摆脱自来水：美国的“喝生水”热潮从何而来？

SAN FRANCISCO — At Rainbow Grocery, a cooperative in this city’s Mission District, one brand of water is so popular that it’s often out of stock. But one recent evening, there was a glittering rack of it: glass orbs containing 2.5 gallons of what is billed as “raw water” — unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water, $36.99 each and $14.99 per refill, bottled and marketed by a small company called Live Water.

旧金山——在彩虹杂货店(Rainbow Grocery)——位于这座城市的教会区的一间合作社，有一个品牌的水很受欢迎，经常缺货。不过，前不久的一个晚上，有一排货架上摆满了这种闪闪发光的商品：一只只装着2.5加仑“生水”的球形玻璃罐，也就是未经过滤、未经处理、未经消毒的泉水，每罐36.99美元，续罐14.99美元。它是由一家名为“活水”(Live Water)的小公司罐装和销售的。

“It has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouth feel, nothing that overwhelms the flavor profile,” said Kevin Freeman, a shift manager at the store. “Bottled water’s controversial. We’ve curtailed our water selection. But this is totally outside that whole realm.”

“它有一种淡淡的甜味，口感顺滑，并没有什么特别的味道，”这家店的值班经理凯文·弗里曼(Kevin Freeman)说，“瓶装水有争议。我们已经减少了水的品类。但这种水完全不在那个范畴之内。”

Here on the West Coast and in other pockets around the country, many people are looking to get off the water grid.

在西海岸和美国的其他地区，很多人都在寻求脱离正规的水源。

Start-ups like Live Water in Oregon and Tourmaline Spring in Maine have emerged in the last few years to deliver untreated water on demand. An Arizona company, Zero Mass Water, which installs systems allowing people to collect water directly from the atmosphere around their homes, began taking orders in November from across the United States. It has raised $24 million in venture capital.

在过去几年里，出现了俄勒冈州的“活水”公司和缅因州的“电气石泉”(Tourmaline Spring)等初创公司，按需供应未经处理的水。亚利桑那州一家名为“零量水”(Zero Mass Water)的公司所安装的系统可以让人们直接从自家周围环境中收集水。它从11月起开始接受来自全美各地的订单，目前已经筹集了2400万美元的风险投资。

And Liquid Eden, a water store that opened in San Diego three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a “mineral electrolyte alkaline” drinking water that goes for $2.50 a gallon.

三年前在圣迭戈开业的“液体伊甸园”(Liquid Eden)水店提供多种选择，包括无氟水、无氯水，以及每加仑售价2.5美元的“矿物质电解质碱性”饮用水。

Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a day, and sales have doubled every year as the “water consciousness movement” grows.

店主特丽莎·库尔迈(Trisha Kuhlmey)表示，该店每天销售约900加仑水，随着“水意识运动”的发展，销售额每年都翻倍。

What adherents share is a wariness of tap water, particularly the fluoride added to it and the lead pipes that some of it passes through. They contend that the wrong kind of filtration removes beneficial minerals. Even traditional bottled spring water is treated with ultraviolet light or ozone gas and passed through filters to remove algae. That, they say, kills healthful bacteria — “probiotics” in raw-water parlance.

追随者的一个共同点在于，他们都对自来水感到担忧，尤其是其中添加的氟化物以及有些水经过的铅管。他们认为，不恰当的过滤方式会去除有益的矿物质。就连传统的瓶装水也要经过紫外线或臭氧处理，还要通过过滤器去除藻类。他们认为，这会杀死健康的细菌，也就是生水中的“益生菌”。

The quest for pure water is hardly new; people have been drinking from natural springs and collecting rainwater from time immemorial. The crusade against adding fluoride to public water began in the 1950s among Americans who saw danger in the protective measures that had been adopted over decades to protect the populace from disease and contamination.

对纯净的水的追求早已有之。人们从远古时代起就饮用天然泉水，收集雨水。反对往公用水中添加氟化物的运动始于20世纪50年代，因为有些美国人认为，几十年来为保护民众免于生病或受到污染所采取的这些保护措施其实存在危险。

But the off-grid water movement has become more than the fringe phenomenon it once was, with sophisticated marketing, cultural cachet, millions of dollars in funding and influential supporters from Silicon Valley.

