State of the Industry Update - 2006
By Alvin E. Rice, President, Multi-Pure®
and Paula I. Rice, Vice President, Administration, Multi-Pure®

Sometime this month, perhaps today, the U.S. population will reach 300 million people. In 1970, when Multi-Pure was founded, the population was 205 million. The opportunities available to us today are far greater than in 1970 or in 1982 when we introduced the Multi-Pure marketing program.

What is Opportunity?

According to Webster’s Dictionary, opportunity is:

1. A favorable juncture of circumstances
2. A good chance for advancement or progress

In 1970, Allen and I believed that the circumstances were favorable because people were unhappy with the quality of their water (mostly concerned about taste and odor at that time) and were buying bottled water. Today those same circumstances exist but consumers are not only dissatisfied with the aethestic quality of their water, they also are concerned about unhealthy contaminants that are found in their drinking water -- contaminants that can make them ill. Today’s circumstances present an excellent chance for advancement or progress in the drinking water treatment industry.

The same amount of water exists today on Earth as existed at the beginning of time, and, thanks to the “water cycle,” it’s the same water, moving unendingly from sea to clouds to rain to earth and back again.Every living thing needs water to live -- water comprises more than 60 percent of our body, 70 percent of our brain, 80 percent of our blood and nearly 90 percent of our lungs. In many communities in the U.S., especially in the arid west, the water we drink is recycled over and over again. Here in Las Vegas, our sewage and effluent water is treated and pumped into Lake Mead. Our drinking water is pumped out of Lake Mead to a water treatment plant where it is treated and disinfected and then delivered to our homes. Our “water recycle” is very brief.

Human survival depends on air and water. You can live about ten minutes without air and only three to four days without water. These essential elements of life serve as the most common conduits for harmful contaminants to enter our bodies. Some of these contaminants are known to cause many human illnesses. Recently we have learned about people becoming ill from the food they eat and the water they drink. The first question one asks when in these situations is, “what is the cause of these mysterious illnesses?”

The Pollution Within

Recently a journalist for National Geographic, David Ewing Duncan, participated in a “human guineapig” experiment to learn more about the chemicals absorbed by the body that stay there for years, causing growing concerns about their health effects. Many of you may have seen the report on NBC’s TODAY Show or read David Duncan’s article titlted “The Pollution Within” that appeared in the October, 2006 issue of National Geographic. David had himself tested for 320 chemicals that he might have picked up from food, drink, the air, and the products that touch his skin -- the compounds he acquired by merely living. He submitted to a huge battery of blood and urine tests to detect traces of industrial chemicals, dangerous metals, and pollutants he has picked up over a lifetime.

Duncan and the researchers were surprised by the findings -- 165 chemicals of the 320 tested were detected inside his body. Here’s the breakdown:

Wanting to get to the bottom of the results of the testing, Duncan set out to learn, as best he could, where the toxins came from, i.e. where and how did they enter his body. His findings are rather interesting:

In the 1960s, David Duncan grew up in a community outside Kansas City where he spent many days playing with his buddies in a dump near the Kansas River. At that time, there were few rules and regulations on how landfills were managed. Companies and individuals in the area dumped thousands of pounds of material contaminated with toxic chemicals, metal tailings, and heavy metals in the landfill. Contaminants from the landfill leached into the Kansas River. The landfill is a half a mile upriver from a county water intake that supplied drinking water for the 45,000 households in his community. Many years later, after leaving Kansas, Duncan learned that the landfill had been declared an EPA superfund site.

Yikes!

In addition to contaminants from the landfill, more contaminants were added by the industries that lined the river. Duncan wrote, “my blood contains traces of several chemicals now banned or restricted, including DDT and other pesticides such as chlordane and heptachlor. My childhood playing in the dump, drinking the water, and breathing the polluted air could also explain some of the lead and dioxins in my blood.”

In the late-1970s, Duncan went to college in Poughkeepsie, New York, about 140 miles downstream from the Hudson River. For about fifty years, General Electric released PCBs - more than 200 different PCBs, in the Hudson River. PCBs were banned in the US in 1976. In 1984, a 200 mile stretch of the Hudson River, from Hudson Falls to New York City, was declared a superfund site (yikes - yikes!), and GE has spent $300 million on the cleanup so far. GE is also working to stop the seepage of PCBs into the river from the factories in the area. To make matters worse, PCBs migrated into nearby community aquifers. Cleanup is difficult because PCBs settle in the river sediment and at the bottom of aquifers; they will continue to be released for decades to come.

David Duncan was living in Poughkeepsie at the height of exposure to PCBs. Duncan now lives in San Francisco where he encounters a new generation of industrial chemicals -- compounds that are not banned. I want to review a few of the contaminants identified when David went on his toxic odyssey in San Francisco:

Phthalates used in shampoos, lotions, PVC, vinyl, etc. Humans can swallow them or absorb them through the skin.

Dioxins which escape from paper mills, certain chemical plants, and incinerators. Dioxins settle on soil and in the water, then pass into the food chain.

Mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently impair memory, learning centers and behavior. Coal-burning power plants are a major source of mercury, sending it out their stacks into the atmosphere where it disperses in the wind, falls in rain, and eventually washes into lakes, streams, or oceans. For people living in Northern California, mercury is also a legacy of the gold rush 150 years ago. Over the decades, streams and groundwater washed mercury-laden sediment out of the old mine tailings.

PBDE (flame retardants) which saturate our world since they were introduced 30 years ago. Human health effects are still unknown; however, studies conducted at Indiana University found an exponential rise of PBDEs in people and animals, with the levels doubling every three to five years.

David Duncan reported that there are thousands of chemicals that were not included in his tests. Nor was he tested for “chemical cocktails” -- mixtures of chemicals that may do little harm on their own but act together to damage human cells. Mixed together, pesticides, PCBs, phthalates, and others “might have additive effects or they might be antagonistic,” says James Pirkle of the CDC, “or they may do nothing. We don’t know.”

After receiving his test results Duncan consulted with his internist who confirmed that he is healthy, “as far as he can tell.” David wrote, even though many health statistics have been improving over the past few decades, a few illnesses are rising mysteriously.

Some experts suspect a link to the man-made chemicals that pervade our food, water, and air. There's little firm evidence. But, over the years, one chemical after another that we thought to be harmless turned out otherwise once the facts were in.

State of the Industry

David Duncan’s profound experiment and report confirm that the "state of the drinking water industry" has not changed much since Multi-Pure was established almost 37 years ago.

• The nation's drinking water is still polluted. And, the pollution is worse now than ever. There are 82,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. today; however, only 25% of those compounds have ever been tested for toxicity. Each year, the USEPA reviews an average of 1,700 new com pounds that industry is seeking to introduce. The agency approves about 90% of the new compounds, many without any testing or restrictions.
• The media continues to report on environmental pollution that shocks consumers.
• American’s awareness of drinking water problems is heightened by reports they read or hear, causing them to seek alternatives.
• The opportunities available to Multi-Pure Distributors to help others solve a real quality of life problem are immeasurable.
• Multi-Pure Drinking Water Systems provide the best protection from water pollutants than any other product on the marketplace.

Drinking water pollution is on the rise. The problems are so large that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has acknowledged that the National Water Program has not met its 2006 goal of 90.9 percent of people receiving water that meets all health-based standards, and they proposed replacing the 95 percent target for 2008 with the "more realistic level" of 91 percent by 2011.

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View the 2003 State of the Industry Whitepaper here