You might think that the water you're drinking tastes clean and pure ... until you realize that the EPA has done little to regulate factory farms' practices of dumping manure into our waterways. Mary Ellen Kustin and Robert Lawrence -- two environmental experts -- joined HuffPost Live host Josh Zepps yesterday to discuss what's actually in your water.
According to the EPA, these farms produce 500 million tons of manure annually leading to the harmful waste in our waterways. Kustin, Legislative Analyst at Environmental Working Group, noted these farms' waste streams, referred to as "poo lagoons," pollute our waterways with elements harmful to human health like microbial pathogens and non-therapeutic antibiotics used to promote animal growth.
Attributing the EPA's failure to regulate these animal feeding operations to the Agency's budgetary constraints, Lawrence, Director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the result is "[We] end up with these large concentrated animal feeding operations essentially being able to scoff at the law in the way that none of the rest of us could."
To learn more about the water you're drinking, watch the full interview at HuffPost Live.
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