Safe Drinking Water? Philippines

Is drinking water safe in the Philippines?

Is it safe to drink tap water in the Philippines?

You can get typhoid from drinking contaminated water or by eating contaminated food in the Philippines.

I do not drink any tap water. I only drink distilled water or at least "purified" water. But only buy it from supermarkets or legitimate stores, not from places where empty bottles may have been re-filled with tap water (for example, from street vendors who walk up to you or who sell water on buses). I did make the mistake of drinking Slurpees a few times at a 7-11 store in Makati, Manila. Later at home I wondered why I was not feeling well. Had to take an Imodium tablet. It took several weeks before I went back to the store and asked the manager at the store if they use filtered water in the Slurpee machine. He answered, "No." Then I looked and sure enough there was a hose from the tap water faucet going directly into the Slurpee machine.

It was suggested that I take "Imodium" to settle my stomach if I ever got a touch of gastroenteritis. I used it on several occasions, and it always worked in a matter of an hour or two. Imodium, or a generic (which is in small green and gray capsules,) is available at Mercury Drugs and other drug stores.

Canteens sell sodas, bottled water and much more. I have never gotten sick drinking name brand bottled or canned drinks from canteens or stores. Prices are much lower in the canteens than in convenience stores like 7-11 and Mini Stop.

I have a Filipina relative in Metro Manila who got Typhoid from drinking tap water in her own house. She was VERY seriously sick with a very high fever and needed medication for several days. She recovered. They purchased a double filter system from Ace Hardware which was located in a nearby mall. The filter system is attached to the wall behind the kitchen sink and the line attaches to the faucet. No one in the family has gotten sick from the tap water since the filter was installed.

After installing this the family has not gotten sick from the water.

Common 5 Gallon Water Bottle

Some Philippine convenience stores (like Mini Mart and some 7-11's) do use purified water in drink machines. Be sure to ask and tell them to show you the source before drinking any of their sodas, Slurpees, Big Gulps or whatever. Often, they will show you large blue plastic bottles. These are used to hold purified water.

Purified Water Refilling Stations

In larger, brand name, convenience stores this water will probably be okay to drink. I have never had a reaction to the "purified" waters, in small 500 ML plastic bottles (16.9 oz US), that SM Malls, Ayala Malls, or Robinson's Malls sell, or the ones sold by convenience stores.

5-gallon bottle of Wilkins Distilled Water on top
of a floor dispenser

Wilkins Distilled Water - a product of the Coca Cola company.

Absolute Distilled Water

But, I feel it is best to stick with either Absolute or Wilkins distilled water for drinking and cooking. Yes, we even used it for cooking. A 500 ML bottle can be purchased for about 30 pesos. We drank those two brands almost exclusively. They can be purchased in 6 litre bottles also. SM Hypermarket at SM City Clark sells several sizes including 10-liter bottles of Wilkins distilled water. Just ask a clerk where it is. The 10-liter bottles are convenient if you drink and / or cook with a lot of distilled water. They are heavy so are hard to carry to a jeepney terminal. Weight is over 22 pounds US or 10 KG. I imagine most people who buy them have a car. From SM Hypermarket a clerk will push your shopping cart to your car, or you may push it yourself.

I keep a small water filter with me when I travel. For those occasions when we run out of purified or distilled water or when only tap water is available. Have never gotten sick when drinking filtered. When traveling I carry mine in my carry-on luggage.

Learn a lot about water and sanitation in the Philippines at this Wikipedia page.

Check out foods to avoid in the Philippines.

CDC advice about Travelers Diarrhea.

Discover Filipino Foods Americans Like.

You will find many American restaurants in the Philippines.

There are grocery stores where you may buy American and European foods.

Malls in the Philippines are World Class! And they feature restaurants from all over the world.

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This article will be expanded upon. Please check back to read more about drinking water, purified water, distilled water and water filtration in the Philippines. Last updated June 4, 2022.

Buying USA Real Estate Properties.

You may buy condos, houses and land in the USA.

Real Estate in the United States

Click Image. Top 10 Apps To Use!

