Can You Brush Your Teeth With Water in China?
The water purification standard of tap water in China has not reached the goal of direct drinking for the time being. If there is no gastrointestinal discomfort in direct contact with tap water (such as washing fruit, etc.), it is because the number of microbes in the residual water is relatively small, which is not enough to cause apparent inflammation compared to your resistance, or these microbes are frequently contacted by the human body and have been symbiotic in the human body. On the other hand, people with very weak resistance or low exposure to microbial species may still have apparent inflammatory reactions after direct contact. Brushing teeth with water is only a cleaning effect, less oral residue, the principle is the same as above. If you care, you can rinse your mouth with cold boiled water after brushing your teeth.
Can I Drink Tap Water Directly? Can I Use the Water for Brushing My Teeth?
At present, tap water in line with the national standard “Sanitary Standard for drinking Water” (GB 5749-2006) can not be directly cited, microorganisms, copy disinfectant residues and so on are still very loose.
In addition, it should be noted that the above standards are tested at the outlet of the waterworks, after a long pipeline, the water quality will be reduced by a hundred, especially the aging pipelines, the water quality will become very poor.
Finally, many residential areas, especially high-rise buildings, need secondary water supply. At one time, the secondary water supply tanks are not cleaned for a long time, and they are very dirty, and there may be dead rats and the like. So the water you know from your faucet is absolutely not up to the national standard, let alone drink it directly, and you can drink it only after you boil it. But brushing your teeth with water is OK.
Present Situation and Sustainable Development of Drinking Water Safety in China
Drinking water safety is China’s top priority. In areas with poor water quality, it can bring health and social problems. In China, 190 million people get sick and 60, 000 die each year from diseases caused by water pollution, such as liver and stomach cancer; about 300 million people face drinking water shortages. In a nationwide assessment in 2009, 1/4 of the 4000 urban water treatment plants surveyed did not meet quality control requirements, sparking public concerns about health impacts.
The Chinese government is implementing a five-year plan to spend 410 billion yuan ($66 billion) to provide safe drinking water to all urban and urban residents (about 54 per cent of the country’s population) by 2015. The plan focuses on the construction of new water plants and pipe network systems, as well as the renovation of 92300 km of major pipelines and water treatment plants to meet developed country standards.
However, this approach to infrastructure development is not suitable for China, which will remain a developing country until at least 2050. Cities are expanding faster than public water systems are improving, and treating contaminated water requires a lot of energy, expensive technologies and chemicals. On the contrary, it should be more effective to focus on clean water and reclaimed water. First, it is important to remove industrial and agricultural pollutants from rivers and lakes and prevent them from entering the water body from the very beginning. The use of lower-cost technologies, such as purifiers on faucets, is enough to provide clean drinking water for most of the Chinese population, which accounts for only a few percentage points of China’s total water consumption. Lower-quality water can meet the needs of laundry, bathing and kitchen water.
In 2012, China issued a standard that tap water in all cities should meet 106 drinking water safety indicators, which is basically in line with the standards of the World Health Organization. In addition to speeding up infrastructure construction and upgrading of standards, the Chinese government has included drinking water safety in 13 major scientific and technological projects, including lunar exploration and manned space programs. The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars to study drinking water in key river basins and lakes. But so far, the number of cities that can meet the desired standards is still very limited.
What Kind of Water Should I Use to Brush My Teeth?
Warm water is the best, and scientists believe that brushing your teeth with warm water is beneficial to the health of your teeth. On the contrary, if you brush your teeth with cold water for a long time, there will be the result that “people are not old, but their teeth are old”. A survey conducted by Japan’s Ministry of Health and Health shows that the average life expectancy of teeth is more than 10 years shorter than that of people, and the root cause lies in the group habit of brushing teeth in cold water. Practice has also proved that warm water of about 35 ℃ is a benign oral protector. Gargling with such water will not only benefit the teeth, throat and tongue, but also help to remove bacteria and food residues from the mouth, which will give people a refreshing and comfortable taste.
Is It All Right for China to Directly Use the Tap to Get the Water?
No. Common faucets are generally made of low-cost copper alloy, which contains lead.
When the faucet is not used for a long time, the inner wall will produce green Baise copper rust, which will make lead and other harmful substances released into tap water, resulting in excessive lead content. If the quality of the faucet at home is not good, the overnight water content is seriously exceeding the standard.
If you wash directly with overnight water in the morning, it is easy for lead to take advantage of, a large number of “attack” into the human body, known as lead poisoning, damage to the nervous, hematopoietic and reproductive systems.
We should still pay attention to the invasion of bacteria and minimize the harm of bacteria to the human body. When brushing your teeth in the morning, you can soak the toothbrush in hot water for 10 to 15 minutes.
Sprinkle some salt in the hot water, a large number of bacteria on the toothbrush will be eliminated, the residual bacteria do not do much harm to the human body, some people do not pay attention to these, very dirty things are also sent directly to the mouth, think that dirty, eat not sick.
In fact, the correct time to brush your teeth should be after each meal. Because 3 minutes after the meal, oral bacteria begin to decompose the acidic substances in the residue between the teeth, which is easy to corrode and dissolve the enamel. Gargle in the morning and evening.
Why Can’t Tap Water Be Drunk Directly in China?
The main process of producing tap water in waterworks can be divided into several parts, such as water intake, chemical addition, coagulation, precipitation, filtration, water supply and so on. Therefore, the tap water from the waterworks is relatively clean. So why can’t tap water be drunk directly?
The reason is that in order to disinfect tap water, waterworks often add a small amount of chlorine to the water, which will produce substances such as hypochlorite, which has a strong effect of sterilization and bleaching. But at the same time, some hypochlorite and organochlorine are produced in the water, which are called residual chlorine. Residual chlorine has a strong oxidizability, if you often drink self-made water containing residual chlorine, it is obviously disadvantageous to health. However, the residual chlorine in tap water is unstable and it is easy to decompose and volatilize under the action of light or heat. Therefore, after the tap water is boiled, the residual chlorine can be removed.
In addition, the tap water exported by the waterworks has to go through many pipes before it can be transported to thousands of households. It is inevitable that there are some dirty substances and disease-causing bacteria in these pipes, and the tap water is likely to form secondary pollution in the process of transportation. Tap water like this kind of secondary pollution can easily infect people with various diseases if it is not thoroughly boiled and sterilized. Therefore, tap water cannot be drunk directly.
