Why Access to Great Water Is Important When Working from Home

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA, all United States employees must have accessto potable water while on the job. In the United Kingdom, there’s the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulationsthat have existed since 1992. Once you leave an office environment, is it still important to have access to great water?

It’s absolutely imperative to have a steady, reliable means of potable water when working from home for reasons of health and safety. Drinking anything but potable water puts you at risk of contracting waterborne diseases. These can lead to death.

How can you be sure your water is potable? What should you do if it isn’t? In this article, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Which Potable Water Rights Protect US Office Employees?

As I touched on in the intro, OSHA oversees the right to potable water for all US office employees. They have specific standards for drinking water.

The OSH Act of 1970also strives to protect the health of employees. Specifically, there’s a General Duty Clause in the act which states the following: “each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.”

This would include a lack of access to fresh drinking water. As mentioned, failure to consume potable water can cause waterborne diseases. I will explain in more detail about waterborne diseases later in this article.

There are four provisions to OSHA’s drinking water standards. These include:

Each employee should have his or her own water bottle, dipper, and/or drinking cup with the intention of avoiding sharing. This can limit the spread of waterborne illnesses and diseases.
If a company provides a water fountain, employees should only use single-use bottles or cups with a covered container for their own sanitation.
Employers must provide enough water that all employees’ “health and physical needs” are met.
This water must be potable. Employees can use it to wash their hands as well as drink the water.

Do You Get That Same Protection When You Work from Home?

You may not have been aware of the rights and protections afforded to you at your office job, but they existed nonetheless. What happens when you leave the office to work from home? Do you still get the same protection?

If you’re part of a company but in a work-from-home environment, it’s unclear whether the OSHA rules would apply. It’s no longer up to your company to provide you with potable drinking water when working, after all. Not only that, but they cannot control what you drink when at home. If you were to contract a waterborne disease, would the culpability be on you or your company? It’s hard to say.

Unfortunately, when it comes to potable water protections from OSHA for work-from-home employees, there’s no information available. If you have concerns about water quality at home but you still work for a company, I recommend you get in touch with your employer and ask about it.

What if you work for yourself? Then the onus is on you to have fresh, potable drinking water. Failing to do so puts yourself and your family at risk. You could even end up with a waterborne disease…

What Are Waterborne Diseases?

Waterborne diseases are those you contract from unclean water. You don’t only have to drink this water; if you eat food prepared with the water or wash and bathe with it, then you’re at risk. The toxic contaminants, biotoxins, and pathogenic microorganisms in this unclean water can cause a whole host of health problems.

Here’s an overview of the diseases you could contract from unclean water:

Viral gastroenteritis: Also called the calicivirus virus, viral gastroenteritis causes a mild fever, exhaustion, sore muscles, headaches, cramps, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. If you consume some shellfish, certain ready-to-eat items like sandwiches or salad, and/or dirty water, then you could get viral gastroenteritis.
Legionellosis: TheLegionella pneumonophilia bacteria from dirty water can cause vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches, and even severe symptoms like anorexia, pneumonia, chills, and fever.
Hepatitis A: Yes, you can contract this virus from unclean water. If you have Hepatitis A, you’ll experience jaundice, darkened urine, nausea, abdominal aches, exhaustion, and fever.
Giardiasis: If recreational water has the Giardia lamblia parasite and you drink it, within a week or so, you’ll get giardiasis. This condition includes symptoms like nausea, stomachaches, stomach cramps, gassiness, and diarrhea.
Cholera: Coastal waters and rivers with contaminated water supplies could cause a breakout of cholera, as can unclean drinking water. The Vibrio cholerae bacteria causes leg cramps, vomiting, and watery diarrhea.
Amebiasis: If someone defecates in a potable water supply or a swimming pool, it’s possible for those infected to get amebiasis or the Entamoeba parasite. Symptoms include abdominal cramps and pain as well as diarrhea.
Adenovirus infection: The Adenoviridae virus will cause symptoms if it’s in unclean drinking water. Various parts of your body can develop the infection, with symptoms differing.

How Can You Be Sure Your Water Is Potable?

You can see now from reading the prior section that waterborne diseases will cause serious symptoms. Remember, these can be deadly as well.

Now that you’re working from home, how can you ensure you have potable drinking water for yourself and your entire family? You have several options.

Use Water Filters

There are four types of water filters you might use: distillation units, reverse osmosis units, ion exchange units, and activated carbon filters. Let’s talk about these in more depth now.

Distillation units: With a distillation unit, you pour the water in and then it gets boiled. The water runs hot until steam forms. At that point, the distillation unit takes the steam and condenses it. You get safe, potable, distilled water as a result.
Reverse osmosis units:Most reverse osmosis units include carbon, much like an activated carbon filter unit would. This filter will rid your water of petrochemicals, pesticides, sodium, and nitrates.
Ion exchange units:You might also try an ion exchange unit. These often include reverse osmosis or carbon absorption options. They also have activated alumina to clear your H2o of hard water culprits like magnesium and calcium.
Activated carbon filters:Last but certainly not least, you can use an activated carbon filter unit. These free your water of lead, copper, and other metals as well as pesticides, solvents, and chlorination byproducts.

Switch to Bottled Water

If you’re not really into the idea of water filters, you can always drink bottled water. Most consumers consider bottled water safer than what comes from the tap, assuming of course your bottled water isn’t just tap water masquerading as something more. Sadly, that sometimes does happen.

If you want real bottled water, do your research. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration or FDA checks that bottled water has no radiological or microbial contaminants as well as no high levels of physical or chemical contaminants.

The downside to drinking bottled water is it can take hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years for the plastic of these bottles to fully break down.

Test Your Tap Water

Your last option for potable water at home is a little more DIY. You can test your tap water using a service like Tap Score. With Tap Score, you receive a kit for testing. You provide a sample and then send it back to a lab. Once the professionals at the lab analyze your water, you’ll receive a report card. This details all the contaminants that can be in your water.

You can even test city water and well water in addition to the water supply in your home.

Is water a human right debate?

There’s been a debate going on for years now about whether water should be considered a basic human right. While I or anyone could write tomes on the topic, I’ll try to keep it simple.

The United Nations, back in 2010, created a resolution that declared water as part of our rights as humans. This kind of backtracked on what took place in 1992 at the United Nations International Conference on Water and Sustainable Development. It was there water was declared as nothing more than “an economic good.”

Okay, so most people agree that everyone deserve potable drinking water. Where’s the debate? It comes down to governmental agencies across the world as well as the very fabric of our Constitution. Since our human rights have been defined as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and water isn’t mentioned in there, it becomes a gray area.

Does Petco offer free water testing?

If you have a pet and you’re concerned about the water they drink or live in, fear not. At most Petco stores across the country, you can ask about water tests for your pets. Yes, these are free. You have to bring a water sample for testing. You can even pick up your own kit while you’re there to safeguard your pet from dissolved oxygen, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, water hardness, and high pH levels in their water.