Purchase condominiums, town houses and single-family homes in the USA. 
One way to find properties for sale in Florida and the USA.

A good, licensed, real estate broker (like me) or a real estate attorney can assist you with the ins and outs of buying or selling USA properties.

Unlike in the Philippines a foreigner can purchase a condo, house, townhouse or land in his own name.

Be sure to hire an attorney to review your purchase plans and to review all documents before finalizing a purchase. Ask the attorney to verify the history of the title the seller holds to the property. Real estate can be tricky, so protect yourself by seeking advice of professionals.

Subscribe to my Florida real estate blog to get updates about Florida real estate.

Subscribe to my Florida real estate blog.

Most houses and apartments in the USA do not have steel bars at the windows or steel gated car parks. Also, most are not in gated communities.

Use a licensed mortgage broker to assist you in finding a low rate home loan.
Even if you use a mortgage broker be sure to do your own research regarding low rate home loans.

Find Real Estate in Florida, USA. The climate in Florida is similar to the Philippines.

Many Filipinos live in Florida. Florida is at the Southeastern corner of the USA.

Florida, USA Real Estate

I was the broker at a Florida real estate company with a website serving local and foreign buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants. The site featured all 50 States of the USA and nearly 200 countries.

Buying or selling real estate in Florida, USA.
Condos on Clearwater Beach, Florida, USA

If you are interested in purchasing property in the USA visit our web site. At our site you may search properties in all 50 states of the USA. If you use the "Search For Homes" bar to find Florida properties, enter a zip code (look up Florida zip codes) into the "Location" field at the top left of the resulting page. You may also use the "Search This Site" field to enter the name of the state you are interested in.

I will be happy to assist you in getting more information about properties located anywhere in the U.S.A. I assist local and foreign buyers and sellers.

I lived in the Philippines for about 5 years and my wife is a Filipina. We can relate to you. We speak fluent English and Filipino.

Clearwater Beach has a beautiful white sand beach on the Gulf of Mexico, in the Tampa Bay area. Here you will find a wide variety of fine hotels and beautiful sunsets. "Sunsets at Pier 60" is a favorite of locals and tourists. The climate is similar to Manila, Philippines. Manila is usually hotter though, because it is about 13 degrees latitude closer to the Equator.

View pictures of Clearwater, Florida.

Check out my blog about visiting Florida, USA.

Weather in the Tampa Bay area is similar to weather in the Philippine Islands. However, in the Fall and Winter temperatures can get pretty chilly.

 Interested in buying property in another state?

Contact me and I will use my expertise to locate an experienced real estate broker in that area.
This can save you a lot of time and trouble.

Prices are still depressed in the USA. The real estate market hit a low in about 2007 and has not fully recovered yet. There are many good deals to be had now. However, the recovery has begun so do not delay if you are seeking to buy US real estate.

If you have a property you want to sell and would like to see if featured in this blog, contact me.

If you are considering buying property in the Philippine read this.

The latest news about Real Estate in the U.S.A.

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This article will be expanded upon. Please check back to read more about buying or selling real estate in the USA. Last updated June 4, 2022.

Pig Farms Philippines

Pigs in the Philippines

Pig Farms and Chicken Farms in the Philippines - They Stink
If you do decide to live in a rural area, I suggest you do a Google Earth search of the surrounding area and look for pig farms and chicken farms (poultry farms). For each farm you will see rows of long tin roofed buildings. The pig farms will have several ponds nearby. We signed our lease not knowing much about the area.
Turns out there were about 25 pig farms and chicken farms within about 1 to 3 miles of our apartment.
On many occasions the odor was very strong. We would close the windows and turn on the air conditioner, but that did not totally eliminate the foul odor. It was especially annoying at evening dinner time.

After having been diagnosed by a Pulmonologist as having bacteria in a lung, I did some online research to see if the wind carried any dangerous bacteria from the farms. In fact, I discovered that the air could carry dangerous bacteria and other contaminants quite a distance from pig farms. My daughter and I both had several unexplained illnesses while living there. Needless to say, we did not renew our lease after learning of the danger of living near the farms. I plan to add a screen shot of the farms that were in our area. See an article about hazards of living near pig farms.

