It’s been a while since we’ve talked water safety with our friend Doug Workman of Liberty Pure Solutions, who continues to educate Nestor about local water impurities, well water and ways to make it safe and tasty for consumption. “Be a filter or buy a filter” simplifies the reality.
Nestor Aparicio discusses the importance of clean water with Doug Workman from Liberty Pure Solutions. Doug explains that while Baltimore’s water used to be top-rated, modern contaminants like microplastics, PFAs, and PFOs have emerged, necessitating water filters. He highlights issues like radium, nitrates, and low pH levels, which can affect health and plumbing. Doug describes a typical water treatment system for Baltimore County, including sediment filters, acid neutralizers, water softeners, and reverse osmosis systems. He also mentions the impact of COVID-19 on water heater manufacturing and the importance of regular testing and maintenance.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Water quality, well water, water treatment, Liberty Pure Solutions, radium, nitrates, microplastics, PFAs, PFOs, water softener, reverse osmosis, plumbing services, water testing, Baltimore County, water contaminants.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Doug Workman
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T am 1570 tassel, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positively getting the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road. The Maryland lottery puts us out with the magic eight balls on Friday in Essex at Pizza Johns. And then on the second of April, it’s the second Orio game. We’ll be taking on the Boston Red Sox. Luke and I will be down at Faith Lee’s Lexington market. Our crab cake tours out. We’ve had some great conversations. We’ve been around the community, and as I get out in the community, I’m trying to bring some more partners, more friends, to talk about things. Doug workman and I have known each other for, I don’t know, about 15 years, thereabouts, since back in the days of Matt Stover, my radio station has sat on well water for the better part of three decades. My home is on well water. I needed water. People and anybody out there you know about clean water and fresh water, and we talk so much about that. It’s probably my my biggest paranoid thing about acts of terror and war would be screwing with water shed tables. Maybe I’ve read too many books. Doug workman is my dude at Liberty. Pure solutions. They do plumbing, they do water they do well water treatment. Heck, I’m just gonna let him tell you all the stuff he does, because he’s here right now. He has been a visitor to the show before. Doug. One time you and I got together, we nerded out about water, and this was like 10 years ago, before I lived I lived in the city. I lived someplace. You’re like, hey, even the city water, you’re going to need filters. And I’m like, okay, okay, but I know where the radio station has always been. We’ve had this green thing at the bottom, and I knew we had well water forever and ever. I never really understood it. I still don’t understand it, which is why I have Doug here to try to explain it. Because I think it can be frightening to some people if they go, even if they look at a house and say, well, that house is $2 million it’s beautiful. It’s out in jarretts food, wherever it is, and saying, Well, what kind of water do they have? And I grew up in East Baltimore. My dad always liked fresh water. We always drink fresh water on our table, and we live near back river. But my dad would always say, you know, like, gotta live somewhere. We’re on public water because public water’s safe. My dad’s thinking, in the 1950s and 60s, you’re chuckling at that at this point, because I read about Flint Michigan, and I think it’s one of the ways I met you. Was Flint Michigan?
