The US is the world’s richest country. So why can’t I get a glass of clean drinking water? | Arwa Mahdawi

This weekend, 8,000 gallons of latex were accidentally dumped in the Delaware River - and tap water across the country is laced with disturbing chemicals

My wife is wonderful in every way, but I realised over the weekend that she is simply not built for the apocalypse. On Sunday, I was scrolling through Twitter and having a nice cup of tea when I saw a tweet from a guy called Ya Fav Trashman about a chemical spill that might affect Philadelphia drinking water. Equipment failure" at a Trinseo chemical facility had dumped more than 8,000 gallons (about 30,000 litres) of latex emulsion product" into the Delaware river. You can't just boil or filter these chemicals out of your water.

I immediately spat out my Delaware River tea. (Perhaps the latex was why it was going down so smoothly?) Yikes," I said. We'd better get some bottled water." My wife volunteered to go to the nearest shop. She came back with ... two bottles.