但是，脱离正规水源的运动已经不再像从前那样只是少数现象了，它有着成熟的市场营销、文化声望、亿万资金以及硅谷权势人物的支持。

One recent morning in the hills of Berkeley, Calif., Cody Friesen, the founder and chief executive of Zero Mass Water, was inspecting water collection panels he had installed for his investor Skip Battle, a longtime tech leader who now sits on the boards of LinkedIn, Netflix and OpenTable.

不久前的一个上午，在加州伯克利的山上，“零量水”公司的创始人兼首席执行官科迪·弗里森(Cody Friesen)在检查他给投资人斯基普·巴特尔(Skip Battle)安装的水收集板。巴特尔是资深技术领袖，现在是LinkedIn、Netflix和OpenTable的董事会成员。

The system — called Source, which retails for $4,500, including installation — draws moisture from the air (the way rice does in a saltshaker) and filters it, producing about 10 liters of water a day and storing about 60 liters. The goal, Mr. Friesen said, is to make water “that’s ultra high quality and secure, totally disconnected from all infrastructure.”

该系统被称为“源”(Source)，零售价为4500美元，含安装费。它从空气中吸取水汽(就像放在盐瓶中的米那样)，然后过滤，每天产出约10升水，储存约60升水。弗里森表示，目标是生产“质量和安全水平超高的水，完全摆脱任何基础设施”。

“Just take a breath of air,” said Mr. Friesen, a professor of materials science at Arizona State University. “Take a deep breath. No matter how wealthy or poor you are, you can take a breath and own that air that you breathe. And yet water — the government brings it to you.”

“你吸一口空气，”弗里森说。他是亚利桑那州立大学(Arizona State University)的材料学教授。“深吸一口。不管你多么富有或多么贫穷，你都可以吸一口空气，那一口空气是属于你的。但是水——水是政府给你的。”

Mr. Battle’s system runs on power from its own small solar panel. It feeds into a tap set up in his stone garden, where he goes to drink. He said he’s been making all his meals and drinks with it.

巴特尔的水收集系统由它自己的小太阳能电池板供电。水流向他在石头花园里安装的一个水龙头，他去那里接水。他说他一直在用它做饭、做饮料。

Mr. Battle poured himself a glass. “The water from the tap just doesn’t taste quite as refreshing,” he said. “Now is that because I saw it come off the roof, and anything from the roof feels special? Maybe.”

巴特尔给自己倒了一杯水。“自来水的味道就是没这个清爽，”他说。“是因为我看见它从屋顶上下来的吗?屋顶上来的任何东西都很特别?也许是吧。”

The most prominent proponent of raw water is Doug Evans, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.

生水最主要的支持者是硅谷创业家道格·埃文斯(Doug Evans)。在他的榨汁机公司Juicero去年9月倒闭后，他进行了为期10天的净化，除了“活水”，什么也不喝。“我很久没喝过自来水了，”他说。

Before he could order raw water on demand, Mr. Evans went “spring hunting” with friends. This has become more challenging lately: The closest spring around San Francisco has recently been cut off by landslides, so reaching it means crossing private property, which he does under cover of night.

在能按需订购生水之前，埃文斯和朋友们一起去“采水”。这个做法最近开始有些困难了：前不久，前往离旧金山最近的泉水的道路被山体滑坡切断，所以要去那里，需要穿越私人地产，他只好趁着夜色前去。

“You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through the dark.”

“你必须灵活、敏捷，愿意尝试，”他说。“你是真的要带着一瓶瓶水在黑暗中行走。”

At Burning Man, the summer festival in the Nevada desert that attracts the digerati and others, Mr. Evans and his R.V. mate brought 50 gallons of spring water they had collected. “I’m extreme about health, I know, but I’m not alone with this,” Mr. Evans said. “There are a lot of people doing this with me. You never know who you’ll run into at the spring.”

夏天在内华达州沙漠地区举行的火人节(Burning Man)吸引着计算机达人和其他人。在火人节上，埃文斯和他的露营车伙计带来了打来的50加仑泉水。“我知道，我对待健康有些极端，但并不是我一个人这样，”埃文斯说。“很多人都和我一样，都在这么做。你永远不知道会在泉边碰到谁。”

The founder of Live Water, Mukhande Singh, started selling spring water from Opal Springs in Culver, Ore., three years ago, but it was a small local operation until this year. Marketing materials show Mr. Singh (né Christopher Sanborn) sitting naked and cross-legged on a hot spring, his long brown hair flowing over his chest.

