How do you know rainwater is safe for drinking?

When it comes to sustainable living and water conservation many people conserve water—but they also wonder, “How do I really know if the rainwater I collect is safe for drinking?” Though it is an understandable question and concern, we are going to explain why this is simply not correct.

So, time for some mythbusting. The fear of drinking rainwater is an understandable misconception, given that most people in today’s society get their drinking water after it has been filtered and bottled into a neat pack, labeled, and thrown on a shelf at the local Kroger. So one can see how we tend to think drinking water = filtered water.

From the industrial age onward, many people seem to think that water bought from the grocery store is the purest form of water and thus, best for drinking. This could not be further from the truth. To put things into perspective, we have a few fun facts for you to mull over:

• People seem to think rain can hurt you when it becomes acidic. But what they don’t understand is that “acidic” simply means the water has pH less than 7. A lot of beverages have a pH less than 7. Orange juice has a pH of around 4. Coffee has a pH of around 5. Rainwater is rarely that low—and even if it was, it would taste sour—and would not cause you any harm.
• The first signs of toxic rain would be seen in aquatic life. To fish, water is like air. They would begin to die off immediately as they would be absorbing the toxic rain into their gills.
• In the United States, the above scenarios have not occurred since the Clean Air Act. Yes, there was severe pollution in the 19th century—fish died. Some forests were affected. But the toxicity never reached the point of destruction described above.

A study funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and Water Quality Research in Australia ran tests with hundreds of families and concluded that “…expanded use of rainwater for many household purposes can be considered and in current times of drought, we want to encourage people to use rainwater as a resource.”

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