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Showing posts with label issue: water pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label issue: water pollution. Show all posts
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
Report finds pollutants lurking in S. Florida tap water
Posted on Sun, Dec. 27, 2009
Report finds pollutants lurking in S. Florida tap water
BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald .com
More than 100 pollutants, from farm herbicides to factory solvents, have shown up in Florida tap water during the last five years -- many barely detectable, but more than a quarter exceeding federal standards at least once, according to a report compiled by an environmental group. Miami-Dade, among the largest utilities in the country with 2.1 million customers, recorded no violations. Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale and four other utilities in Miami-Dade and Broward counties reported only a handful of violations in thousands of tests since 2004.
But all the systems also detected from 11 to 17 chemicals -- some repeatedly and others occasionally -- at levels above U.S. Environmental Protection Agency health guidelines. Those aren't legal limits, but more-stringent benchmarks that would virtually eliminate any risk of cancer or other illness over a lifetime of drinking a system's water.
The most common:disinfectant s used in water treatment, followed by assorted other toxicsubstances such as cyanide, arsenic, radium and barium.
Olga Naidenko, a senior scientist for the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, said because most EPA standards are based on annual averages, formal water quality violations are rare and mask wider unreported concerns, such as unregulated chemicals and seasonal spikes that could pose public health risks.
``What they are saying to you is they are in compliance, and they usually are,'' said Naidenko, one of the lead researchers for the report, which EWG posted online this month in a comprehensive data base. ``We feel like this is giving a more complete picture of what is happening in Florida and what is happening in the country.''
The database shows that 316 chemicals have been detected in drinking water nationwide. There are no federal or state standards for more than half of them.
The number of chemicals detected in South Florida was roughly triple the national average but better than two North Florida utilities the EWG ranked among the worst of the 100 largest municipal systems nationwide: JEA in Jacksonville at No. 91 and, dead last, Emerald Coast in Pensacola, with 45 chemicals detected overall, 21 topping EPA guidelines. Neither recorded water quality violations.
`EXCELLENT WATER' Utilities and state and federal regulators don't dispute the numbers, compiled from some 20 million regular tests that 47,677 water plant operators filed to state water and environmental agencies.
But they called EWG's report and rankings misleading and skewed to overstate potential risks.
Dee Ann Miller, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which monitors drinking water quality, said utility customers in Pensacola and Jacksonville had nothing to worry about and that Florida has ``some of the highest quality and safest drinking water in the United States.''
``To imply these utilities are supplying unsafe drinking water is both irresponsible and simply not true,'' she said in a written statement.
Rafael Terrero, assistant director of Miami-Dade's Water and Sewer Department, which ranked No. 46 on the list of 100 ``big city'' systems serving more than a quarter-million people, said the county water beat EPA standards by a wide margin.
``To me, it's excellent water,'' he said.
The EPA and DEP have been at odds over a court-ordered plan by the federal agency to impose nutrient standards for Florida surface waters, but both defended oversight of tap water.
MONEY ISSUE They said EWG, which campaigns for tougher toxicity standards, crunched the numbers to suggest the widest number of problems -- placing too much weight on the number of chemicals, including many at trace levels, and the EPA guidelines that aren't intended as legal limits.
For most carcinogens, the guideline to eliminate any health impact is close to zero. That goal, said Terrero, is too expensive to justify.
``How the hell can you get zero? You'd have to go to something like a bottled water and pay $4,000 for it,'' he said. ``If we're going to treat something to get rid of all this, we'll be to a point where people couldn't afford water.''
Overall, 22 different chemicals were detected in Miami-Dade, about average for South Florida utilities.
About half were by-products of chlorine and ammonia treatment to remove bacteria and pathogens. Most of them are suspected carcinogens at high levels or linked to other illnesses. Miami-Dade's tests on average detected only a third of the amount allowed under EPA's legal standard -- based on a 1-in-10,000 chance of developing cancer from drinking two liters a day for 70 years -- but periodically exceeded no-risk guidelines.
The trade-off of reducing disinfectants, the EPA said, would be less protection from the pathogens they kill.
Most remaining chemicals such as barium, an unregulated mineral that can occur naturally but also in mining and industrial waste, showed up sporadically and at levels some 50 to 100 times below no-risk EPA guidelines.
OTHER PROBLEMS Miami-Dade has had other issues that didn't show up in the report, most recently a plume of benzene, typically associated with blasting or fuel spills, found in rock pits near the county's largest well field. The contamination, detected in 2005, forced the county to shut down several wells for years.
In 2003, the department, in negotiations with the DEP, also agreed to spend $400 million to fix persistent leaks from an underground sewage injection in South Miami-Dade that threatened to taint drinking water supplies.
Four South Florida utilities -- Florida City, Coral Springs, Dania Beach and Pembroke Pines -- ranked among 20 in the state with the highest number of chemicals.
Florida City, which supplies only about 10,000 people, had the third largest number -- 38 -- but 30 were detected only once in 2005, all below EPA legal limits but above the lifetime risk-free guidelines. The array suggests some sort of agricultural pesticide spill.
Jacksonville' s JEA and Emerald Coast, the two utilities ranked in the bottom 10 nationally, both dismissed the EWG report.
Kevin Holbrooks, JEA's director of compliance, said the analysis penalized utilities for testing frequently and for a wide array of chemicals.
The average utility conducted 420 tests. JEA ran 17 times more tests and detected 23 chemicals -- some naturally occurring in the Floridan Aquifer that the utility draws from, he said.
``That's 23 hits out of 7,000 test results,'' he said. ``Percentage- wise, our numbers are better than most.''
However, in annual reports, both utilities cautioned that some contaminants could pose heightened risk to people with health problems, especially illnesses that suppress the immune system -- a boilerplate warning repeated by most utilities.
The EPA said it will decide by 2014 whether to write legal limits for up to five new contaminants in addition to the 114 it already regulates. If is does, it would be the first update since 2000.
EXPOSED Environmentalists, saying the data exposed holes in water-quality reporting and enforcement, argue more needs to be done and faster.
Naidenko said with chemical detections rising, regulators need to be considering the impact of exposure to more than one contaminant at a time, and one-day or seasonal spikes that could harm newborns and children.
``The issue we see is being really proactive about what is in the water and how we can protect it,'' she said.
Report finds pollutants lurking in S. Florida tap water
BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald .com
More than 100 pollutants, from farm herbicides to factory solvents, have shown up in Florida tap water during the last five years -- many barely detectable, but more than a quarter exceeding federal standards at least once, according to a report compiled by an environmental group. Miami-Dade, among the largest utilities in the country with 2.1 million customers, recorded no violations. Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale and four other utilities in Miami-Dade and Broward counties reported only a handful of violations in thousands of tests since 2004.
But all the systems also detected from 11 to 17 chemicals -- some repeatedly and others occasionally -- at levels above U.S. Environmental Protection Agency health guidelines. Those aren't legal limits, but more-stringent benchmarks that would virtually eliminate any risk of cancer or other illness over a lifetime of drinking a system's water.
The most common:disinfectant s used in water treatment, followed by assorted other toxicsubstances such as cyanide, arsenic, radium and barium.
Olga Naidenko, a senior scientist for the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, said because most EPA standards are based on annual averages, formal water quality violations are rare and mask wider unreported concerns, such as unregulated chemicals and seasonal spikes that could pose public health risks.
``What they are saying to you is they are in compliance, and they usually are,'' said Naidenko, one of the lead researchers for the report, which EWG posted online this month in a comprehensive data base. ``We feel like this is giving a more complete picture of what is happening in Florida and what is happening in the country.''
The database shows that 316 chemicals have been detected in drinking water nationwide. There are no federal or state standards for more than half of them.