Doug Workman 02:19
Yeah, I think so good morning. Nestor, good morning. How are you good we yeah, we start back I started in the late 80s in the water treatment industry. And back then, Baltimore was rated number two in the world for water quality or taste. And everybody was told when the from the news how great Baltimore’s water was. Matter of fact, I was told by several manufacturers that we’d we’d never be able to make it and survive in business and water treatment in Baltimore because the water was so good. Unfortunately, taste didn’t have a lot to do with it. It was it was the quality. And obviously there’s a lot of contaminants that have come up in the last 40 years that aren’t weren’t there back in the early 80s, you know, they didn’t know about them. We were testing in parts per 1000, then parts per million. Now we’re testing in parts per billion, and as we can test that low on levels, they’re finding the microplastics and the PFAs and the PFOs and lots of names people aren’t familiar with, but they, I think, pretty much today versus then, everybody’s aware they’re either going to be a filter or buy a filter. It’s kind of their choice, whether they want to, they want to be the water filter or they want to buy a water filter and keep the nasty stuff out of them. I
Nestor Aparicio 03:33
think I told you this story, but I went to Hawaii in 2017 for the first time, and my wife and I went and we flew all the way to Maui. We got to the beautiful island of Maui, and we got our rental car, and we went down the road. There was a beach, and we pulled up, pulled the car up, and we went out onto the beach. It was a deserted beach. I mean, it’s Maui. There’s not a lot of people there, right? So they’re deserted beaches, not like Ocean City on a summer day. And we went out. We saw this giant turtle, you know, out on the beach sunning himself. My wife said, Yeah, we gotta get picture with the turtle. Took a picture with the turtle. Walk down past the turtle, left turtle alone, walking down the beach. And I looked down, I saw a little orange, a little blue, little red, little yellow, little green. And I pulled the sand up in my hand, and I could see the plastic on the beach in Hawaii like I’ve never seen it in Ocean City that way. I’ve never seen it that way. In California, I’ve been to beaches all over the world. I’ve been to exotic beaches, different places, Jamaica, wherever the Caribbean. I never seen that. And I was out in the middle of Pacific Ocean, and I thought, oh, you know what it looked like? It looked like the little Johnsons they put on top of the the red wraps, the little plastics that it looked like they got blown in those million Smithereens little pieces, but these were hard, obvious colored plastics that were in the sand out there. And I’m like, oh boy. I remember seeing that story about the big. A area out in the Pacific Ocean where there’s nothing but trash and plastic, and it’s a big plastic Island or whatever. And I’m thinking like, I could just a big bay here, you know, anytime you people make fun of the harbor and you can’t swim in it, and stuff floating around or whatever, but it’s all the same water. I grew up back river, you know, and I we crossed the kind of Wingo. And I’m thinking to myself, what could people be putting in the water here? What could businesses be putting in the water here? What do you find like when you test this water? Towson Lutherville. You mean, you’re a Hunt Valley business, Jarrettsville area. What? What is the worst thing that you find when you find things here?
Doug Workman 05:35
Oh, the worst thing, probably, that is hidden that people don’t pay attention to is radium. Radium is a naturally occurring radon. It causes radon. So a lot of people are test their house for radon, but they don’t test their water for radium. And there is a pretty serious shelf in Baltimore County where a lot of the well well users have radium. The thing is, it’s not hard to treat. It’s typically treated by water softener or carbon and it’s easy to get rid of nitrates. Is another hidden problem for for young children or older people, it inhibits the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. Obvious things like bacteria low pH all contribute to having issues with their plumbing and with health. When you have low pH, you end up with lead and copper. So lot of health issues that we don’t we try not to discuss them, but I think people are aware. Simply, we don’t want to use scare tactics, but people are aware that their water could be better and needs to be better when you get into the city water. We’re like, according to The EWG, we’re like 824 times the suggested level for haa nine, which sounds terrible, but it’s they’re basically acids that are formed when you mix chlorine with organic matter, where most of our water comes from, reservoirs. So you have branches and leaves and and natural organics in the water. You put chlorine in it, you form try, like, try help methylenes And lots of big names, but basically the byproducts are nasty and they’re easily removed with the water treatment. And we just try to educate people and let them get to know about it and make a good decision, because they, you know, there’s a water treatment system for every budget and people need to be making instead of buying bottled water, which, you know, we certainly have bottled water for the case where that’s necessary, but it’s in most cases, you can make the water for pennies a gallon that’s purified and good for drinking. Doug workman
