A recent scientific study reveals that it is not recommended to drink rainwater for several reasons, partly related to pollution. Explanations.
The weather has been raining for the past few days over a good part of the territory, after strong heat pushed Météo France to send an alert bulletin in several departments. Some of you might be tempted to collect all therainwater which is flowing to prepare for a possible drought to come in August… However, we must now give up on this project despite the environmental issues that interest us. This is essentially the lesson to be learned from a study from the Swedish University of Stockholm and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, published in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology.
According to one of the authors of this study, Ian Cousins, “Rainwater would everywhere be judged unfit for human consumption“. “Although we rarely drink it, many people around the world expect rainwater to be drinkable, and to supply many of the springs” he warns, before giving the scientific reasons that lead him to alert us.
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Rainwater is naturally polluted
According to Ian Cousins and his colleague Martin Scheringer with whom he released the results of his analyses, rainwater is polluted by what they call “eternal chemicals”. In scientific jargon, we speak of substances “perfluoroalkylated and polyfluoroalkylated”called “PFAS”which we find everywhere around us because they come from our clothes or some food packaging. Their proportions are so large that they have spread to soils and sediments all over the world, making theundrinkable water without her being pre-processed. “Levels of PFAS in environmental media are now everywhere above guideline values” report the researchers, which is not without consequences.
Indeed, these substances do not disappear in a snap of the fingers. If the rainwater is naturally contaminated with different bacteria or fungi, it becomes truly dangerous once subject to PFAS which could be the cause of many ailments such as cancer, problems during pregnancy or even infertility. It is also reported that exposure to these PFAS could also cause difficulties in children’s learning or explain some of their behaviors. On the website of Public service, it is also recalled that it is totally forbidden to recover rainwater for its own consumption because of the risk of pollution. Instead, turn to mineral waters, some of which are distinguished by their characteristics, depending on your needs…
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