Drinking from a hose

Ah summer. What a great time of year to be a kid! Warm days spent outside playing - no school to worry about, just fun.

Water always played a big part - whether it was going to the beach, or the pool or most often just playing with the hose in the yard. Running through the sprinkler, sipping from the hose when thirsty.

It was always better sipping from the hose than going to the house. Trying to set the water flow just right to drink. I don't know about you but somehow we either got it wrong and we got all wet, or our friends - played with the valve to get us.


When I had daughters, I taught them how to drink form the hose and yes - i might have played with the valve to get them wet. I even taught my 14 month old grandson how to last summer.


BUT WAIT!

A new study released is exposing the dangers of drinking from the hose. Garden hoses don't have the same requirements as drinking water plumbing. The research team left a section of garden hose filled with water out in the sun over multiple days. When the water was tested it was found to exceed federal standards for safe drinking water for several chemicals — including four times the standard considered safe for phthalates, 18 times that for lead and 20 times that for BPA.

A spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said that the commission would never recommend that any consumer drink from a garden hose. “The real health concern here is bacterial contamination,” she said. “Garden hoses sit outside and bake in the sun. Anything can get in them, and it’s a perfect environment for all sorts of microbial communities.”

Now that's a mouthful, but I don't think I'll be taking a mouthful of hose water any time soon.