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Evan's Reviews > Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink
Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink
by
by
First, I want to thank St. Martin's Press for the advance reader copy.
Unfortunately for me, I didn't like it as much as his last book, Let There Be Water. In Let There Be Water, I came away thinking that most of the narrative was fact based and fairly presented. I think he does a good job of being fact-based in Troubled Waters, but he makes little effort to fairly present the issue. I think my main takeaway is disappointment. I think Seth points out many failures in the regulation of drinking water. I may be more skeptical about his studies on contaminants, but the chapter on lead pipes is horrific - I googled my water company after reading it. I hope some progress is made, especially with better water treatment infrastructure. My main problem with the studies on contaminants, without seeing them, is that I assume the people conducting them have incentives to show a problem because they will lose their funding if the don't find a problem. He quotes someone at an environmental group as saying something along those lines - I'll list in the quotes below.
Page 15, "Some of the drinking water contaminants may prove to be benign, but the safer route is to have a higher level of caution."
- My issue with this logic is that California tried to list coffee as a carcinogen. Twelve thousand doctors want cheese listed as a carcinogen (https://vegnews.com/2019/10/12000-doc...) This issue comes up throughout the novel. Just because a study is conducted, doesn't mean the methods are good.
Page 27, "Whether all, some or none of these were caused by the drinking water is impossible to say with absolute certainty, but it is likewise, impossible to know what future diseases or birth defects might be lurk..."
- I don't know how he can say "it is impossible to know", and then list the worse possible outcome. He is anchoring the reader's expectation for the worse possible outcomes throughout the book, even where he doesn't have evidence.
Stopping here for now. I have many more pages marked to comment on.
Unfortunately for me, I didn't like it as much as his last book, Let There Be Water. In Let There Be Water, I came away thinking that most of the narrative was fact based and fairly presented. I think he does a good job of being fact-based in Troubled Waters, but he makes little effort to fairly present the issue. I think my main takeaway is disappointment. I think Seth points out many failures in the regulation of drinking water. I may be more skeptical about his studies on contaminants, but the chapter on lead pipes is horrific - I googled my water company after reading it. I hope some progress is made, especially with better water treatment infrastructure. My main problem with the studies on contaminants, without seeing them, is that I assume the people conducting them have incentives to show a problem because they will lose their funding if the don't find a problem. He quotes someone at an environmental group as saying something along those lines - I'll list in the quotes below.
Page 15, "Some of the drinking water contaminants may prove to be benign, but the safer route is to have a higher level of caution."
- My issue with this logic is that California tried to list coffee as a carcinogen. Twelve thousand doctors want cheese listed as a carcinogen (https://vegnews.com/2019/10/12000-doc...) This issue comes up throughout the novel. Just because a study is conducted, doesn't mean the methods are good.
Page 27, "Whether all, some or none of these were caused by the drinking water is impossible to say with absolute certainty, but it is likewise, impossible to know what future diseases or birth defects might be lurk..."
- I don't know how he can say "it is impossible to know", and then list the worse possible outcome. He is anchoring the reader's expectation for the worse possible outcomes throughout the book, even where he doesn't have evidence.
Stopping here for now. I have many more pages marked to comment on.
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