The number of chemicals detected in South Florida was roughly triple the national average but better than two North Florida utilities the EWG ranked among the worst of the 100 largest municipal systems nationwide: JEA in Jacksonville at No. 91 and, dead last, Emerald Coast in Pensacola, with 45 chemicals detected overall, 21 topping EPA guidelines. Neither recorded water quality violations.
`EXCELLENT WATER' Utilities and state and federal regulators don't dispute the numbers, compiled from some 20 million regular tests that 47,677 water plant operators filed to state water and environmental agencies.
But they called EWG's report and rankings misleading and skewed to overstate potential risks.
Dee Ann Miller, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which monitors drinking water quality, said utility customers in Pensacola and Jacksonville had nothing to worry about and that Florida has ``some of the highest quality and safest drinking water in the United States.''
``To imply these utilities are supplying unsafe drinking water is both irresponsible and simply not true,'' she said in a written statement.
Rafael Terrero, assistant director of Miami-Dade's Water and Sewer Department, which ranked No. 46 on the list of 100 ``big city'' systems serving more than a quarter-million people, said the county water beat EPA standards by a wide margin.
``To me, it's excellent water,'' he said.
The EPA and DEP have been at odds over a court-ordered plan by the federal agency to impose nutrient standards for Florida surface waters, but both defended oversight of tap water.
MONEY ISSUE They said EWG, which campaigns for tougher toxicity standards, crunched the numbers to suggest the widest number of problems -- placing too much weight on the number of chemicals, including many at trace levels, and the EPA guidelines that aren't intended as legal limits.
For most carcinogens, the guideline to eliminate any health impact is close to zero. That goal, said Terrero, is too expensive to justify.
``How the hell can you get zero? You'd have to go to something like a bottled water and pay $4,000 for it,'' he said. ``If we're going to treat something to get rid of all this, we'll be to a point where people couldn't afford water.''
Overall, 22 different chemicals were detected in Miami-Dade, about average for South Florida utilities.
About half were by-products of chlorine and ammonia treatment to remove bacteria and pathogens. Most of them are suspected carcinogens at high levels or linked to other illnesses. Miami-Dade's tests on average detected only a third of the amount allowed under EPA's legal standard -- based on a 1-in-10,000 chance of developing cancer from drinking two liters a day for 70 years -- but periodically exceeded no-risk guidelines.
The trade-off of reducing disinfectants, the EPA said, would be less protection from the pathogens they kill.
Most remaining chemicals such as barium, an unregulated mineral that can occur naturally but also in mining and industrial waste, showed up sporadically and at levels some 50 to 100 times below no-risk EPA guidelines.
OTHER PROBLEMS Miami-Dade has had other issues that didn't show up in the report, most recently a plume of benzene, typically associated with blasting or fuel spills, found in rock pits near the county's largest well field. The contamination, detected in 2005, forced the county to shut down several wells for years.
In 2003, the department, in negotiations with the DEP, also agreed to spend $400 million to fix persistent leaks from an underground sewage injection in South Miami-Dade that threatened to taint drinking water supplies.
Four South Florida utilities -- Florida City, Coral Springs, Dania Beach and Pembroke Pines -- ranked among 20 in the state with the highest number of chemicals.
Florida City, which supplies only about 10,000 people, had the third largest number -- 38 -- but 30 were detected only once in 2005, all below EPA legal limits but above the lifetime risk-free guidelines. The array suggests some sort of agricultural pesticide spill.
Jacksonville' s JEA and Emerald Coast, the two utilities ranked in the bottom 10 nationally, both dismissed the EWG report.
Kevin Holbrooks, JEA's director of compliance, said the analysis penalized utilities for testing frequently and for a wide array of chemicals.
The average utility conducted 420 tests. JEA ran 17 times more tests and detected 23 chemicals -- some naturally occurring in the Floridan Aquifer that the utility draws from, he said.
``That's 23 hits out of 7,000 test results,'' he said. ``Percentage- wise, our numbers are better than most.''
However, in annual reports, both utilities cautioned that some contaminants could pose heightened risk to people with health problems, especially illnesses that suppress the immune system -- a boilerplate warning repeated by most utilities.
The EPA said it will decide by 2014 whether to write legal limits for up to five new contaminants in addition to the 114 it already regulates. If is does, it would be the first update since 2000.
EXPOSED Environmentalists, saying the data exposed holes in water-quality reporting and enforcement, argue more needs to be done and faster.
Naidenko said with chemical detections rising, regulators need to be considering the impact of exposure to more than one contaminant at a time, and one-day or seasonal spikes that could harm newborns and children.
``The issue we see is being really proactive about what is in the water and how we can protect it,'' she said.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Snow Atop the Andes Mountains No Longer Pure … Why Should This Concern You?
Snow Atop the Andes Mountains No Longer Pure …
Why Should This Concern You?
by www.SixWise.com
Link to full article below
Stretching 4,500 miles from Venezuela to the tip of Chile are the Andes Mountains, drawing thousands of visitors each year to witness the longest mountain range along with one of the highest mountain peaks in the world.
Traces of toxic PCBs have made their way to one of the “purest” places on Earth: the top of the Andes mountains.
Sadly, even remote parts of the world like this -- long considered to be among the purest forms of nature -- have been tainted by environmental pollutants. In a recent study researchers tested snow samples from Aconcagua Mountain in Argentina, which is considered the highest peak in the Andes at 22,834 feet high, and found traces of a toxic pollutant called PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls).
How PCBS are Making Their Way Into the Environment
PCBs are a mixture of 209 man-made chlorinated chemicals. They can enter the environment through air, water, and soil during their manufacture, use, and disposal; from accidental spills and leaks during their transport; and from leaks or fires in products containing PCBs.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), before being banned in the United States in 1979, PCBs were found in various products such as old fluorescent lighting fixtures and electrical devices containing PCB capacitors, old microscope and hydraulic oils, paints and carbonless copy paper.
Even though the traces of PCB found in the Andes snow samples were low, researchers expressed serious concerns because:
1. These contaminants found their way through the atmosphere to these very remote areas of 20,340 feet elevation
2. A change in climate -- such as a warm spell that would cause glaciers to melt -- would lead to pollutants finding their way into the meltwater that is used for agriculture and drinking
Please read the full article: http://www.sixwise.com/Newsletters/2009/December/23/Snow-Atop-the-Andes-Mountains-No-Longer-Pure.htm?source=nl
Why Should This Concern You?
by www.SixWise.com
Link to full article below
Stretching 4,500 miles from Venezuela to the tip of Chile are the Andes Mountains, drawing thousands of visitors each year to witness the longest mountain range along with one of the highest mountain peaks in the world.
Traces of toxic PCBs have made their way to one of the “purest” places on Earth: the top of the Andes mountains.
Sadly, even remote parts of the world like this -- long considered to be among the purest forms of nature -- have been tainted by environmental pollutants. In a recent study researchers tested snow samples from Aconcagua Mountain in Argentina, which is considered the highest peak in the Andes at 22,834 feet high, and found traces of a toxic pollutant called PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls).
How PCBS are Making Their Way Into the Environment
PCBs are a mixture of 209 man-made chlorinated chemicals. They can enter the environment through air, water, and soil during their manufacture, use, and disposal; from accidental spills and leaks during their transport; and from leaks or fires in products containing PCBs.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), before being banned in the United States in 1979, PCBs were found in various products such as old fluorescent lighting fixtures and electrical devices containing PCB capacitors, old microscope and hydraulic oils, paints and carbonless copy paper.
