Legal But Unhealthy Water
The New York Times is taking a deep look at tap water through a series of articles examining various aspects of tap water, pollution, and related issues. The following article looks at the 35 year old Safe Drinking Water Act, which regulates 91 contaminates in our tap water. The basic premise of the article is that with over 60,000 chemicals in use in the U.S., the number of regulated contaminants is inadequate and leading to “legal” water that still presents serious health risks.
My two favorite lines from the article:
- Dr. Parekh has struggled to make his case. “People don’t understand that just because water is technically legal, it can still present health risks,” he said. (Yikes!)
- “They supposedly discovered these chemicals, and then they ruined the reservoir by putting black pimples all over it,” said Laurie Pepper, whose home overlooks the manmade lake (this line is funnier when read in the context of the article).
So, what’s the solution? Black balls on reservoirs to block sunlight, thereby preventing some contaminants from converting to “likely” cancer causing agents? I cannot believe this was actually done. Thrown around in a brainstorming session? Sure. Drawn up on a cocktail napkin? Absolutely? But, workers actually dumped a bunch of balls into a real live reservoir. Wow. I am not saying that it cannot work. It may even be the best solution. I just can’t believe it was actually done.
As for the solution, you cannot regulate and test for 60,000 chemicals. Plus, many of those chemicals are likely not harmful. But, as the article states there are many harmful chemicals that are not regulated. And some of the maximum “legal” limits for certain chemicals still allow a harmful level of contaminants in our drinking water. Eliminating all of these chemicals entirely would be cost prohibitive and unnecessary. As I’ve mentioned many times, the great majority of tap water is not used for drinking water, but for irrigation, toilets, showers, laundry, etc. To me, calling tap water “drinking water” is misleading as it presumes all tap water will be consumed when that is clearly not the case. In my mind, the municipalities should deliver us good, safe “tap water” and those of us who want a higher standard for the relatively tiny percentage that is consumed as “drinking water” should treat it ourselves. If a technology comes along to purify all tap water to drinking water standards that is not cost prohibitive, that would be great. But, until then, a small investment in a quality reverse osmosis unit is a pretty good bet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true
That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy
Irfan Khan/The Los Angeles Times, via Associated Press
This Los Angeles reservoir contained chemicals that sunlight converted to compounds associated with cancer. The city used plastic balls to block the sun, but nearby homeowners asked why, if the water didn’t violate the law.
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: December 16, 2009
The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal.
Toxic Waters
Outdated Laws
Articles in this series are examining the worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.
What’s in Your Water
The data was collected by an advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group, who shared it with The Times. Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times.
But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000.
Other recent studies have found that even some chemicals regulated by that law pose risks at much smaller concentrations than previously known. However, many of the act’s standards for those chemicals have not been updated since the 1980s, and some remain essentially unchanged since the law was passed in 1974.
All told, more than 62 million Americans have been exposed since 2004 to drinking water that did not meet at least one commonly used government health guideline intended to help protect people from cancer or serious disease, according to an analysis by The Times of more than 19 million drinking-water test results from the District of Columbia and the 45 states that made data available.
In some cases, people have been exposed for years to water that did not meet those guidelines.
But because such guidelines were never incorporated into the Safe Drinking Water Act, the vast majority of that water never violated the law.
Some officials overseeing local water systems have tried to go above and beyond what is legally required. But they have encountered resistance, sometimes from the very residents they are trying to protect, who say that if their water is legal it must be safe.
Dr. Pankaj Parekh, director of the water quality division for the City of Los Angeles, has faced such criticism. The water in some city reservoirs has contained contaminants that become likely cancer-causing compounds when exposed to sunlight.
To stop the carcinogens from forming, the city covered the surface of reservoirs, including one in the upscale neighborhood of Silver Lake, with a blanket of black plastic balls that blocked the sun.
Then complaints started from owners of expensive houses around the reservoir. “They supposedly discovered these chemicals, and then they ruined the reservoir by putting black pimples all over it,” said Laurie Pepper, whose home overlooks the manmade lake. “If the water is so dangerous, why can’t they tell us what laws it’s violated?”
Dr. Parekh has struggled to make his case. “People don’t understand that just because water is technically legal, it can still present health risks,” he said. “And so we encounter opposition that can become very personal.”
Some federal regulators have tried to help officials like Dr. Parekh by pushing to tighten drinking water standards for chemicals like industrial solvents, as well as a rocket fuel additive that has polluted drinking water sources in Southern California and elsewhere. But those efforts have often been blocked by industry lobbying.
Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks. Others argue that the cost of removing minute concentrations of chemicals from drinking water does not equal the benefits.
Moreover, many of the thousands of chemicals that have not been analyzed may be harmless. And researchers caution that such science is complicated, often based on extrapolations from animal studies, and sometimes hard to apply nationwide, particularly given that more than 57,400 water systems in this country each deliver, essentially, a different glass of water every day.
Government scientists now generally agree, however, that many chemicals commonly found in drinking water pose serious risks at low concentrations.
And independent studies in such journals as Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology; Environmental Health Perspectives; American Journal of Public Health; and Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, as well as reports published by the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that millions of Americans become sick each year from drinking contaminated water, with maladies from upset stomachs to cancer and birth defects.
