Tag Archives: water

Advice for Tap Water

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“My dad used to tell me, or I guess he still tells me, that when you’re using tap water, you should try to have it on the coldest setting because if its too hot it’ll dissolve minerals in the pipes and that’s bad for you to ingest. So you should always use cold tap water.”

There is a lot of mistrust towards municipal water supplies and the plumbing that carries it in the United States, as exemplified by this advice. One only needs to look at Brita water filter sales to confirm that many people in the US do not trust that the water coming out of the tap is safe to drink. I feel there is a lot of paranoia about municipal water because the subject happens to combine two very important topics: the government and water. There is a lot of distrust and ill-will towards the government. Often, it seems like there is a general consensus that the government is inept and does not care about the well being of its citizens. Whether this is actually true or not is up for debate, but when this idea of governmental bungling is applied to water, a vital resource, we seem to tend to assume that there is no way that the government could be managing such a vital resource properly.

Water Bottle Toxins

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“So whenever I bring a water bottle onto the car I almost always forget it there. My dad says that after you leave it in the sun and the bottle heats up, you’ll get cancerous toxins in the water and he would never let me drink it and would always force me to pour it out in front of him.”

The belief that water bottles leach toxins into the water that they hold is not a novel one.  I have heard this health belief from many other people in the United States. Generally, the usual concern is due to BPA (bisphenol-A), which is said to interfere with natural hormone regulation. My high school chemistry teacher believed strongly in this health belief and spent one of his lectures demonstrating how it is possible for BPA to leach from a plastic water bottle into the water it holds. As a precaution, he was often seen with a metal water bottle.

However, this is my first time hearing about possible toxins causing cancer. I think this plays into a cultural fear of carcinogens, especially within the food manufacturing sector, and combines it with our health beliefs about plastic water bottles.  None of my foreign relatives share this health belief, which leads to me to believe that it is mostly a belief shared by those in the US or specifically health and environmentally-conscious California. This health belief most likely stems from the fear of “chemicals” that seems to run rampant in our society. It is a fear of the unknown. We don’t know how water bottles are made and how the substances used in manufacturing them interact with our day-to-day usages, so we tend to assume the worst.

Furthermore, water is a life-giving substance to humans and the idea of vessels used to hold it “betraying” us and leaching something poisonous into it has a certain appeal to it. This health belief has been largely debunked in scientific literature: while plastic water bottles do leach BPA, the amount leached is so negligible that one would be more likely to die of water poisoning before the BPA levels would reach any significant level.

See:
Schmid, P., Kohler, M., Meierhofer, R., Luzi, S., Wegelin, M. “Does the reuse of PET bottles during solar water disinfection pose a health risk due to the migration of plasticisers and other chemicals into the water?” Water Research. 4 Sep. 2008, Volume 42, Issue 20: 5054-5060.

ACC. “The Safety of Polythylene Teraphthalate (PET).” PlasticsInfo.Org. American Chemistry Council, 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 13 Nov. 2009. <http://www.plasticsinfo.org/s_plasticsinfo/sec_generic.asp?CID=657&DID=2605>

Nightmares to the Water

Form of Folklore: Folk Belief (Protection)

Informant Bio: The informant was born in Yerevan, Armenia, moved to Moscow, Russia at six months, then to Detroit Michigan at age three. Since she was five years old, she was raised in Glendale, California. Most of the folklore she knows is from her mother (passing down traditions she learned) and from peers at school. Her mother remains as her main source of cultural folklore (Armenian) whereas her friends in school exposed her to the folklore of American culture.

Context: The interview was conducted on the porch of another informant’s house in the presence of two other informants.

Item: Since I was young, my mom told me that if I ever had a nightmare at night, to wake up the following morning and go to the bathroom, turn on the sink, let the water run, and tell my bad dreams to the water… as a way of letting them be washed away and not come true. And I did this for a very long time and often, if my dreams are bad enough, I still follow through with it just to give myself the reassurance.

Informant Comments: The informant does not truly believe that telling her nightmares to the running water in the sink really protects her from having her dream come true. Doing it does, however, offer her some comfort when she has had a horrible dream. Since there is no harm in telling the water about what she had seen in her dreams, the informant continues to do so just as a part of her morning routine after a bad dream.

Analysis: In this and many other folk beliefs for protection, water seems to be used as a method of purification or cleansing. Somehow having the water running as the bad dream is being told, removes the danger of having the evils in the nightmare come true. Since water is physically used to clean, it makes sense that it is also used as a metaphorical cleaning agent for bad dreams. Like the informant, I do not see any harm in using this folk protection but would not consider it to be a necessary action; if one forgets to tell their nightmare to the running water in the sink, they should not panic (if they do, they could always find another source of running water).

LMU Birthday Ritual

At Loyola Marymount University (LMU) inLos Angeles, it is tradition that on the night of a freshman’s birthday, that freshman has to be thrown into the Foley Fountain.

My informant is a currently a student at Loyola Marymount University.  She told me that she heard this piece of folklore when she was first taking a tour of the school; the tour guide had informed them that it was a tradition at this school although he had no idea where it had originated from.  When it was her birthday, her friends took her to the fountain and threw her into the water.  At the same time, my informant told me that this fountain throwing happened almost on a daily basis at night.

I asked my friend what she thought about this tradition.  She told me that as a viewer, it was always fun to watch people getting dunked in the water.  On the other hand, as somebody who was being thrown, it was quite scary since the Foley Fountain is known for being quite dirty.  However, afterwards, she said it was definitely one of the highlights of her freshman year at LMU.  I believe that this tradition is a right of passage at LMU as it is something that is expected of all freshman.  At the same time, I feel it is a quintessential part of the LMU student identity because my informant told me that whenever she meets alumni, they always ask her if she has been thrown into the Foley Fountain yet.

How the Irish keep from drowning

My informant told me of an old Irish superstition that he learned from his father:

“If you bless yourself before diving into the water, it keeps you from drowning”

My informant swims often, and he said that he always blesses himself before going into the water. He does not remember a time when he didn’t, and believes that he would surely drown if he did not.

I have seen my Irish relatives make similar gestures before doing things like: crossing the street, getting on an airplane, or even carving the Thanksgiving turkey, so it did not surprise me that crossing or “blessing” yourself before diving into water was also practiced. It again highlights the strong connection between the Irish and religion, and the fear that comes along with it. In this case, the fear is drowning.