Even though the traces of PCB found in the Andes snow samples were low, researchers expressed serious concerns because:
1. These contaminants found their way through the atmosphere to these very remote areas of 20,340 feet elevation
2. A change in climate -- such as a warm spell that would cause glaciers to melt -- would lead to pollutants finding their way into the meltwater that is used for agriculture and drinking
Please read the full article: http://www.sixwise.com/
Monday, July 6, 2009
Artificial Sweeteners May Contaminate Water Downstream Of Sewage Treatment Plants And Even Drinking Water
Artificial Sweeteners May Contaminate Water Downstream Of Sewage Treatment Plants And Even Drinking Water ScienceDaily June 18, 2009 Link to full article below
Sewage treatment plants fail to remove artificial sweeteners completely from waste water. What’s more, these pollutants contaminate waters downstream and may still be present in our drinking water. Thanks to their new robust analytical method, which simultaneously extracts and analyses seven commonly used artificial sweeteners, Marco Scheurer, Heinz-Jürgen Brauch and Frank Thomas Lange from the Water Technology Center in Karlsruhe, Germany, were able to demonstrate the presence of several artificial sweeteners in waste water.
Their findings are published online this week in Springer’s journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.
To read the full article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617123650.htm
******************************************************
If you enjoyed this, would you please make a donation?
Even $1 or $5 helps us to serve you.
Sewage treatment plants fail to remove artificial sweeteners completely from waste water. What’s more, these pollutants contaminate waters downstream and may still be present in our drinking water. Thanks to their new robust analytical method, which simultaneously extracts and analyses seven commonly used artificial sweeteners, Marco Scheurer, Heinz-Jürgen Brauch and Frank Thomas Lange from the Water Technology Center in Karlsruhe, Germany, were able to demonstrate the presence of several artificial sweeteners in waste water.
Their findings are published online this week in Springer’s journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.
To read the full article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617123650.htm
If you enjoyed this, would you please make a donation?
Even $1 or $5 helps us to serve you.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Find your drinking water quality report by state
Find your drinking water quality report by state
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccr/whereyoulive.html?OpenView
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccr/whereyoulive.html?OpenView
Saturday, January 17, 2009
What Happens When We Run Out Of Drinking Water?
What Happens When We Run Out of Drinking Water? - Audio
By , National Radio Project
January 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/119935
http://www.alternet.org/story/119935/
From Australia to Arizona, it's become clear that humans are using water at an unsustainable rate. Many communities only respond with water restrictions during droughts, and in most cases development continues, making things worse.
On this edition, we'll take a look at three growing communities facing water shortages along with the pressure to grow. We'll hear their different approaches to finding solutions -- including denial
= = =
Comments:
Posted by: EinMD on Jan 15, 2009 8:41 AM
We all die.
Not a complicated question, really.
Though, there are ways to continue. Apparently there's a product called the Dragon-Fly that can distill up to 8 gallons of distilled, sanitized water a day from the air. So I suppose anyone can become a scruffy nerf herding moisture farmer for just $1400!
Price Price Price!
Posted by: davidzet on Jan 15, 2009 9:38 AM
EVERYONE can have enough water if drinking water is free BUT water for lawns, driveways, etc. is expensive. Developers should pay the FULL cost of hookups AND mitigate water demand elsewhere...
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Price Price Price!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: davidzet on Jan 15, 2009 9:38 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
EVERYONE can have enough water if drinking water is free BUT water for lawns, driveways, etc. is expensive. Developers should pay the FULL cost of hookups AND mitigate water demand elsewhere...
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Conservation isn't enough
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rickiey on Jan 15, 2009 6:11 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Even with the most strict conservation efforts, even those that significantly reduce the the quality of life, we will still run out of drinking water, if we leave the making of it to nature.
But when you put a nuclear reactor on the coast, a byproduct of the process is the conversion of salt water to clean drinking water.
Imagine carbon-free electricity, and new rivers of clean water while getting rid of all that radioactive waste we currently have (by using it as fuel), all at the same time.
3 major problems with one stone.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Simple, you learn the old native Indian methods of trapping water.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Jennifer Bedingfield on Jan 16, 2009 1:00 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I remember that episode in that old kids show Mr. Wizards World.
By , National Radio Project
January 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.alternet.org/story/
From Australia to Arizona, it's become clear that humans are using water at an unsustainable rate. Many communities only respond with water restrictions during droughts, and in most cases development continues, making things worse.
On this edition, we'll take a look at three growing communities facing water shortages along with the pressure to grow. We'll hear their different approaches to finding solutions -- including denial
= = =
Comments:
Posted by: EinMD on Jan 15, 2009 8:41 AM
We all die.
Not a complicated question, really.
Though, there are ways to continue. Apparently there's a product called the Dragon-Fly that can distill up to 8 gallons of distilled, sanitized water a day from the air. So I suppose anyone can become a scruffy nerf herding moisture farmer for just $1400!
Price Price Price!
Posted by: davidzet on Jan 15, 2009 9:38 AM
EVERYONE can have enough water if drinking water is free BUT water for lawns, driveways, etc. is expensive. Developers should pay the FULL cost of hookups AND mitigate water demand elsewhere...
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Price Price Price!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: davidzet on Jan 15, 2009 9:38 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
EVERYONE can have enough water if drinking water is free BUT water for lawns, driveways, etc. is expensive. Developers should pay the FULL cost of hookups AND mitigate water demand elsewhere...
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Conservation isn't enough
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rickiey on Jan 15, 2009 6:11 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Even with the most strict conservation efforts, even those that significantly reduce the the quality of life, we will still run out of drinking water, if we leave the making of it to nature.
But when you put a nuclear reactor on the coast, a byproduct of the process is the conversion of salt water to clean drinking water.
Imagine carbon-free electricity, and new rivers of clean water while getting rid of all that radioactive waste we currently have (by using it as fuel), all at the same time.
3 major problems with one stone.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Simple, you learn the old native Indian methods of trapping water.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Jennifer Bedingfield on Jan 16, 2009 1:00 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I remember that episode in that old kids show Mr. Wizards World.
Friday, January 9, 2009
WWF: Focus on the enemy we don't see
WWF: Focus on the enemy we don’t see
December 23, 2008
http://www.supermarketguru.com/index.cfm/go/sg.viewArticle/articleId/196
All the ways retailers, suppliers and consumers demonstrate their green-ness are painting America with a fresh layer of environmental protectiveness. Trouble is, neither our nation’s activity nor our vision goes far enough, suggests the World Wildlife Fund in a position paper it calls “Leading the World Toward a Safer and Sustainable Future: Greenprint for a New Administration.”
The 17-page document, along with its 48-page Living Planet Report, serves as an urgent calling card to the incoming Obama presidency. “U.S. foreign policy has paid too little attention to the social, economic and environmental causes underlying many current conflicts [which] unchecked may pose a greater threat to global security in the future than terrorism does today,” the paper compels.
WWF cites climate change, natural resource exhaustion and ecosystem collapse as being “among the most profound and long-term threats to peace and security in the 21st century. The conflict imperiling the planet in the coming millennium is less likely to be between nations than between man and nature.”
The environment, says WWF, is “already stressed by unsustainable development, climate change and pollution….Consumptive demands are rising….Riots erupting as a result of soaring food prices may only be a taste of things to come if we fail to address this growing imbalance between what humanity consumes and what nature, in its declining state, can provide.”
To head off this potential devastation, WWF proposes a four-step plan to President-elect Obama:
1. Confront the challenge of climate change. Secure a new treaty, curb deforestation, lower greenhouse gas emissions and create a low-carbon economy.
2. Ensure food for all. Reconsider ethanol, help develop performance standards, do more to assist poor countries agriculturally, reform fisheries management.
3. Secure water for life. Make freshwater availability a strategic priority, establish water security through science and policies.
4. Protect nature and manage resources sustainably. Include conservation and sustainability in our foreign assistance programs, invest in our natural assets, engage China on green issues.