Nestor Aparicio 07:42
is here. He wants to make sure you’re safe, make sure your water’s safe. I talk about it all the time. Doug’s always out running around these trucks. I see your truck sometimes with north side of the beltway running around, and I’m like, I haven’t had you on in a number of years, and I talk about your plumbing services. And I I think when I see Liberty pure, I’m like, Okay, I see the water and I know what you’re doing, but I’m thinking like Plumbing alone is its own issue. I’ve got a clog sink right now. I didn’t call you and tell you about it. Your treatment people came out, but I got a clog sink and, you know, zapping this and dumping that out. And at some point I might need a snake, because I shave in there, and I’m getting older, and I shave a lot, and there’s just good going down the drain. So I think about that, but the water part for me, and when I start thinking about water is when I do travel, right? So I’m going to Florida next week for a day to see my brother. I’m going to be up in Canada. And when I go to places like buffalo, I go north, water seems to taste better. You know, when I, when I, if I get a glass of water in Buffalo at a restaurant next week, table water, it will it won’t taste awful. Go to Florida, go to California, go to Arizona and go to Nevada, in Las Vegas, you you will not drink you will buy bottled water when you’re on that vacation, because you cannot drink the water just tastes terrible. And when it tastes terrible or it smells funky, i a i don’t want it. I won’t drink it. I smell it first. When I’m on the road, sometimes I’m like, is that the glass that smells is that? Is that the dishwasher they’re using there? Like, you know, that gives that odor or whatever? I’m freaky, you know, I my wife said cancer twice, so I really need to be safe. And that’s what I did when I knew you and called you, especially we moved to our new place three years ago. When I moved to New place, I’m like, hey, I need you. I need a system. What kind of system did you give me? I don’t even know. I just know the water’s good. I trust you. I trust it. You come out every couple months and service me. It’s affordable. But what kind of system do you give a guy from Dundalk that moves uptown to lock Raven and has green things going on at the bottom of their thing? Because I had more water?
Doug Workman 09:48
Well, you actually had very typical water for Baltimore County. It’s a low pH, a little bit of hardness, some iron, and a lot of total dissolved solids, which is a fancy. Name for particles in the water. So you have a sediment filter that basically just protects everything. You have a new acid neutralizer, which raises the pH to between seven and eight where you want it to be. You have a water softener conditioner that takes all the hardness and gunk out. And then you have a under counter reverse osmosis system, which takes everything we are aware of that could be in the water out for your purified ice and drinking water. That’s typical system for Baltimore County. Some people need a little bit more because they have salt intrusion and other problems. Some people need a little less if they don’t have if they’re on city water, obviously, they don’t need the neutralizer and usually don’t need the sediment filter, because they get a lot of the particles out at the plant. But very typical system. I think you also called me for Saturday morning or Friday night about a water heater.
Nestor Aparicio 10:54
Yeah, we had a water heater issue here. But, but more than that, back to the when I had the water heater issue, I chatted with you and your folks about stuff. You’re like, yeah, your toilet water and the other water. It’s not the same water. Like you’re sending me better water for my drinking, but you’re not crystal purifying the water I’m going to flush. Right,
Doug Workman 11:15
right? Well, we’re conditioning the water throughout the whole house for bathing, for making sure it’s safe to be then flush the toilet, brush your teeth if you have to, but the purifier waters for more what you’re consuming. So
Nestor Aparicio 11:28
I think I told you this my, my aunt, my passed away aunt, who hardcore California Republican. She was at San Diego, yeah, and she she had a beautiful house by San Diego State. When I was a boy, I would go out there all the time. The time, especially when I once I got money, she gave me the key to her house. She lived on San Diego State, I go out and see Tony, go and play baseball, but I would fly out to her house in the morning. And you get all weird when you’re young, you fly six hours and you’re three hours behind. And the first thing I do when I get there was take a shower at her house. And I would get in the shower at her house, and it felt like oil, like my body was so slippery. And I’m like, is it the soap? Is it California? Is it all this sunshine that Mickey Mouse and Ronald Reagan told me about? No, she had super soft water. I didn’t know what the hell soft water was. When I was 18 years old, she had