活水公司的创始人穆汉杰·辛格(Mukhande Singh)三年前开始售卖取自俄勒冈州卡尔弗蛋白石泉(Opal Springs)的泉水，但一直只是当地的一家小企业，直到今年。营销材料上，辛格(原名克里斯托弗·桑伯恩[Christopher Sanborn])赤身盘腿坐在一眼温泉上，棕色的长发飘扬在胸前。

Pure water can be obtained by using a reverse osmosis filter, the gold standard of home water treatment, but for Mr. Singh, the goal is not pristine water, per se. “You’re going to get 99 percent of the bad stuff out,” he said. “But now you have dead water.”

可以用反渗透过滤器得到纯净水，这是家庭水处理的标准做法，但对辛格来说，目标不是纯净的水本身。“你会过滤掉99%的不好的东西，”他说。“但剩下的是死水。”

He said “real water” should expire after a few months. His does. “It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery,” he said. “If it sits around too long, it’ll turn green. People don’t even realize that because all their water’s dead, so they never see it turn green.”

他说，“真正的水”应该几个月后就死了。他的水就是这样。“在一个月周期的送货期内是最新鲜的，”他说。“如果存放太久，水就会变成绿色。人们甚至意识不到，因为他们所有的水都是死水，所以他们永远看不到水变绿。”

Mr. Singh believes that public water has been poisoned. “Tap water? You’re drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them,” he said. “Chloramine, and on top of that they’re putting in fluoride. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a mind-control drug that has no benefit to our dental health.” (There is no scientific evidence that fluoride is a mind-control drug, but plenty to show that it aids dental health.)

辛格认为公用水被污染了。“自来水?你喝的其实是含有避孕药的马桶水，”他说。“氯，除此之外他们还加氟进去。可以说我是阴谋论，但这是一种精神控制药物，对我们牙齿的健康没有好处。”(没有科学证据表明氟是一种精神控制药物，但大量证据显示它有助于牙齿健康。)

Talk like Mr. Singh’s disturbs Dr. Donald Hensrud, the director of the Healthy Living Program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. What the raw-water partisans see as dangers, he says, are important safety measures.

像辛格这样的言论让明尼苏达州罗切斯特梅奥诊所(Mayo Clinic)的健康生活项目(Healthy Living Program)负责人唐纳德·亨斯鲁德(Donald Hensrud)感到担忧。他说，重要的安全措施被支持饮用未经处理的水的人当成是危险。

“Without water treatment, there’s acute and then chronic risks,” Dr. Hensrud said, including E. coli bacteria, viruses, parasites and carcinogenic compounds that can be present in untreated water. “There’s evidence all over the world of this, and the reason we don’t have those conditions is because of our very efficient water treatment.”

“不进行水处理，就存在急性和慢性风险，”亨斯鲁德说，包括大肠杆菌、病毒、寄生虫和致癌物，都可能出现在未经处理的水里。“全世界都有这方面的证据，我们没有出现这些情况是因为我们的水处理非常有效。”

Dr. Hensrud said he has noticed more interest in alternative water sources; a patient recently asked questions about a raw water he had been drinking. “There are people, just like with immunizations, that don’t accept the status quo,” Dr. Hensrud said.

亨斯鲁德说，他已经注意到人们对非传统水源的兴趣增加。一名患者最近问了一些问题，是关于对方一直在喝的未经处理的水的。“有些人，就像对待免疫接种一样，不接受现状，”亨斯鲁德说。

The rules for selling bottled water are imposed by states and the Food and Drug Administration, which does not specify how water be treated but sets acceptable amounts of chemicals and bacteria at a low level. State and federal inspectors make unannounced visits to bottling plants to test for harmful contaminants.

有关销售瓶装水的规定是由各州和食品与药品管理局(Food and Drug Administration)制定的，食品与药品管理局未对如何处理水做明确规定，但制定了可接受的，较低的化学制品和细菌含量。州和联邦检查人员会突然造访装瓶厂，检测有害污染物。

Seth Pruzansky, the chief executive of Tourmaline Spring (whose website touts its “sacred living” water), got an exemption from the State of Maine in 2009 to sell his water untreated. “The natural food industry has been in the dark ages when it comes to water,” he said. “Now there is a renaissance.”

