Drinking Rain Water
...Is It a Good Option?

While living in a small town in northeastern Congo, we collected all the rain water we could. The town water ran only sporadically and with low pressure. During the rainy season we had a long line of 50 gallon barrels lined up on one side of our huge porch, perhaps 10 barrels. They were fed off our huge aluminum roof and when one barrel filled the overflow would pour into the next barrel till all were full. We drank this water regularly, but only after we had boiled it and then filtered it.

From ancient times people recognized the only source of safe water to be from rain or from deep wells. As many as 4,000 years ago there were systems in ancient Palestine and Greece for collecting rain. Even the Romans, with their system of aqueducts, supplemented their water supply with individual cisterns and paved courtyards to collect rain water.

Is Drinking Rain Water a Good Option for Americans?

I could make a case for the great quality of rain water for drinking if collected properly, and I could make a case of the dangers of drinking rain water. You can catch this anomaly in the following two statements by scientists:

"There is no essential reason why you can't drink rain water. I think the concern about drinking rain water has to do with the fact that in our non-pristine environment the raindrops may have picked up some contaminant on the way down from the clouds."

"Normally you could drink rainwater without becoming ill. However, rainwater contains pollutants, soil, plant parts, insect parts, bacteria, algae, and sometimes radioactive materials the rain/snow has washed out of the air."

Most experts say that you should be careful about the way you collect the rainwater so it picks up the least amount of pollutants as possible. Then you should boil it or disinfect it with chlorine. Then you should filter it. Now, if you have to do all that to make it drinkable, why use rain water for drinking in the first place? You're much better off taking your tap water and filtering it directly.

Is Drinking Rain Water an Option
For Some Areas of the World?

There are millions of people in the developing world who would do well to drink rain water rather than water from their streams and lakes which are polluted with tropical parasites. A little care in collecting rainwater in ways to minimize environmental pollution, would give them a healthy supply of drinking water. They don't have a source of treated water and they don't have the financial means for boiling their water regularly. So, because of the obstacles, rainwater becomes a wonderful source for drinking water.

There's a growing movement in the world of what is called "rainwater harvesting". Just do a Goggle search on this term and you'll find a wealth of information. Essentially it is done in dry climates, like in Texas, or in developing countries without running water.

In India, for example, Bunker Roy founded "The Barefoot College". He and his rural Indian graduates have focused on rainwater harvesting in 470 schools and community centers and then piped this water to places more accessible to people. At present it supplies 15,000 people in 13 villages. They do water analysis and assure the drinking quality of the water.

A Better Option for Most Americans

In short, the possibilities of harvesting and using rainwater in the world are almost limitless. It's an initiative to be encouraged. But to think of rainwater as a source of drinking water in developed countries is not practical. We have much better options for drinking water both from the standpoint of safety and cost. Filtering your tap water is the best option for drinking water for most Americans. It improves the purity of tap water and can be done at a reasonable cost. Bottled water is costly, and not really an improvement over tap water when it comes to quality.

For more information about rain water and related topics, go to "drinking rain water".