to explain it to me, she don’t drink it. And I’m like, what? But, but. And then that’s really where I learned, like, why my father went with her to California in 53 and came back. My dad always said to me, I wanted to live in California with Lucille Ball, Lawrence Welk, couldn’t drink the water. My dad literally, the reason he hated California was he hated the water, and he moved back here in 1953 and his sister stayed out there and lived there and died there. But I remember like water’s different and educational, and even when I got in the shower, it was all slippery. I thought, this is different kind of water than the water I have in them. And I don’t know that people that listen on a day by day basis, or a knucklehead from Dundalk would even know the difference between water. But I do think every time I go near a back River, it scares me, the smell I live near there cancer, this that what we’re putting in our body. And I know 20 years ago when I met you, it was the first thing I said. It’s like I grew up in Dundalk. I’m worried about the water I drank 40 years ago, but you have a way to make it perfectly clean. And you talk about the water heater that went up for me. Explain what, what can go wrong with water heaters and why people call you for plumbing, because the plumbing is the other part of what you do, and if the plumbing is not good, you got a real problem. And I had bad plumbing in my place three years ago. When I moved in, you had to move in and do a lot of different things for me to help me out, because it wasn’t what made the house of 60 years old? It wasn’t built the way you need it built. Well,
Doug Workman 13:44
there’s a couple of things you’re because we installed that water heater that went bad. I preface it with that. We also know that during COVID, which is when we installed that water heater, there were very poor quality manufacturing stuff going on. So we have lost, I don’t know, 50% of those heaters. Luckily, there’s warranties on a lot of them from the manufacturer, but yours actually leaked around the element. The tank itself didn’t go bad. It was just the ELEMENT SEAL created a leak over time, and that’s going to happen with soft water. The one thing you have to be careful of with with low pH water, if you just put in a water softener without a neutralizer, you actually enhance the problem. Now, in your case, we put in both, but again, maintenance and all is issue for other people. If we didn’t know that that water heater was questionable back we didn’t know when we installed it, but we have since replaced a lot of the ones installed around COVID time. Looks like they were doing a bad job on the manufacturing of the water heater sides, but that’s so that’s not a normal thing with you’re using a water conditioner and a water neutralizer, and your water being perfect use your water heater should last 20 years. So. So that was kind of a fluke, but we know what happened in that but a lot of cases, we don’t know. People have salt in their water around here, high sodium levels, high chloride levels, and that makes the water very corrosive. We go into people’s homes and they have brand new dishwashers, and the plastic has actually exploded with rust underneath the plastic in the in the drawers, and you can see the top of the metal bar sticking out from the from, and that’s a lot of times from chlorides. It just rusts everything so and that can be resolved. That’s a whole house reverse osmosis, nothing that you needed in your home. But it’s something that people are aware of, and they can visibly see, and that’s obviously the most simple customer. As long as we’re cost effective, if you can see that your water is nasty, then they’re obviously going to want to do business.
Nestor Aparicio 15:54
Well, I mean, I can see it in the bottom of the bowl, when you see the green or the blue ring, you know, like you need Liberty pure you absolutely shouldn’t be drinking that water, right? Yep, and
Doug Workman 16:03
the purer the water, the less maintenance you should have on the plumbing side. So we do probably a third of the business in plumbing that we do in water treatment because of our, you know, experience and reputation, thanks to our customers in this area, we carry good reputation, and hope to continue that, but our plumbing and and water treatment kind of went hand in hand. But four years ago, we only sold water treatment, so that’s all we did. And about 20 years ago, we started doing plumbing
Nestor Aparicio 16:35
for water in the area. Here is there an area that you find that has, I don’t say contaminated, but just has more complications. Let’s use it that way. Is it closer to a reservoir, further from a reservoir, closer to a water tributary? I don’t know the table, but I would assume there are some places that are really problem, places that they need to
Doug Workman 16:57