The essence of the plan is for the United States to lead the world in confronting critical environmental challenges, and restore the integrity of science to our policy and decisionmaking. “We still have time to meet the challenge of climate change, time to manage our resources sustainably, time to preserve nature for both the wonders that inspire us and the services that sustain us…but not all that much of it,” states WWF.
To SupermarketGuru.com, it looks as if we’re in for a period of accountability for so many decades of humanity disrespecting the planet, living beyond sustainable means, and using resources to nationalistic advantage rather than managing conservatively on a global scale so all could benefit. Our world is out of sorts and needs to be given a chance to heal. These issues are tough, but timely, and sooner we address them, the better we and future generations will all be.
December 23, 2008
http://www.supermarketguru.
All the ways retailers, suppliers and consumers demonstrate their green-ness are painting America with a fresh layer of environmental protectiveness. Trouble is, neither our nation’s activity nor our vision goes far enough, suggests the World Wildlife Fund in a position paper it calls “Leading the World Toward a Safer and Sustainable Future: Greenprint for a New Administration.”
The 17-page document, along with its 48-page Living Planet Report, serves as an urgent calling card to the incoming Obama presidency. “U.S. foreign policy has paid too little attention to the social, economic and environmental causes underlying many current conflicts [which] unchecked may pose a greater threat to global security in the future than terrorism does today,” the paper compels.
WWF cites climate change, natural resource exhaustion and ecosystem collapse as being “among the most profound and long-term threats to peace and security in the 21st century. The conflict imperiling the planet in the coming millennium is less likely to be between nations than between man and nature.”
The environment, says WWF, is “already stressed by unsustainable development, climate change and pollution….Consumptive demands are rising….Riots erupting as a result of soaring food prices may only be a taste of things to come if we fail to address this growing imbalance between what humanity consumes and what nature, in its declining state, can provide.”
To head off this potential devastation, WWF proposes a four-step plan to President-elect Obama:
1. Confront the challenge of climate change. Secure a new treaty, curb deforestation, lower greenhouse gas emissions and create a low-carbon economy.
2. Ensure food for all. Reconsider ethanol, help develop performance standards, do more to assist poor countries agriculturally, reform fisheries management.
3. Secure water for life. Make freshwater availability a strategic priority, establish water security through science and policies.
4. Protect nature and manage resources sustainably. Include conservation and sustainability in our foreign assistance programs, invest in our natural assets, engage China on green issues.
The essence of the plan is for the United States to lead the world in confronting critical environmental challenges, and restore the integrity of science to our policy and decisionmaking. “We still have time to meet the challenge of climate change, time to manage our resources sustainably, time to preserve nature for both the wonders that inspire us and the services that sustain us…but not all that much of it,” states WWF.
To SupermarketGuru.com, it looks as if we’re in for a period of accountability for so many decades of humanity disrespecting the planet, living beyond sustainable means, and using resources to nationalistic advantage rather than managing conservatively on a global scale so all could benefit. Our world is out of sorts and needs to be given a chance to heal. These issues are tough, but timely, and sooner we address them, the better we and future generations will all be.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
How the West's Energy Boom Could Threaten Drinking Water for 1 in 12 Americans
How the West's Energy Boom Could Threaten Drinking Water for 1 in 12 Americans
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
December 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/115017
http://www.alternet.org/water/115017/
http://www.alternet.org/story/115017/
This story was co-published with the San Diego Union-Tribune and also appears in that newspaper's Dec. 21, 2008 issue.
The Colorado River, the life vein of the Southwestern United States, is in trouble.
The river's water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico's border. It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans.
Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.
The region could contain more oil than Alaska's National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It has the richest natural gas fields in the country. And nuclear energy, viewed as a key solution to the nation's dependence on foreign energy, could use the uranium deposits held there.
But getting those resources would suck up vast quantities of the river's water and could pollute what is left. That's why those most concerned are water managers in places like Los Angeles and San Diego. They have the most to lose.
The river is already so beleaguered by drought and climate change that one environmental study called it the nation's "most endangered" waterway. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography warn the river's reservoirs could dry up in 13 years.
The industrial push has already begun.
In the eight years George W. Bush has been in office, the Colorado River watershed has seen more oil and gas drilling than at any time in the past 25 years. Uranium claims have reached a 10-year high. Last week the departing administration auctioned off an additional 148,598 acres of federal land for gas drilling projects outside Moab, Utah.
As still more land is leased for drilling and a last-minute change in federal rules has paved the way for water-intensive oil shale mining, politicians and water managers are now being forced to ask which is more valuable: energy or water.
"The decisions we are making today will be dictating how we will be living the rest of our lives," said Jim Pokrandt, a spokesman with the Colorado River Conservation District, a state-run policy agency. "We may have reached mutually exclusive demands on our water supply."
Some experts and officials say the economic and ecological importance of the Colorado is just as vital to American security as the natural resources that can be extracted from around it.
"Without (the Colorado), there is no Western United States," said Jim Baca, who directed the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in the Clinton administration and says the agency's current policy is narrow-sighted. "If it becomes unusable, you move the entire Western United States out of any sort of economic position for growth."
Balancing that risk with the need for energy is complicated, because scientific understanding of the Colorado is limited and no single agency manages the river as a national resource.
The Interior Department, which includes the BLM, oversees where the water goes, but not how it is kept clean. The EPA is charged with maintaining water quality, but it can't control who uses it and doesn't conduct its own research. Furthermore, the EPA delegates much of its authority to the states that the river runs through, and the federal, state and local authorities in charge of separate aspects of the river don't always coordinate or cooperate.
"I don't know that there is, quite honestly, anyone that looks at an entire overview impact statement of the Colorado River," said Robert Walsh, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which governs the allocation and flow of the southern part of the waterway.
Desolation Canyon, Utah. (Ray Bloxham/SUWA)
Oil and natural gas drilling in Colorado already require so much water that if its annual demand were satisfied all at once, it would be the equivalent of shutting off most of Southern California's water for five days. If Colorado's oil shale is mined, it would turn off the spigot for 79 days.
Although company executives insist they adhere to environmental laws, natural gas drilling has led to numerous toxic spills across the West. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mining has contaminated four out of 10 streams and rivers in the West. Similarly, mining has topped the government's list of the most polluting industries for the past decade, and new mine problems continue to arise today.
Industry representatives and the Bush administration say breaking America's dependence on foreign oil makes using all available energy resources here at home a priority.
"I believe this country needs to offer domestic resources to be energy independent," said Tim Spisak, a senior official who heads the BLM's oil and gas development group. "The way to do that is to responsibly develop public resources on our lands."
Critics of Bush's energy policies said they favor business interests at a time when climate change demands a fundamental shift in the way the nation values water. They also complain that the administration doesn't grasp the West's looming water problem.
"When Lake Mead goes dry, you cut off supply to the fifth largest economy in the world," said Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, referring to the reservoir that sits behind the Hoover Dam and controls water flow to the Southwest's cities. She points out that while some dispute the timing of Lake Mead's demise, no one says it won't happen.
"We've ignored the need to adapt," Mulroy said. "We've never looked at what the secondary impact of, say, an energy decision is."
Both the U.S. House and Senate are considering bills that would require better management of the nation's water quality and water assets. But the bills focus more on the threat of climate change than the threat of industrial development. A growing number of water professionals say even a congressional act isn't enough to clarify the government's responsibility. They want the president to appoint a new national water authority -- or even a cabinet-level water czar.
"If you are really going to deal with water, the nation needs to deal with it in a far more comprehensive manner," said Brad Udall, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's water assessment program at the University of Colorado. "We can't afford to play around with potentially damaging activities."
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the state of Arizona and the Metropolitan Water District, which governs the water supply to Los Angeles and San Diego, have implored Bush's Interior to proceed with caution as it races in these last days to develop mining, gas and oil near the river.
