Before you drink another glass of water from your kitchen tap, think about the source of the water. Your local water supply has done its best to purify the water before it came to you, but rules governing water purification can vary. When the local municipality received the water, it would have been full of pesticides and other chemicals, as well as industrial sludge and disease- bearing pathogens. The water that gushes from your kitchen tap started out this way! Even if your water comes from natural sources, you may still want to check the levels of contaminants in it.

Years ago, there was no need to worry about toxins from chemical waste and industrial sludge. The Romans and the Mayans just piped their water overland using aqueducts and that was the municipal water distribution! In more recent history, we too, took our water for granted.

We were understandably proud of the fact that our water was pure and drinkable. While there are regulations in place, these are fallible, and two strong water contaminants (chlorine and fluoride) may be part of the chemical prescription used to purify it.

Nowadays, even in North America, we have heard of injury and deaths due to contaminated water supplies. Water is a large part of our life, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the human body mass. It is an essential part of living as without it, we are dead.

We are told that drinking copious amounts of water may improve our health, but if we continually drink water containing contaminants we could become susceptible to many illnesses, from asthma to Parkinson's disease. Very few of us have ever initiated our own water test, so it would seem that we trust the local government. Yet, the move to bottled water has increased in the last decade and many of us have large quantities of water delivered to our home.

For a while carrying bottled water was 'cool'. Lately, however, certain insights have jaundiced the love affair with bottled water. For instance, one famous company was found to be bottling 'fake' water (taken from a tap!) Recently we were informed of the possibility that the chemicals from the plastic bottle containing our pure bottled water could actually leach into water!

There is one alternative left and that is water that is filtered within your home. These need not necessarily cost huge amounts of money. A whole house filtration system can cost a thousand dollars, but if you consider that you only drink the water from your kitchen tap, then a small attachment at the sink is less than one hundred dollars. Most water filters specify which germs they remove, all of them remove lead and chlorine, and three on the market remove E-coli.

Whichever action you decide to take, either an up to date water test, a kitchen tap filtration system or a whole house filtration unit, your action will help to sell your house more quickly if you can assure a prospective buyer that your home has pure water.