have you, yeah, depends on what contaminant you’re talking about, if you’re talking about microplastics, PFAs, PFAs, it’s universal. We just tested all the all the schools in one of the local counties, and found that 80% of them were contaminated with PFAs. So and there, now there’s a lot of city water, or a lot of well water in that particular county, but there’s also city water, and they’re finding it’s everywhere. So that’s, that’s the new buzz word, really is PFAs, PFOs, and it can be removed with very specific water treatment that has to be certified. But it’s, they’re very it’s 10 parts per billion that you’re allowed to have in the water supply, which is a very, very minute amount. And so we’re finding that the to meet that standard is almost impossible for any source to meet it. So we’re doing a lot of municipal size systems to treat that, hopefully at the city level. And obviously, if they’re going to treat for that, they’re going to be taking care of a lot of other issues. So this may be a blessing, but the only way to know for sure on your water quality is to have it tested. And we use a local lab, Aqua labs. Aqua labs usa.com. Is their website, but they’re right up there in Freeland, and they can do all the typical potability water testing for you. And we’re going to be partnering with them up there in Freeland as well, because that area of northern Baltimore County is specifically bad. And as you go into York County, there’s a lot of problems with nitrates and and other issues that are are can cause Blue Baby Syndrome and to in excessive levels. So as we’re concerned about that community, we’re going to put a local office there to give them the same level of service. But nitrates is the other issue that we’re worrying about. There nitrates and nitrates. So if you’re going to get your water tested, livery peer, of course, offers free water testing for the esthetic things, but when it comes down to your health, you need to use a certified, a state certified laboratory. And you can use Aqua labs, USA, you can use homeland testing. There’s a lot of different companies in the area that will do that testing, but
Nestor Aparicio 19:07
you do that, you come in, you take the water and you get it professionally tested, and come back and say, here are the results, and here’s the remedy, correct? Yeah,
Doug Workman 19:14
we have a lot of free tests that we do, so it just depends on how far the people want to go. If you’re let’s say you’re going to test for nitrates and bacteria and turbidity. That’s $100 test. It’s great to know. It’s a good baseline tells you if you need a something to deal with bacterias, whether or not you need a chlorination. But in essence, if you chlorinate the water, you’re forming triomethylenes, which are carcinogen. So you have to chlorinate in order to get rid of bacteria, but you’re introducing another problem. So a lot of times, we’ll recommend a UV light after it’s chlorinated and and everything’s cleaned up, because you don’t want to continuously chlorinate it, because that causes other
Nestor Aparicio 19:52
problems. Um, well, we’ve all had a pool, yeah, so, you know, we don’t want to drink the pool water,
Doug Workman 19:56
right? That’s true. That’s true. Don’t work,
Nestor Aparicio 19:59
but it’s. Here, he runs, owns and makes sure that people have fresh water like me, as well as great plumbing services. Liberty pure. I’ll let you, as we end here, talk about your catch line and your jingle, but when you want to be sure, call Liberty pure, right? I mean, and everybody’s consuming water, even my friend Chris, who says he doesn’t like water. He told me that he’s my man, we don’t wipe the taste of water. I’m like, You got crappy water you need? Doug, is what you need. Um, there’s air and water, right? Taxes other than that. I mean, we gotta get, we gotta get them all right? Um, for for you with folks, simple as making a phone call, making an appointment, right?
Doug Workman 20:35
Doug, that’s it. One, 800 clean water. We’re old school with an 800 number, but we’re the local the local office is 410-527-1024, and we do have access here. I have access to us 24 hours a day for plumbing as well as water treatment. And we do free estimates. If people are interested.
Nestor Aparicio 20:53
Alright, it’s right on the front of the website. You deserve fresh, clean water. Yes, you do affordable water treatment, well pump and plumbing services. They’re 24 hours. Believe me, they’re 24 hours. If you have a flood at 5am they answer the phone and they show up and they help you. Because I know this to be true. 410-527-1024, Doug, I’ve bailed out my water. The water in my coffee that I just made is is clean and pure, the water I’m bathing with. I know you don’t think I wash my hair more than once a week because it’s getting long, but I do, and I will see you same bad time, same bad channel next week. And we’ll talk some more. We’ll talk some radium next week. We’ll talk some other things about in the water. Always good to have you on Doug. Great. Thank you, Nestor. Buckle up for opening day. We got opening day next week. Luke and I are going, I don’t know how the water is in Canada. I’m going to have to check up there. I have my Canadian hat. I got my passport out. We’re all ready to go. Okay, Blue Jays, let’s play ball. Luke and I will be in Toronto next week, and then we’re back at fade Lee’s on April the second. We will have magic eight ball scratch offs to give away from the Maryland lottery as the Maryland crab cake tour. Moves on. Little education, little clean water. Get your day off to a good start. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking. Baltimore. Positive you.