"We have other sources of power," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, MWD's General Manager. "We don't have other sources of water."
Hot Water
One of those alternative sources of energy is uranium, which is essential to the production of nuclear energy. In the last six years, new uranium mining claims within five miles of the river have nearly tripled, from 395 to 1,195, according to a review of BLM records by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based policy organization.
Although few of those claims will actually be mined, mining has a track record of contamination that alarms water officials dependant on the river. The Metropolitan Water District points to a 16 million ton pile of radioactive waste near Moab as a warning of what can happen when mining isn’t carefully controlled.
The pile sits on the banks of the Colorado at the site of a mill that once processed uranium for nuclear warheads. The plant closed in 1984, but the Grand Canyon Trust estimates 110,000 gallons of radioactive groundwater still seep into the river there each day. The U.S. Department of Energy decided in 2000 to move the pile away from the river. But the planning was so complicated and the cost so high -- estimates top $1 billion -- that the first loads of waste won't be hauled off until next year.
The mill site in Moab, Utah (Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
The industry says the Moab case is an outdated blight from the distant past.
"What gets my ire up is when we get compared to stuff that happened in the 60s. There is no argument from us now about being careful... with an eye to preserving the environment," said Peter Farmer, CEO of Denison Mines, a Canadian company that operates seven U.S. mines as well as the nation's only operating uranium mill in Blanding, Utah.
Denison recently spent more than $5 million to triple-line a waste pit and outfit it with leak detection sensors. It's cheaper to pay up front, Farmer says, than to clean up later.
Roger Haskins, a specialist in mining law at the BLM, agrees that concerns over mining are overblown. He says landmark environmental regulations in the 1970s prepared the industry for the 21st century. While it's still easy to stake a mining claim, projects must now undergo extensive environmental review before they can be turned into mines.
"Whatever happens out there is thoroughly manageable in today's regulatory environment," Haskins said.
Scientists say some degree of pollution is inevitable, because mining sometimes uses toxic chemicals like cyanide. It also exposes naturally toxic metals that would otherwise remain deep underground.
Drilling for uranium creates pathways where raw, radioactive material can migrate into underground aquifers that drain into the river. Surface water can seep into the drill holes and mine shafts, picking up traces of uranium and then percolating into underground water sources. The milling process itself creates six pounds of radioactive and toxic waste -- including ammonia, arsenic, lead and mercury -- for every ounce of uranium produced.
"There has to be some impact to downstream water. Whether or not we can measure -- that is the question," said David Naftz, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Salt Lake City who studies uranium mining.
Naftz has documented dangerous levels of uranium near waste dumps at more than 50 separate test sites in Utah. While much of the mining happens in high, dry places where contaminants don't easily seep into surface water, he says periodic storms can still wash them into the river.
"What we've done is kind of upset the geochemical equilibriums in these basins by taking these ores and exposing them to conditions on the surface," he said. "The question is, how long is it going to take to transport them down to water systems?"
Pollution problems with gold, copper and other mines also challenge the assertion that technology and better regulation have eliminated the environmental risks.
One study compared the EPA's environmental impact statements for 25 sites to what really happened after mining took place. Water at three quarters of the mines was found to be contaminated, even though the mines used technology and techniques that the EPA had said would keep the environment clean, according to the research done for the Earthworks by Jim Kuipers, an environmental engineer in Butte, Mont. and Ann Maest in Boulder, Colo.
At least four large mines that operated as recently as the 1990s -- long after new regulatory standards were put in place -- have caused so much contamination that the EPA designated them as priority Superfund cleanup sites. One rendered a 20-mile stretch of a Colorado River tributary completely dead.
"Promises are made and promises are broken," said Roger Clark, who is director of the Grand Canyon Trust's air and energy program and has been monitoring the rise in mining claims near the Grand Canyon. "This is not something we can sit back and take industry's word for."
Clark, who explored the Colorado River as a Boy Scout and later as a river guide, already has seen signs of the park's decline. On a recent hike along the Grand Canyon's rim, he passed a stream whose water he drank freely as a boy. Now it's marked with a sign saying, "Drinking and bathing in these waters is not advisable." The Park Service posted the same warning along five other canyon streams that feed into the Colorado, because high concentrations of uranium have leached into the water, likely from old mines.
In June, the House Natural Resources Committee invoked a rarely-used authority to force the Bush administration to make one million acres of public land adjacent to the park ineligible for exploration. Two months later, though, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne allowed some 20 new claims in the area by deciding that the committee's move violated executive authority.
Secret Chemicals
In the last decade, a pattern of contamination has also emerged in places where natural gas drilling has intensified. If drilling increases substantially across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, it could also imperil the river.
A waste pit at a natural gas drilling site (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)
Most wells rely on a process called
hydraulic fracturing
, which requires as much as two million gallons of water plus small amounts of often-toxic chemicals for a single well. The waste water then sits in open pits until it is treated, recycled or disposed of.
In February a waste pit high on a mesa overlooking the town of Parachute, Colo. sprang a leak, allowing some 1.6 million gallons of fluid to soak into the arid earth. According to state records, the spill migrated underground until it seeped from a cliff side and froze into a gray pillar of ice more than 200 feet tall. When it melted, the fluids dripped into the torrid currents of Parachute Creek and finally dumped into the Colorado River.
Although the number of gas drilling accidents in the upper Colorado River watershed is small relative to the amount of drilling, they have begun adding up. Colorado state records show that of some 1,500 spills in drilling areas since 2003, more than 300 have seeped into water. In one case last summer a truck carrying drilling fluids crashed into the Colorado, where it remained partially submerged for more than three weeks.
In neighboring Wyoming, the BLM found a 28-mile-long plume of benzene contamination in an aquifer beneath a gigantic gas field. The aquifer is near a tributary to the Green River, which in turn flows into the Colorado.
Doug Hock, a spokesman for the Canadian gas company Encana, which drills in Colorado and Wyoming, says that while there will always be spills, the fears of pollution are exaggerated. Encana uses steel and concrete casing around its drill pipes, lines its waste pits and, increasingly, cleans its waste water and re-uses it inside its wells.
"We have put in place safeguards to protect the water," Hock said. "There is always a balance -- this country has a great demand for energy."
But because the energy industry has been exempted from so many federal environmental regulations during the Bush administration, it's difficult to assess the industry's true impact on the river.
The mix of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing is held as proprietary competitive information by the industry and kept secret from even the EPA. Scientists say that without knowing the specific ingredients in the mix, they don't know what compounds to test for after a spill and can't check to see if they've reached the river.
The 2005 Energy Policy Act exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Also exempted from federal control and water protection laws are the drilling industry's construction activities, including the sediments and dust produced from thousands of miles of road building, site grading and the drilling itself, even though that debris often ends up in waterways.
"We have seen an explosion in drilling, and at the same time we have seen a weakening of the federal standards under which drilling occurs," said Dusty Horwitt, an analyst with the Environmental Working Group.
Given the relaxation in regulatory authority, the development may be out-pacing scientists' ability to measure the implications.
In August drilling companies bid on 55,000 acres of federal parcels atop the Roan Plateau, a cherished wilderness area in central Colorado that drains into the Colorado River. A September report from the University of Colorado Denver predicted that in 15 years Garfield County, a western drilling area bisected by the river, will have 23,000 wells, six times what is has now, based on permit applications already filed with the state.
The push to drill continued last week, when the BLM opened 148,598 more acres of federal land near Moab to drilling. Quarterly lease sales in that area during the last two years were typically about 75,000 acres.
"It seems reckless," said Bill Hedden, director of the Grand Canyon Trust. Near his home outside Moab, natural gas drilling rigs may soon be visible through Delicate Arch, the wind-hewn bridge of rock at Arches National Park that graces Utah's license plate.
