Book Reviews

Review by Vincent J. Felitti, MD, Associate Editor

We Americans are so used to opening a faucet and having pure water come out that we rarely give thought to what makes this possible and what the significance is when something goes wrong. Drs. Barzilay (internist) and Weinberg (infectious disease specialist with Southeast Permanente in Atlanta) and Dr. Eley (who teaches at Emory University School of Medicine) have written a small, interesting, clearly written book on water quality and its surprisingly broad implications for health.

The Water We Drink is a book that will interest most physicians. It is well thought out, highly readable, and provides an opportunity for physicians to step back from the minutiae of everyday practice to consider global public health issues. For instance, how might trace contaminants ingested throughout a lifetime affect health? The book discusses the history of water purification as done in biblical as well as modern times. Who would have imagined that Jersey City--home of the notoriously corrupt Democratic political machine operated by Frank Hague--was the first American city to chlorinate its water supply, in 1909? Everyone is aware of the relation between drinking water and infectious disease, but the details of Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, and viruses are not known to most of us. The relation between drinking water and cancer, bone density, and hormonal activity is even more arcane. The discussion of bottled waters (which have become surprisingly popular in the United States, one of the relatively few countries where tap water is safe) is fascinating; so too is Appendix 4, which shows the enormous range of sodium content in bottled waters.

This book is well referenced, useful to physicians, and will be of interest to any intelligent general reader. Its approach is far preferable to that used in the reliable but overly long book on the same subject, Is Your Water Safe to Drink?, published by Consumers Union in 1986.

The Water We Drink. Joshua Barzilay, MD; Winkler G. Weinberg, MD; J. William Eley, MD, MPH. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; 1999. ISBN: 0-8135-2673-6.

Paper $17; cloth $40. 192 pages.

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