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OVER 20% OF WATER SYSTEMS VIOLATE POLLUTION LAWS
NY Times - More than 20 percent of the nation's water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. The water system in Ramsey, N.J., has illegal concentrations of arsenic and the solvent tetrachloroethylene, both linked to cancer.
That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.
Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.
That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.
Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.
2 Comments:
"20% of water systems violate pollution laws" is truly an inflammatory and misleading headline.
Pathological bacterial contamination is not measured directly, but rather through a 100 year old estimate known as an MPN -- a Most Probable Number of bacteria which are themselves not known to be disease causing. It is a test which is believed to sort of correlate with the presence of disease organisms. I spent quite a bit of time working with a new mathematical model of the test which was originally reported by researchers in the journal "Biometrics". The results can have problems that are spurious for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being contamination, and the fact that the result distributions are Poissonian in nature -- they work with the laws of small numbers rather than large numbers. Such tests can and do give anomalous results, and if they can not be repeated, are almost guaranteed to be meaningless when testing drinking water.
The Times article itself specifically states that "some" of the tests were positive one time only. In almost all cases, such incidents are absolutely meaningless.
Chemical names can be frightening, but many of these substances are occur in the environment. Unless present in medically significant quantities, there is little concern.
Some water supplies are not as clean as one would like. Rarely, some should not be used temporarily. Even more exceptionally, some probably should not be consumed and the sources should be permanently closed. But, as Sam has previously noted on many occasions, public water supplies are far safer to consume than bottled water.
New York public water supplies in particular are extremely safe. Standards are strict, and testing is enforced, checked independently and regulated. Such headlines do naught but frighten individuals. This causes more problems than mere anxiety as it pushes more to drinking bottled water which is not only expensive, but potentially more dangerous. We used to find a lot of toxic substances in bottled water that we never found in public water supplies.
I say put the shit in plastic bottles, call it artisanal gold or rain from heaven and sell it at wholefoods.
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