Ignorance is Bliss

            (Pollution Level under 100)

WARNING:  If you are my mother, you should stop reading right now.  This may disturb your sleep.
Just this week we had our air purifiers delivered.  3 of them to be exact.  The pollution here seems to be climbing to new levels weekly and it's becoming to hard to ignore.  We are in a constant debate as to whether 4+ years ago when we arrived in China the pollution existed in our city to the same degree as it does now.  We aren't sure if we were just ignorant at the time and the "fog" that often plagues our seaside city was indeed pollution, or if it is actually that much worse now.  But whatever the case, we are painfully aware of the pollution levels now.  There are multiple apps on our smartphones that remind us daily of the levels that we face.  In fact I have stopped checking the weather forecast for the day when I wake up.  I'm much more interested in the pollution level.  Of course now we've come to recognize that the air quality number have a direct correlation to the distance we can see from our windows in the morning.  If we can see the bay, the number is below 200.  If we can see out to the ocean, the number is under 100.  If we can see the ships out farther the number is under 50.  The same applies for the mountain ranges on our drive to school.  We can almost roughly predict now without checking our apps as closely.
               (Pollution level over 200)

 Aside from the basic concern over the long term health affects of the consistently higher air quality readings, we are also starting to visibly notice the effects on our health.  Maddie has developed asthma which flares noticebly on the high pollution days.  I've actually had a few asthma attacks myself recently which hasn't happened to me since I was a child.  Allergies and coughs seems to be making the regular rounds at our house even more than normal.  And so we decided that part of living long term here for us was going to be a need to run air purifiers in our bedrooms while we sleep.  A week later we are noticing the difference.  Maddie's dry nightime cough has almost disappeared and I am starting to breath clearly instead of struggling every night to get comfortable.  All in all, I was feeling pretty good about ourselves for purchasing these expensive little machines.  That was until that fateful day.........

A friend stopped by, and being a good hostess I offered her a drink of water.  She looked down at her cup and let out a little shriek.  There was a very very tiny little worm in her glass.  Disturbed I figured it must have gotten in somehow while it sat in the cupboard.  Then I examined my water to find the same thing.  We dumped out our cups and got new water, only to have the same experience.  Um grosss!!!!!  So I called our fix-it guy to come replace the water filter.  When he arrived, I explained the situation, he told me he would of course replace the filter.  But he looked at me a little funny and then in Chinese started asking me if I was taking a drink right from the filtered water faucet.  Yes, I replied.  He proceeded to tell me that no one drinks the water from that faucet unless they had first boiled it.  In fact he said, even after it's boiled no one drinks that water.  They all buy the water jugs from the dispenser in the courtyard and even then they boil it.  I asked again and again to be sure I was getting the complete meaning in Chinese.  Finally he told me to wait, went and got a new filter, and gave me the package insert from the filter container.  It was conveniently written in English.  Basically it said that the filter was only for sand, dirt, and other big particles.  It did absolutely nothing to filter out chemicals or bacteria.  Oh my............  So for the past 2 years we have been drinking almost completely unfiltered tap water...........  I almost cried. Why then? i asked, do they have a separate faucet for the "filtered" water?  Which, by the way, the management office assured me was safe for drinking when i moved in.  He didn't know the answer to that, only that no one else drinks it. I have no idea why he has never told me this in the 2+ years that he has been coming in to replace my water filters.  I think it never occurred to him that I would be stupid enough to drink it. I called Rob and sent him right out to get me a water machine and start delivery of the office style filtered water bottles right to our door.  I am still cringing whenever I think about it and praying that God somehow protects my children from whatever the effects are of having drunk that water for 2 years straight.  It still makes me want to cry just a little bit.  But as Rob keeps reminding me, no use in crying over spilt milk.  PTL we miraculously never got sick from it.  And I have learned my lesson again that you can just never accept the safety of things here at face value.  A filtered water faucet with a water filter attached does not necessarily mean what you might think.  There are no guarantees here.  I'm hoping that in years to come this story makes me laugh.  That's why I'm writing it.  But for now, it just makes me cringe.

So we are hoping to start this new week with clean water for drinking and clean air to breath in as we sleep.  I don't think that's too much to ask, but who knows.  I think at times ignorance is certainly bliss.  I wonder what else I'm ignorant of at the moment.  I'm not sure that I want to know..........

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