2009年，电石泉公司(在其网站上宣传“神圣活水”)的首席执行官塞思·普鲁赞斯基(Seth Pruzansky)在缅因州获得销售未经处理的水免税的权利。“就水而言，天然食品行业一直处在黑暗时期，”他说。“现在复兴了。”

The movement against tap water, like the movement against vaccines, has brought together unlikely allies from the far left and the far right. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, founder of the right-wing website Infowars, have long argued that fluoride was added to water to make people more docile. Similar claims can be heard in the largely liberal enclaves where Live Water is seeing interest spike.

和反对疫苗的运动一样，反对自来水的运动让不太可能成为盟友的极左翼和极右翼走到了一起。像右翼网站Infowars创始人亚历克斯·琼斯(Alex Jones)这样的阴谋论者长期认为，在水里加氟是为了让人们变得更加听话。在以自由派为主的飞地，也能听到类似的说法。这些地方对活水公司的兴趣剧增。

“Fluoride? It’s a deathly toxic chemical,” said Vanessa Kuemmerle of Emeryville, Calif., who does landscape design for large tech companies. She said she was an early adopter of raw water, and has noticed many of her clients following suit.

“氟?这是一种致命的有毒化学物，”加利福尼亚州埃默里维尔的瓦妮莎·屈默勒(Vanessa Kuemmerle)说。为大型科技公司设计景观的她说自己是早期饮用不经处理的水的人，并且注意到她的很多客户纷纷效仿。

“They’re health-conscious people that understand the bigger picture of what’s going on,” she said. “Everyone’s looking for an edge: nootropics, Bulletproof coffee, better water.”

“他们都是有健康意识的人，明白正在发展的大趋势，”她说。“所有人都在寻找优势：益智药、防弹咖啡、更好的水。”

The health benefits she reported include better skin and the need to drink less water. “My skin’s plumper,” she said. “And I feel like I’m getting better nutrition from the food I eat.”

她反映的健康益处包括肤质改善和喝水需求减少。“我的皮肤更饱满了，”她说。“而且我感觉自己从吃的食物中获取了更好的营养。”

In the community of tap-water skeptics, many talk about water the way others might about fine wine.

在对自来水持怀疑态度的群体中，很多人像其他人讨论上等葡萄酒一样讨论水。

“My friends who drink spring water, when they come over now they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, give me the good stuff,’” said Amanda Thompson, a writer in San Francisco. “The consciousness around water is changing.”

“我一些朋友喝泉水，现在他们来我家时，会说‘太好了，给我好东西，’”旧金山作家阿曼达·汤普森(Amanda Thompson)说。“围绕水的意识正在改变。”

Not everyone has been receptive. Many San Franciscans are proud of their tap water, which comes from Hetch Hetchy, a reservoir in Yosemite National Park.

不是所有人都接受。很多旧金山人为他们来自优胜美地国家公园(Yosemite National Park)赫奇赫奇(Hetch Hetchy)水库的自来水感到自豪。

“My landlord lives across the street and thinks I’m crazy,” Ms. Thompson said. “He gave me a big rant around Hetch Hetchy water and how the water’s so good. I always hope he’s not around when there’s a delivery.”

“我的房东住在街对面，觉得我疯了，”汤普森说。“他和我大谈了一通赫奇赫奇水库的水，和这水怎么怎么好。我总希望送水来的时候他不在旁边。”

Raw water is such a nascent business that there’s debate over what exactly to call the liquid. Daniel Vitalis hosts a podcast, “ReWild Yourself,” that promotes hunting for food and gathering water; he started the site called FindASpring.com to help people locate springs. He prefers the term “unprocessed water,” which echoes the idea of processed versus unprocessed food.

未经处理的水是一个新兴行业，以至人们围绕到底该怎么称呼这种液体展开了争论。丹尼尔·维塔利斯(Daniel Vitalis)主持了一档名为《返璞归真》(ReWild Yourself)的播客节目，宣传猎取食物和取水。他创办了名为FindASpring.com的网站，帮助人们寻找泉水。他更喜欢“未经加工的水”这个说法，这与加工和未加工食品的概念相呼应。

“I don’t like ‘raw water’ because it sort of makes people think of raw sewage,” Mr. Vitalis said. “When you say ‘live water,’ that’s going to trigger a lot of people who are into physics and biology. Is it alive?”

“我不喜欢‘未经处理的水’这个说法，因为它在一定程度上会让人想到未经处理的污水，”维塔利斯说。“说‘活水’又会刺激很多热衷研究物理和生物的人。水是活的吗?”