"We Americans have tried to export a lot of our problems off to the boondocks -- but in this case the boondocks is the watershed and the problem is coming right back to us," Hedden said.
According to Spisak, the BLM official in charge of drilling, the Maob sale is the result of "pent up build-up" in the cue of requests the agency is handling. Companies that want to drill on federal land ask the BLM to consider listing that land for a future lease sale. Over the past few years, Spisak said, environmental organizations have challenged some of the listings the BLM approved, delaying their sale. Now the agency is catching up.
"We are required to push them forward," Spisak said. "It's due to pressures of prices and industry, and we are responding to the market demand."
An Unprecedented Demand
Colorado River (Flickr User: WisDoc)
No project poses a greater threat to the Colorado River -- or better represents the choice between water and energy -- than mining for oil shale.
In mid November the BLM quietly approved a rule change that paved the way for extracting oil from rock deposits in Colorado and Utah, smack in the heart of the river's watershed. If the vast deposits are mined to their potential -- and it could be a decade before any of the projects go forward -- the reserves could help the United States make a significant leap towards energy independence.
Getting oil from the shale, if researchers can find a reliable way to do it on a large scale, would be astronomically expensive. It might also require more water than the Colorado River can provide.
A recent study for the state of Colorado estimates that if the oil shale industry takes off in northwest Colorado, the region's energy industry will need at least 15 times as much water as it uses now. In 30 years, the report predicts, the energy industry in the upper Colorado River basin would stop the river's entire flow for nearly six weeks if it used the water all at once.
"It would take every bit of water rights that we currently have plus more," said Scott Ruppe, general manager of Uintah Water Conservancy District in northeastern Utah.
Counties across the Western states are apportioned a limited quota of water rights that can be used for industry, farming, or municipal use, he explained. Using Colorado River water for oil shale means less water for urban growth, agriculture and personal use. It means trading fresh fruit and vegetables – not to mention green lawns -- for energy.
"It just comes down to how needy the nation is for energy," he said. "If energy is short then some of the other concerns might get pushed aside."
These stark choices have driven Congress to begin examining the water problem in the absence of leadership from the White House. One of the bills that has been written would, if passed, direct the Interior Department to undertake the kind of comprehensive inventory of the nation's water quality and supply that critics say is missing.
It will be up to the Obama administration, though, to ultimately decide the nation's priorities. The appointment of Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to head the Interior Department will inject a unique understanding of western water issues into Washington politics. Salazar is a long-time rancher and a former water attorney.
The new administration could temper some of Bush's decisions by limiting mining claims in sensitive areas, refusing to finalize leases sales that haven't been signed, and rigorously enforcing existing environmental regulations. It also could try to reverse some of the rules the Bush administration has issued to speed development, although that will be difficult.
Obama's greatest opportunity to address the conflict between water and energy may lie not in undoing policies from the past, but in looking to the future.
"The administration has an opportunity to start thinking about water as a national resource," said Nevada's Mulroy. "We have no rear view mirrors anymore."
Abrahm Lustgarten is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times since receiving his master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2003.
By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
December 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/115017
http://www.alternet.org/water/115017/
http://www.alternet.org/story/115017/
This story was co-published with the San Diego Union-Tribune and also appears in that newspaper's Dec. 21, 2008 issue.
The Colorado River, the life vein of the Southwestern United States, is in trouble.
The river's water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico's border. It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans.
Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.
The region could contain more oil than Alaska's National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It has the richest natural gas fields in the country. And nuclear energy, viewed as a key solution to the nation's dependence on foreign energy, could use the uranium deposits held there.
But getting those resources would suck up vast quantities of the river's water and could pollute what is left. That's why those most concerned are water managers in places like Los Angeles and San Diego. They have the most to lose.
The river is already so beleaguered by drought and climate change that one environmental study called it the nation's "most endangered" waterway. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography warn the river's reservoirs could dry up in 13 years.
The industrial push has already begun.
In the eight years George W. Bush has been in office, the Colorado River watershed has seen more oil and gas drilling than at any time in the past 25 years. Uranium claims have reached a 10-year high. Last week the departing administration auctioned off an additional 148,598 acres of federal land for gas drilling projects outside Moab, Utah.
As still more land is leased for drilling and a last-minute change in federal rules has paved the way for water-intensive oil shale mining, politicians and water managers are now being forced to ask which is more valuable: energy or water.
"The decisions we are making today will be dictating how we will be living the rest of our lives," said Jim Pokrandt, a spokesman with the Colorado River Conservation District, a state-run policy agency. "We may have reached mutually exclusive demands on our water supply."
Some experts and officials say the economic and ecological importance of the Colorado is just as vital to American security as the natural resources that can be extracted from around it.
"Without (the Colorado), there is no Western United States," said Jim Baca, who directed the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in the Clinton administration and says the agency's current policy is narrow-sighted. "If it becomes unusable, you move the entire Western United States out of any sort of economic position for growth."
Balancing that risk with the need for energy is complicated, because scientific understanding of the Colorado is limited and no single agency manages the river as a national resource.
The Interior Department, which includes the BLM, oversees where the water goes, but not how it is kept clean. The EPA is charged with maintaining water quality, but it can't control who uses it and doesn't conduct its own research. Furthermore, the EPA delegates much of its authority to the states that the river runs through, and the federal, state and local authorities in charge of separate aspects of the river don't always coordinate or cooperate.
"I don't know that there is, quite honestly, anyone that looks at an entire overview impact statement of the Colorado River," said Robert Walsh, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which governs the allocation and flow of the southern part of the waterway.
Desolation Canyon, Utah. (Ray Bloxham/SUWA)
Oil and natural gas drilling in Colorado already require so much water that if its annual demand were satisfied all at once, it would be the equivalent of shutting off most of Southern California's water for five days. If Colorado's oil shale is mined, it would turn off the spigot for 79 days.
Although company executives insist they adhere to environmental laws, natural gas drilling has led to numerous toxic spills across the West. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mining has contaminated four out of 10 streams and rivers in the West. Similarly, mining has topped the government's list of the most polluting industries for the past decade, and new mine problems continue to arise today.
Industry representatives and the Bush administration say breaking America's dependence on foreign oil makes using all available energy resources here at home a priority.
"I believe this country needs to offer domestic resources to be energy independent," said Tim Spisak, a senior official who heads the BLM's oil and gas development group. "The way to do that is to responsibly develop public resources on our lands."
Critics of Bush's energy policies said they favor business interests at a time when climate change demands a fundamental shift in the way the nation values water. They also complain that the administration doesn't grasp the West's looming water problem.
"When Lake Mead goes dry, you cut off supply to the fifth largest economy in the world," said Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, referring to the reservoir that sits behind the Hoover Dam and controls water flow to the Southwest's cities. She points out that while some dispute the timing of Lake Mead's demise, no one says it won't happen.
"We've ignored the need to adapt," Mulroy said. "We've never looked at what the secondary impact of, say, an energy decision is."
Both the U.S. House and Senate are considering bills that would require better management of the nation's water quality and water assets. But the bills focus more on the threat of climate change than the threat of industrial development. A growing number of water professionals say even a congressional act isn't enough to clarify the government's responsibility. They want the president to appoint a new national water authority -- or even a cabinet-level water czar.
"If you are really going to deal with water, the nation needs to deal with it in a far more comprehensive manner," said Brad Udall, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's water assessment program at the University of Colorado. "We can't afford to play around with potentially damaging activities."
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the state of Arizona and the Metropolitan Water District, which governs the water supply to Los Angeles and San Diego, have implored Bush's Interior to proceed with caution as it races in these last days to develop mining, gas and oil near the river.
"We have other sources of power," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, MWD's General Manager. "We don't have other sources of water."
