Easy access at the tip of your fingers, subscribe to our daily ePaper version of our New Era Newspaper.
Home / Why boiling water before drinking is better
Why boiling water before drinking is better
2018-04-23Staff Report 2 Alvine Kapitako Windhoek-More people are embracing the idea of buying water for consumption, but those who cannot afford to buy water have the option of boiling it for their safety, the general manager of Namibia Angel Investment, Jon Zhang, says. Namibia Angel Investment is a water purification company based in Windhoek and Zhang sat with New Era to explain why drinking tap water is a health hazard. “I’m not saying that tap water is bad because NamWater cleans the water before it reaches the taps. But the best is to boil water because drinking water from the tap is risky,” said Zhang. In addition to containing harmful chemicals, the pipes through which the water travels to the taps are sometimes dirty, according to Zhang. “That is why you sometimes see that after a pipe has been fixed the water is yellowish in colour or it looks like milk,” explained Zhang, while demonstrating to the New Era team using technology to test the amount of chemicals found in tap water. At the end of his demonstration using the technology, the tap water was black in colour. “You can see for yourself why it is important to at least boil water. You can also taste the difference between tap water and purified water,” Zhang added. He explained that Namibia does not have spring water. There is a difference between spring water and pure water, Zhang explained further. “Spring water is natural. In Cape Town they have spring water and mineral water. But in Namibia we don’t get spring water. We get water from boreholes but chemicals are still strongly present. Some people say water from the farm tastes good but the chemicals in the water are too strong,” said Zhang. If a person continually drinks water that has too many chemicals present, in the long run they risk getting kidney and stomach stones, explained Zhang. That is probably the reason why so many people are diagnosed with different diseases such as cancer compared to the past, added Zhang. “Namibia has many people with kidney stones and it’s because of the water and a lot of the sickness can be from the water but people don’t know,” stressed Zhang. Emphasising the importance of water, Zhang said people should not go a day without drinking it. “The body itself is made up of water.” For the past 17 years, Namibia Angel Investment has been in the business of purifying water through the process of reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis (RO) is a process whereby water is demineralised or deionised by pushing it under pressure through a semi-permeable reverse osmosis membrane. This way, a large majority of contaminants from water is removed, Zhang said. “We purify water because we want people to drink clean water at a low (reasonable) price. People have to buy five litres from the shop and they end up paying more. Our water is purified in our factory. We clean the bottle every time and we deliver it for free at the home. We also have water coolers to make water hot and cold,” said Zhang. For 19 litres of water, a customer can pay N$55. Namibia Angel Investment also supplies water to different organisations, including government ministries and embassies here in Windhoek. “We want to give the best service to our customers. Some customers just used to buy our water coolers and not the water and use tap water instead but you can see the difference because the water is yellowish but our water is clear,” Zhang said. 2018-04-23Staff Report 2
