eli5: When people used wells for drinking water, how did they not get sick? Was there some type of filter or was the water just naturally clean?
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I grew up drinking well water in my house, and I’m under 40 in the US.
It was explained to me, that there are pockets of ancient water in the clay layer of the soil underground. It’s also important to know that soil is the best and natural way to filter water. So not only for water to get so far underground, you know it’s been filtered, but the fact that it’s been protected/sealed in a clay “bubble”, it’s clean potable water underground.
I always hated ‘city water’ I when I was a kid, since I was used to well water. It tasted to me like drinking chlorinated pool water. Even now that I have city water in my townhouse, I have a Brita tap filter so I can’t taste the water, because it tastes like bleach or chlorine to me still.
Now that I think about it, does it taste that way to everybody? Even people that grew up on city water?
I have a well. The water is about 175 feet underground, in a natural cistern. All the water in there has been filtered pretty well by all the various layers of earth its seeped through. I have a simple filter on my water system that keeps my water clear of biological contaminates and I have a softener for the excess iron. I use that for showers, cleaning etc. I have a five stage reverse osmosis filter I use for the drinking water, but it’s not strictly necessary.
You may be surprised to find that water filters are just sand gravel and charcoal, shit like that. Different mediums.
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They got sick, very sick, fatally sick, from diseases like cholera.
Billions of people around the world still rely on wells for water and millions die every year from water-borne diseases.
>eli5: When people used wells for drinking water, how did they not get sick? Was there some type of filter or was the water just naturally clean?
Before the advent of industrialized agriculture, the heavy focus on en-masse animal husbandry, and industrialization in general, which tends to ***heavily*** pollute the environment around and downstream of the farms due to chemical runoff and feces contamination, many water-sources were, comparatively-speaking, safe to drink, especially in comparison to today.
You can read reports from Colonial (1600s-1700s) New England in the US of people drinking straight from rivers that are, in the modern day, ***hopelessly-polluted*** from upstream factories and agricultural runoff
In addition, rock, sand and soil acts as a *relatively*-decent filter for water: drinking water from a well might be safer than drinking the “same” water from the river next to the well.
The “city” water in my county all comes from individual wells that the county maintains. They have pump houses in every subdivision. To your question though, there are filters in the lines, but that’s mainly for sediment not contaminants.
The ground is a remarkably good filter. The only things that ground water can’t filter out is the pollution from the soil where there are things like huge farms leaching pesticides out into the environment. This is why protecting our freshwater reserves is so important. Groundwater is one of the few water sources that is endlessly renewable because all you need is a rainy day.
Grew up on well water! I love the taste, it’s slightly metallic in our area from the iron content (I think). It’s used for everything, there aren’t water lines coming from the nearest town 5 miles away. It’s a bit hard from the mineral content, but not the worst. I have no idea how deep our well is.
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