. It is always changing.

Kevin: I personally think it’s nice to have someone hold my hand, because of the amount of research, there are other people as well, but 30 years of environmental research, come on. I don’t have that and I’m researching everything else in terms of health, so it’s very valuable to go to a person and tell them what my water looks like, what do you think, what are your recommendations, and then decide. whether it is a setting or not.