Did you know that the artificial sweetener acesulfam-k (E950; 200 times sweeter than sugar and no calories) from cola light and diet yoghurt has lately been proven to be in drinking water? Do you know what that means?
Even though you try to avoid harmful substances by buying “bio”, you get in contact with those through the water you drink.
Your body can’t use acesulfam-k and therefore discards it. That’s where it goes down the canalisation. But purification plants aren’t able to filter it completely or dissipate it biologically, so aesulfam-k leaves with the water and sinks deeper and deeper and reaches the mineral water sources from where we get our drinking water.
Studies show that we are no longer able to keep the mineral water sources clean and seperated from the influence humans have on earth. That can be easily seen when analyzing surface water from lakes, where one is able to detect high concentrations of trace elements from drugs, hormones of birth control pills, pesticides, nitrate (agriculture), synthetic fragrances – and acesulfam.
Those traces do no great harm to humans by now, but considering the animals living in those lakes, they do have an impact. For example, the painkiller Diclofenac can lead to kidney problems in trouts. Oestrogen from birth control pills influences the courtship behaviour of frogs so that males lack the need to reproduce. This could lead to decreasing population sizes and thus has an effect on other populations because nature is a great network where changes affect not only one species.
My conclusion is to support organic farming and bio products for which no pesticides and synthetic substances are used. If many people would do that, less pesticides are used so that less pesticides reach our drinking water.
Source: Schrot&Korn 03/2015, Leo Frühschütz