logoalt Hacker News

kfinley10/11/20240 repliesview on HN

I couldn't agree more.

Out of curiosity, last year, I purchased some test strips to test my drinking water. The strips showed typical contaminates: arsenic, lead, copper etc. they all registered in the "acceptable range". In the test, there was a test strip for QUATs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_ammonium_cation), which caught my attention. It wasn't something that I would have thought to test for, but my water tested positive. I was curious, so I started testing other local water sources including bottled water from various brands; to my surprise they all tested positive for QUATs. The only local water I could find that didn't contain QUATs was distilled.

I thought maybe it was just in my area, so I started taking the test strips with me when I traveled. In the last year, I've tested the drinking water in multiple states and countries, and only one source has tested negative for QUATs. It was the water from a drinking fountain in the San Francisco Airport, interesting enough.

My suspicion is that QUATs are often flushed down the drain, and the molecules must be too small to be filtered out in the water treatment process.

I haven't found much research on the impact of QUATs on the human body, but I can help but think our mitochondria would be susceptible to damage.