Hot Water
One of those alternative sources of energy is uranium, which is essential to the production of nuclear energy. In the last six years, new uranium mining claims within five miles of the river have nearly tripled, from 395 to 1,195, according to a review of BLM records by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based policy organization.
Although few of those claims will actually be mined, mining has a track record of contamination that alarms water officials dependant on the river. The Metropolitan Water District points to a 16 million ton pile of radioactive waste near Moab as a warning of what can happen when mining isn’t carefully controlled.
The pile sits on the banks of the Colorado at the site of a mill that once processed uranium for nuclear warheads. The plant closed in 1984, but the Grand Canyon Trust estimates 110,000 gallons of radioactive groundwater still seep into the river there each day. The U.S. Department of Energy decided in 2000 to move the pile away from the river. But the planning was so complicated and the cost so high -- estimates top $1 billion -- that the first loads of waste won't be hauled off until next year.
The mill site in Moab, Utah (Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
The industry says the Moab case is an outdated blight from the distant past.
"What gets my ire up is when we get compared to stuff that happened in the 60s. There is no argument from us now about being careful... with an eye to preserving the environment," said Peter Farmer, CEO of Denison Mines, a Canadian company that operates seven U.S. mines as well as the nation's only operating uranium mill in Blanding, Utah.
Denison recently spent more than $5 million to triple-line a waste pit and outfit it with leak detection sensors. It's cheaper to pay up front, Farmer says, than to clean up later.
Roger Haskins, a specialist in mining law at the BLM, agrees that concerns over mining are overblown. He says landmark environmental regulations in the 1970s prepared the industry for the 21st century. While it's still easy to stake a mining claim, projects must now undergo extensive environmental review before they can be turned into mines.
"Whatever happens out there is thoroughly manageable in today's regulatory environment," Haskins said.
Scientists say some degree of pollution is inevitable, because mining sometimes uses toxic chemicals like cyanide. It also exposes naturally toxic metals that would otherwise remain deep underground.
Drilling for uranium creates pathways where raw, radioactive material can migrate into underground aquifers that drain into the river. Surface water can seep into the drill holes and mine shafts, picking up traces of uranium and then percolating into underground water sources. The milling process itself creates six pounds of radioactive and toxic waste -- including ammonia, arsenic, lead and mercury -- for every ounce of uranium produced.
"There has to be some impact to downstream water. Whether or not we can measure -- that is the question," said David Naftz, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Salt Lake City who studies uranium mining.
Naftz has documented dangerous levels of uranium near waste dumps at more than 50 separate test sites in Utah. While much of the mining happens in high, dry places where contaminants don't easily seep into surface water, he says periodic storms can still wash them into the river.
"What we've done is kind of upset the geochemical equilibriums in these basins by taking these ores and exposing them to conditions on the surface," he said. "The question is, how long is it going to take to transport them down to water systems?"
Pollution problems with gold, copper and other mines also challenge the assertion that technology and better regulation have eliminated the environmental risks.
One study compared the EPA's environmental impact statements for 25 sites to what really happened after mining took place. Water at three quarters of the mines was found to be contaminated, even though the mines used technology and techniques that the EPA had said would keep the environment clean, according to the research done for the Earthworks by Jim Kuipers, an environmental engineer in Butte, Mont. and Ann Maest in Boulder, Colo.
At least four large mines that operated as recently as the 1990s -- long after new regulatory standards were put in place -- have caused so much contamination that the EPA designated them as priority Superfund cleanup sites. One rendered a 20-mile stretch of a Colorado River tributary completely dead.
"Promises are made and promises are broken," said Roger Clark, who is director of the Grand Canyon Trust's air and energy program and has been monitoring the rise in mining claims near the Grand Canyon. "This is not something we can sit back and take industry's word for."
Clark, who explored the Colorado River as a Boy Scout and later as a river guide, already has seen signs of the park's decline. On a recent hike along the Grand Canyon's rim, he passed a stream whose water he drank freely as a boy. Now it's marked with a sign saying, "Drinking and bathing in these waters is not advisable." The Park Service posted the same warning along five other canyon streams that feed into the Colorado, because high concentrations of uranium have leached into the water, likely from old mines.
In June, the House Natural Resources Committee invoked a rarely-used authority to force the Bush administration to make one million acres of public land adjacent to the park ineligible for exploration. Two months later, though, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne allowed some 20 new claims in the area by deciding that the committee's move violated executive authority.
Secret Chemicals
In the last decade, a pattern of contamination has also emerged in places where natural gas drilling has intensified. If drilling increases substantially across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, it could also imperil the river.
A waste pit at a natural gas drilling site (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)
Most wells rely on a process called
hydraulic fracturing
, which requires as much as two million gallons of water plus small amounts of often-toxic chemicals for a single well. The waste water then sits in open pits until it is treated, recycled or disposed of.
In February a waste pit high on a mesa overlooking the town of Parachute, Colo. sprang a leak, allowing some 1.6 million gallons of fluid to soak into the arid earth. According to state records, the spill migrated underground until it seeped from a cliff side and froze into a gray pillar of ice more than 200 feet tall. When it melted, the fluids dripped into the torrid currents of Parachute Creek and finally dumped into the Colorado River.
Although the number of gas drilling accidents in the upper Colorado River watershed is small relative to the amount of drilling, they have begun adding up. Colorado state records show that of some 1,500 spills in drilling areas since 2003, more than 300 have seeped into water. In one case last summer a truck carrying drilling fluids crashed into the Colorado, where it remained partially submerged for more than three weeks.
In neighboring Wyoming, the BLM found a 28-mile-long plume of benzene contamination in an aquifer beneath a gigantic gas field. The aquifer is near a tributary to the Green River, which in turn flows into the Colorado.
Doug Hock, a spokesman for the Canadian gas company Encana, which drills in Colorado and Wyoming, says that while there will always be spills, the fears of pollution are exaggerated. Encana uses steel and concrete casing around its drill pipes, lines its waste pits and, increasingly, cleans its waste water and re-uses it inside its wells.
"We have put in place safeguards to protect the water," Hock said. "There is always a balance -- this country has a great demand for energy."
But because the energy industry has been exempted from so many federal environmental regulations during the Bush administration, it's difficult to assess the industry's true impact on the river.
The mix of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing is held as proprietary competitive information by the industry and kept secret from even the EPA. Scientists say that without knowing the specific ingredients in the mix, they don't know what compounds to test for after a spill and can't check to see if they've reached the river.
The 2005 Energy Policy Act exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Also exempted from federal control and water protection laws are the drilling industry's construction activities, including the sediments and dust produced from thousands of miles of road building, site grading and the drilling itself, even though that debris often ends up in waterways.
"We have seen an explosion in drilling, and at the same time we have seen a weakening of the federal standards under which drilling occurs," said Dusty Horwitt, an analyst with the Environmental Working Group.
Given the relaxation in regulatory authority, the development may be out-pacing scientists' ability to measure the implications.
In August drilling companies bid on 55,000 acres of federal parcels atop the Roan Plateau, a cherished wilderness area in central Colorado that drains into the Colorado River. A September report from the University of Colorado Denver predicted that in 15 years Garfield County, a western drilling area bisected by the river, will have 23,000 wells, six times what is has now, based on permit applications already filed with the state.
The push to drill continued last week, when the BLM opened 148,598 more acres of federal land near Moab to drilling. Quarterly lease sales in that area during the last two years were typically about 75,000 acres.
"It seems reckless," said Bill Hedden, director of the Grand Canyon Trust. Near his home outside Moab, natural gas drilling rigs may soon be visible through Delicate Arch, the wind-hewn bridge of rock at Arches National Park that graces Utah's license plate.
"We Americans have tried to export a lot of our problems off to the boondocks -- but in this case the boondocks is the watershed and the problem is coming right back to us," Hedden said.
