Clean Water
Photo by Rupert Britton / Unsplash As summer approaches, small tin buckets filled with water begin to line the schoolyard at my daughter’s preschool. The children run outside and squish their little butts in them to cool off. The faucet is placed at eye level so the children can reach it, and they are free to play in the water as long as they like.
“Doesn’t this run up your water bill?” I once asked one of the preschool teachers on a particularly hot summer day.
“Of course it does,” she replied. “But water is important for children.”
The nursery school teachers take good care of my daughter, Fuka, and sure enough, she’s grown to love the water. Whenever she takes a bath, she puts her mouth right up to the faucet to drink out of it. If she sees a bucket of water, she immediately climbs in and wants to play. Ocean or river, she’s drawn to water like a magnet.
In May of 2019, just as it was time to start getting Fuka’s floaties and buckets out for the summer, I found out our tap water was contaminated.
According to news reports, a series of tests administered to residents of Ginowan, Okinawa, revealed that their blood contained perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), a known carcinogen, at rates four times higher than the national average, as well as perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS), a synthetic chemical compound restricted internationally under the Stockholm Convention, at rates of fifty-three times the national average. The suspected source of contamination was the
