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Nope, they don't treat the cisterns because the water has been treated at the conditioning plant. Part of the reason for treatment is because holding reservoirs pose a significant risk for contamination.
In my municipality there aren't enough cisterns that there's a significant risk of undetected damage, but larger cities, particularly with tall buildings, will have enough that contamination is able to go longer without detection. It's why major cities treat their water more aggressively.
Salt is poison. It's also a disinfectant antimicrobial. You also die unless you get a quantity of it.
Ethanol is a disinfectant poison, and so is lye/sodium hydroxide. Having a pretzel and a beer every now and then is also harmless, despite being cooked in disinfectant, topped with disinfectant, and washed down with yet another disinfectant.
You die unless you get enough water, and you die if you get too much.
Foxglove can kill you, or correct dangerous heart conditions.
Apples contain trace amounts of cyanide. Pears have formaldehyde in them because it's part of natural biological processes. (Your body actually has special processes for handling the formaldehyde it produces. You still shouldn't drink it, but pears are fine)
The dose makes the poison. That's not just a phrase meaning that sometimes you can avoid toxicity, it's quite literal. A poison is a chemical that disrupts normal bodily processes. Every chemical can do that with the correct (incorrect?) concentration.
If you choose to point to a chemical and say it shouldn't be consumed because there's a dose that can be harmful, it's worth remembering that every substance has that limit.
And that's the type of question you need to ask, not "is it poisonous at some dosage". You might be shocked to learn that that's actually part of what we look at when deciding if a chemical is safe to use in some context.
Also, I don't drink the pool water because it's a taboo in my culture to drink water that has had people in it. Doesn't mean it's unsafe to drink, since getting some in your mouth is inevitable when swimming. It's treated much more aggressively because "people are in it" and communal things like that are risks for disease spread.
Kinda like why I don't sterilize my scissors at home, but my barber does. The public health aspect is why they need a license and training that covers sanitation and the basics of skin diseases.
Also, the pool inevitably has pee in it. at a significantly higher concentration than the chlorine in drinking water, as an aside.
I feel like I was pretty resoundingly disputing that bit, because it's not a true statement. Concentration matters. A substance not being readily eliminated from the body is just one way for a concentration to become high enough to do harm.
Yes. Sometimes science misses an outcome. It's entirely about balancing risks with benefits. The risk of chlorine as a water additive is low, because we've studied it, there's no theoretical mechanism, and it's been in use for several generations with no ill effects. The benefits are cost effective clean drinking water.
There is nothing inaccurate about stating poison is poison. You're arguing the poison will not have an effect. That does not mean anything about its chemical structure or toxic properties have changed.
There is a reason the LD50 is listed. It shows a what concentration will kill a species of animal, usually mice. This is not entire analogous to humans but we accept this is the only practice that is maybe acceptable.
We do not test on humans and there is no blind study to show there are no longterm effects of consuming trace amounts of chlorine in water.
It's quite inaccurate to say that "poison is poison", because it's entirely a matter of the effect it has in the body. Is water poisonous? It doesn't take a huge amount to disrupt bodily functions and kill you. Ironically for the conversation, one of the key things disrupted by water poisoning is the balance of chlorine ions in nerves.
So is water poisonous even though we rarely consume it in toxic amounts?
Is chlorine not poisonous because we require a quantity of it to live?
Or, maybe, poison is better used for a substance that is or will cause disruption to functions if introduced to the body. A glass of water isn't poisonous, but a 5 gallon jug is. A full fox glove plant is poisonous, but a trace of the digitalis it contains is medicine.
I'm not sure why we would need a blind study of chlorine in water. We can just look at aggregate health trends in several populations. A blind is necessary when researchers are performing an intervention, but if you're not intervening you don't need one, just a way to deal with possible confounding variables. A typical one is "observational populations large enough to cover almost all variables", like you get by looking at population aggregated health data across entire countries.
It how we gauge the effectiveness of things like flossing and brushing your teeth where it's considered unethical to require a subject to forgo a procedure believed to be beneficial. It's not like you learn nothing just because your methodology didn't eliminate every confounder.
Again, you're talking about a dilution. Is a glass of water with trace amount of chlorine, chlorine?
I'd gladly review any study, that you're aware of, that states there are no longer term effects of drinking trace amounts of chlorine. That is, since it's such a walk in the park to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicity
Maybe reading it somewhere else will help you get it.
Yes, lower concentrations of a poison make it not a poison.
Do you think pure water is toxic because it can kill you if you drink too much?
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/dwchloramine.pdf
https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/related-research-chloramines-drinking-water
That's from just basic googling, so yeah, I'd say it's pretty easy to find at least moderately compelling evidence.
Don't forget some studies on the benefits:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15782893/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10176376/
As well as on general chlorine safety: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK598756/
From the first link:
Have you looked through the second link? It's all about EPA methods. If I felt further discussion with you might be productive I might investigate some of the citations. I just think you're accusing me of one thing and I'm saying something entirely different.
Are you suggesting chlorine is actually good for you, not that it has antibacterial properties that makes the water safer for consumption?
I'll skip the chlorine safety stuff because I asked for a study.
As far as the toxicity stuff I'm not concerned because you're still talking about concentration (see. Dilution).
If you had any tact you would understand that I'm not trying to say chlorine is unsafe for human consumption I'm saying that the goal of science isn't to determine every possible outcome of consuming it.
Anyway. You'll just have disregard me because we aren't communicating on the same level.
Tact? I've been extremely tactful you twit. You've been obtuse the the point of incredulity.
Yes, I sent a collection of EPA references. Who do you think oversaw most of the studies?
My entire point has been the toxicity issue which you seem incapable of understanding. You'll have to forgive me for invoking the chlorine issue so much, since you started this whole thing with implying I drink pool water and saying that "poison is poison" in contradiction to "dosage matters".
You still haven't answered me. If a toxic substance is toxic no matter what, "poison is poison", would you consider water to be a poison?
Clearly.
What studies? Just fucking link them.
Go on, now. Cya.