Check proximity to pig farms like this. Use Google Earth to search.

HEALTH WARNING: Here is an excerpt from an article "Another Something Foul In The Air Above Pig Farms,"

"...University of North Carolina School of Public Health researcher Steve Wing authored a paper in which he outlined respiratory disease rates in rural neighborhoods within two miles of hog farms. He found the number of people who, over six months, reported 12 or more incidents of upper respiratory problems (runny nose, coughing, headaches, mucous membrane irritation, and sore throat) almost doubled near hog farms when compared to the control group. “It’s really bad,” says Wing. “Thirty to forty thousand head of livestock is like a city of 50,000 people without a waste treatment plant.” In another review, conducted in 2002, University of Iowa found very high rates of illness, especially respiratory illness, in factory hog farm hands. Nearly 70 percent of these farm employees complain of acute bronchitis and 25 percent complain of chronic (lasting two or more years) bronchitis. These diseases are just a small sample of ailments that also include asthma, depression, and fatigue. Wing says a complex mixture of pollutants such as hydrogen sulfide gas, dust, and live airborne viruses and bacteria cause these symptoms."

Update Oct. 2014: Here is an excerpt from an article at Mercola.com, 

"As reported by Frontline, researchers have found that 

people living close to confined animal feeding 

operations (CAFOs) also suffer drug-resistant 

infections at much higher rates than others, again 

suggesting that antibiotic-resistant bacteria originate 

from large-scale agriculture."

Look for chicken farms like this.

Pig meat is BAD

Selena Jackson

September 17, 2021 · 

13 PROBLEMS WITH PORK

1) A pig is a real garbage gut. It will eat anything including urine, excrement, dirt, decaying animal flesh, maggots, or decaying vegetables. They will even eat the cancerous growths off other pigs or animals.

2) The meat and fat of a pig absorbs toxins like a sponge. Their meat can be 30 times more toxic than beef or venison.

3) When eating beef or venison, it takes 8 to 9 hours to digest the meat so what little toxins are in the meat are slowly put into our system and can be filtered by the liver. But when pork is eaten, it takes only 4 hours to digest the meat. We thus get a much higher level of toxins within a shorter time.

4) Unlike other mammals, a pig does not sweat or perspire. Perspiration is a means by which toxins are removed from the body. Since a pig does not sweat, the toxins remain within its body and in the meat.

5) Pigs and swine are so poisonous that you can hardly kill them with strychnine or other poisons.

6) Farmers will often pen up pigs within a rattlesnake nest because the pigs will eat the snakes, and if bitten they will not be harmed by the venom.

7) When a pig is butchered, worms and insects take to its flesh sooner and faster than to other animal's flesh. In a few days the swine flesh is full of worms.

Swine and pigs have over a dozen parasites within them, such as tapeworms, flukes, worms, and trichinae. There is no safe temperature at which pork can be cooked to ensure that all these parasites, their cysts, and eggs will be killed.

9) Pig meat has twice as much fat as beef. A 3 oz T bone steak contains 8.5 grams of fat; a 3 oz pork chop contains 18 grams of fat. A 3 oz beef rib has 11.1 grams of fat; a 3 oz pork spare rib has 23.2 grams of fat.

10) Cows have a complex digestive system, having four stomachs. It thus takes over 24 hours to digest their vegetarian diet causing its food to be purified of toxins. In contrast, the swine's one stomach takes only about 4 hours to digest its foul diet, turning its toxic food into flesh.

11) The swine carries about 30 diseases which can be easily passed to humans. This is why God commanded that we are not even to touch their carcass (Leviticus 11:8).

12) The trichinae worm of the swine is microscopically small, and once ingested can lodge itself in our intestines, muscles, spinal cord or the brain. This results in the disease trichinosis. The symptoms are sometimes lacking, but when present they are mistaken for other diseases, such as typhoid, arthritis, rheumatism, gastritis, MS, meningitis, gall bladder trouble, or acute alcoholism.

