Jan 7, 2018 4 min read

In the annals of useless consumer goods, it would be hard to top pet rocks.

If you were around in the mid-1970s, you’ll recall that pet rocks were, well, rocks, but they were packaged in cardboard boxes and came with breathing holes and straw. Like many artifacts of the mid-1970s, such as 8-track tapes, CB radios and Ford Pintos, pet rocks had a brief time in the sunlight before being relegated to the back of the closet or, in the case of the cars, dragged off to the scrapyard. Even the creator of pet rocks later had regrets: “Sometimes I look back and wonder if my life wouldn’t have been simpler if I hadn’t done it,” he said.

But human ingenuity is boundless, and it appears that pet rocks now have a competitor for the most useless consumer good: so-called “raw” water.

Over the last couple of weeks, several national news outlets have reported on the denizens of Silicon Valley guzzling down unfiltered, untreated “raw” water. It’s spring water, and has been selling for up to $37 for a 2.5-gallon supply. Proponents sing its praises, saying that it improves their skin, improves their absorption of nutrients from food and, above all, it’s not that scary tap water, with its fluoride, chlorine and other chemicals.

One seller of raw water told The New York Times that it “has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouth feel, nothing that overwhelms the flavor profile.” Another fan even resurrected the old John Birch Society canard that fluoride is a mind-control drug “that has no benefit to our dental health.”

At first glance, talking about water as if it’s a pricey French wine seems harmless enough. There’s a sucker born every minute, as P.T. Barnum is said to have observed. But sipping on raw water could result in a lot more than needlessly lightening someone’s wallet – drinking untreated water is an invitation to swallow parasites, pesticides, bacteria, animal feces and all kinds of other goodies that, at the very least, could lead to an upset stomach for the ages.

Much like the anti-vaccination crowd or the food enthusiasts who turn up their noses at genetically-modified fare, it’s a reflection of how much progress we have made in eliminating hunger, eradicating disease and making our water safe that a subset of people with arguably much more money than common sense have decided that the path to good health lies in rejecting the achievements of the last century or so and rediscovering an idealized, pre-modern state of purity.

David Jones, a professor of the history of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told The Washington Post that our water supply is “incredibly safe and reliable,” and “the fact that people are worried filtration is removing necessary minerals is really an extreme case of one of those First World problems.”

It should also be remembered that diseases spawned by unsafe, untreated drinking water remain a major cause of death and suffering around the world. Waterborne diseases still cause more than 1 million deaths per year according to the World Health Organization. Experts have pointed out that the large drop in mortality in American cities in the first part of the last century, particularly among children, can be credited to the chlorination and filtration of drinking water.

Simply put, our public water systems are something to be celebrated, not shunned.

Let’s hope all those gallon jugs of “raw” water have as long a shelf life as pet rocks.