Silicon Valley has become obsessed with untreated, unfiltered water even though
it may be dangerous. Welcome back to What's Trending, I'm Shira Lazar. Be sure
to LIKE this video and SUBSCRIBE for more social media news daily. 2 gallon
jugs are selling for over $60 in stores. It's pretty crazy! And the raw water
craze has become so popular that stores are actually selling out! What is wrong with
people? Why are you interested in this? The founder of Live Water, Mukhande Singh
has seen his company go from a small local operation to a company with
serious funding from Silicon Valley investors. And the reason he's doing so
well? Well, he believes that public water can't be trusted. And his commodity is
not cheap! He's gonna make you pay for it. He told the New York Times: "Tap water?
You're drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them. Chloramine and on
top of that they're putting in fluoride. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it's
a mind-control drug that is no benefit to our dental health."
I mean, tap water? Yes. It can be gross, but mind control drug? Really? He also insists
that real water only stays fresh for: "one lunar cycle. If it sits around
too long, it should turn green." Okay, really what he's saying is poor people
water? Eww. And now, because of its popularity, a ton of other companies are
looking to get into the raw water business. Zero Mass Water, which sells
tech that allows people to collect water from the atmosphere, has already raised
24 million in venture capital. Cody Friesen, who founded the company,
says that unfiltered water should be just as accessible as oxygen! That
actually makes sense. I would invest in a company like this. To make water
accessible for everyone? That's awesome! He says: "Just take a breath of air.
Take a deep breath. No matter how wealthy or poor you are, you can take a breath
and own that air that you breathe. And yet water, the government brings it to
you." One of the prominent investors is Doug Evans, who saw his juicing company
collapse last September. He says he goes "spring hunting" with friends because
there are not a lot of accessible Springs near San Francisco, so he
basically needs to go in people's private property at night to get that
water. Now experts are saying that this trend is dangerous. Untreated water can
include bacteria that may lead to disease and infection, but because
filtered, treated water has become the norm, most people don't realize the
repercussions of drinking raw water. It just sounds
cool right now because I guess a lot of people are buying it, and because it's
hard not to agree with Silicon Valley According to Dr. Donald Hensrud, the
director of the Healthy Living Program at the Mayo Clinic: "There are people, just
like with immunizations, that don't accept the status quo.
Without water treatment, there's acute and then chronic risks. There's evidence
all over the worlds of this, and the reason we don't have those conditions is
because of our very efficient water treatment." Another health expert, Bill
Marler, put it this way in Business Insider: "Almost everything conceivable
that can make you sick can be found in water. The diseases that killed our great
grandparents we're completely forgotten about." Even from the cleanest streams,
unfiltered water can contain animal feces. And that can cause a lot of
harmful stuff to your body, like Giardia which causes 4,600 hospitalizations a
year. Or, like something called Hepatitis A. That resulted in 20 deaths in an
outbreak in 2017, and can be spread through water if it isn't treated. The
problem is that most Americans don't know someone who died of Hepatitis A
or cholera because those diseases have gone away a long time ago.
Marler adds: "It's fine till some 10-year-old dies a horrible death from
cholera in Montecito, California. You can't stop consenting adults from being
stupid. But we should at least try." After the New York Times published the article
about this, social media had a field day mocking this entire thing. No surprise
there! Simon Barrett said: "People are mocking this Raw Water guy but getting
Silicon Valley millionaires to drink $50.00 bacteria-laden puddle water
because they're scared to drink the same tap water as poor people merits some
kind of Guggenheim Fellowship." Andi Zeisler tweets: "Raw Water is the whitest
thing I've seen today, and I was just in an IKEA in Portland."
Catherynne Valente says: "Spoiler: The mouth feel is Giardia,
the flavor is dysentery." Okay so the idea of paying $60 for water might be the "Mad
Max dystopian future," but is it something that makes sense today? Probably not.
Would you buy this water? Do you think this is a trend that's going to stay? Let
us know in the COMMENTS below, LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for more of What's Trending.