13) The pig is so poisonous and filthy, that nature had to prepare him a sewer line or canal running down each leg with an outlet in the bottom of the foot. Out of this hole oozes pus and filth his body cannot pass into its system fast enough. Some of this pus gets into the meat.

-Courtesy BRScience

Read my article Foods to Avoid in the Philippines.

Check out Vegetarian In The Philippines. It reveals the dangers of eating pork.

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This article will be expanded upon. Please check back for more information about living near pig farms or chicken farms in the Philippines. This page last updated July 2, 2022.

GMO Philippines

Say No to GMO in the Philippines

GMO in the Philippines

"Published on Mar 26, 2013

MANILA, Philippines -- In Southeast Asia, the 

Philippines has so far, the greatest number of 

genetically modified (GMO) crops approved by the 

government for human consumption,"

Click on "Show More" to read the whole published statement.

Health risks of GMO foods are described at the "Institute For Responsible Technology"
Some GMO crops are already in the Philippines.

See this excerpt from an article "breathing in GMO corn pollen.":

"...Separately, Terje Traavik, director of the Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology, announced a study claiming that villagers who lived next to a plantation of biotech maize in the southern Philippines suffered fevers and respiratory, intestinal and skin ailments in late 2003.

Blood tests indicated the symptoms resulted from inhaling mutated maize pollen that had been airborne, Traavik said.

As far as I can see American snacks available in the Philippines most likely contain GMO ingredients. For example, Cheetos and Dorito's Corn Chips.

UPDATE May 25, 2013: Philippines orders stop to field testing of modified egg plants!
"...The Court of Appeals (CA) has ordered the government to stop ongoing field-testing in several provinces of Bacillus thuringiensis (bt) eggplants, a genetically modified variety that produces its own pesticide...."

400 Filipinos destroy GMO test crop of Golden Rice.

See March Against Monsanto and the videos found there.

Watch The Plan For Your Extinction.

John Stewart describes Monsanto Protection Act. Hilariously funny! (but really makes a point.)

Also watch "Food, Inc" Discover how you have been tricked into eating an unhealthy diet.

Many Countries Ban GMOs

Check out Monsanto's Dirty Dozen including GMO and other bad stuff they have foisted upon the people. Be careful what you eat and drink. Watch a trailer of the movie "Genetic Roulette." It exposes the dangers of GMO foods.

Yes, GMO corn is grown in the Philippines. Watch the videos and learn about crop failures and more. 

Political and corporate elite shun GM food on their own plates!

Click Here to Shop via Non-GMO Project

To avoid GMO foods check out the list at the Non GMO Project!

See people who refuse to eat GMO

 foods.

Learn more and see list of countries growing GM crops.

Refer to this list of products which contain GMO ingredients

(Find products which are available in the Philippines.)

List of foods which probably contain GMO ingredients:
(the following list is a excerpt from http://www.stuartwilde.com/2013/01/gmo-foods-to-avoid/)

May Contain GMO Ingredients 

FritoLay (Lay’s, Ruffles, Doritos,

Cheetos, Tostitos)

Hostess Products

(Interstate Brands)

Keebler (Kellogg’s)

Kraft (Nabisco, Nilla Wafers,

Oreos, Ritz, Nutter Butter,

Honey Maid, Snack Wells,

Teddy Grahams, Wheat

Thins, Triscuit)

Pepperidge Farm (Campbell’s)

Pringles

Quaker Oats Company

See a very long list of non-GMO and GMO foods.

Think GMO is the only problem food? Read about mutagenesis (mutant plants) and the scariest veggies of all. The best seeds to plant are heritage seeds!

Learn about Sustainable Crop Production.

Other food in the Philippines

Filipino foods Americans and Europeans like.

American restaurants in the Philippines.

Where to buy American Groceries in the Philippines.

You will find many American and European restaurants in malls in the Philippines.

Vegetarian food in the Philippines.

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If you have found this article helpful, have suggestions, advice or insights please "comment" below.

This article will be expanded upon. Please check back for more information about GMO in the Philippines. Last updated June 4, 2022.