According to Spisak, the BLM official in charge of drilling, the Maob sale is the result of "pent up build-up" in the cue of requests the agency is handling. Companies that want to drill on federal land ask the BLM to consider listing that land for a future lease sale. Over the past few years, Spisak said, environmental organizations have challenged some of the listings the BLM approved, delaying their sale. Now the agency is catching up.
"We are required to push them forward," Spisak said. "It's due to pressures of prices and industry, and we are responding to the market demand."
An Unprecedented Demand
Colorado River (Flickr User: WisDoc)
No project poses a greater threat to the Colorado River -- or better represents the choice between water and energy -- than mining for oil shale.
In mid November the BLM quietly approved a rule change that paved the way for extracting oil from rock deposits in Colorado and Utah, smack in the heart of the river's watershed. If the vast deposits are mined to their potential -- and it could be a decade before any of the projects go forward -- the reserves could help the United States make a significant leap towards energy independence.
Getting oil from the shale, if researchers can find a reliable way to do it on a large scale, would be astronomically expensive. It might also require more water than the Colorado River can provide.
A recent study for the state of Colorado estimates that if the oil shale industry takes off in northwest Colorado, the region's energy industry will need at least 15 times as much water as it uses now. In 30 years, the report predicts, the energy industry in the upper Colorado River basin would stop the river's entire flow for nearly six weeks if it used the water all at once.
"It would take every bit of water rights that we currently have plus more," said Scott Ruppe, general manager of Uintah Water Conservancy District in northeastern Utah.
Counties across the Western states are apportioned a limited quota of water rights that can be used for industry, farming, or municipal use, he explained. Using Colorado River water for oil shale means less water for urban growth, agriculture and personal use. It means trading fresh fruit and vegetables – not to mention green lawns -- for energy.
"It just comes down to how needy the nation is for energy," he said. "If energy is short then some of the other concerns might get pushed aside."
These stark choices have driven Congress to begin examining the water problem in the absence of leadership from the White House. One of the bills that has been written would, if passed, direct the Interior Department to undertake the kind of comprehensive inventory of the nation's water quality and supply that critics say is missing.
It will be up to the Obama administration, though, to ultimately decide the nation's priorities. The appointment of Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to head the Interior Department will inject a unique understanding of western water issues into Washington politics. Salazar is a long-time rancher and a former water attorney.
The new administration could temper some of Bush's decisions by limiting mining claims in sensitive areas, refusing to finalize leases sales that haven't been signed, and rigorously enforcing existing environmental regulations. It also could try to reverse some of the rules the Bush administration has issued to speed development, although that will be difficult.
Obama's greatest opportunity to address the conflict between water and energy may lie not in undoing policies from the past, but in looking to the future.
"The administration has an opportunity to start thinking about water as a national resource," said Nevada's Mulroy. "We have no rear view mirrors anymore."
Abrahm Lustgarten is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times since receiving his master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2003.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Why Mercury Tuna is Still Legal
Why Mercury Tuna Is Still Legal
The Bush FDA helped industry suppress the bad news about mercury. Still want fish for dinner?
Stephanie Mencimer
September 02, 2008
Source: motherjones.com
First, Deborah Landvik-Fellner's hair started falling out. Then her speech began to slur and her memory grew unreliable. Her heart started fluttering, and her hands shook. One day she walked out of the supermarket and woke up surrounded by a crowd of people. She'd collapsed in the parking lot for no apparent reason. Landvik-Fellner, then 45, went to one doctor, then another, and another. None could figure out what was wrong. Finally, in 2004, after five years of weird symptoms, her husband Mike saw a TV show about a man who was poisoning his business partner with mercury, a potent toxin that can damage the heart, nervous system, and kidneys. The business partner's symptoms—shaky hands, staggering gait—reminded Mike of his wife's. On a lark, he suggested that she have her blood tested. When the results came back, they were both stunned: 48 parts per billion of mercury, nearly 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe.
A few Google searches later, the Fellners, who own an auto shop in Rockaway, New Jersey, had solved Deborah's health mystery. For some 12 years, she'd been eating a can of albacore tuna every day, because it was one of the few foods that didn't exacerbate her Crohn's disease. (Her family, of Norwegian extraction, consumed a lot of fish anyway. "We'd think nothing of putting a piece of cod on a piece of flatbread for breakfast.") She'd never realized that most tuna sold in the United States is contaminated with the toxic heavy metal—some up to double the epa's safety benchmark.
Landvik-Fellner stopped eating tuna, and within about a year, her symptoms began to subside. But by now she was angry, and confused. If eating tuna could make your hair fall out, shouldn't the label tell you so? In 2006, she filed a lawsuit against Tri-Union Seafoods, parent company of Chicken of the Sea, alleging that the company had violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act by failing to disclose that its product contained mercury.
"Toxic tort" cases are notoriously hard to win, and Landvik-Fellner faced long odds against the deep-pocketed industry. That much she knew. What she didn't anticipate was that her biggest obstacle would turn out to be the US Food and Drug Administration—the very agency responsible for protecting the public from mercury in the first place.
tuna is big business. Americans eat nearly three pounds of canned tuna per capita every year, making it the nation's second most popular seafood (behind shrimp). The government promotes it via school lunch programs, wic (the federal food program for poor women and children), and even in the fda and US Department of Agriculture dietary recommendations. It's a staple of low-carb diets. Bodybuilders binge on it. Low in fat, high in protein, canned tuna contains lots of omega-3 fatty acids that are thought to protect against heart disease and boost brain development early in life. Some tuna cans come stamped with the American Heart Association seal of approval.
But thanks to emissions from power plants and garbage incinerators, tuna also absorbs significant amounts of methylmercury, a form of mercury that concentrates in the fatty tissues of big fish and humans. Fatal in high doses, mercury at lower levels has been linked to heart disease in older men and developmental problems in babies. Tuna is not the highest-mercury fish we eat—that honor belongs to swordfish and tilefish—but it is by far the most widely consumed. "Tuna is the largest source of mercury in the diet because people eat so much of it," says Edward Groth, a scientist who has written a report on mercury in fish for the environmental groups Oceana and Mercury Policy Project.
None of this is news to federal regulators. In 1970, a New York chemistry professor tested a can of tuna in his pantry and discovered that it contained significantly more mercury than what the fda then considered safe. After running tests of its own, the agency recalled nearly 1 million cans of tuna. It also issued an "action level" under which fish with more than 0.5 parts per million (ppm) of methylmercury could be pulled from the market.
An action level is not a regulation. It doesn't require anyone to do anything. Even so, the fishing industry found the new benchmark so intolerable that it sued the fda. In 1979, drawing mostly on a National Marine Fisheries Service assessment that relaxing the guideline would "provide economic benefit" to industry, the fda doubled the level to 1 ppm, making it twice as high as what the epa (which issues mercury advisories for anglers) and the European Union consider safe. The action level in China is 0.3 ppm—more than three times more stringent than the fda's. (Tuna often exceeds even the weak US standard: In 2006, for instance, the group Defenders of Wildlife tested cans of tuna straight out of grocery stores and found that 1 in 20, particularly those imported from Latin America, had mercury above the fda action level and could, in theory, be pulled from the shelves.)
After its initial burst of activity in the 1970s, the fda seemed to lose interest in tuna. In the 1990s, it even stopped its occasional tests of store-bought fish. But after years of criticism from environmental groups and scientists, it drafted an advisory in 2000 that warned pregnant women about mercury. The original draft listed canned tuna as a high-mercury product. But then, fda officials met privately with representatives of the country's three largest tuna companies (Bumble Bee, Tri-Union, and StarKist), the US Tuna Foundation, and the National Food Processors Association.
The companies were very worried. The Tuna Foundation had warned the agency in private meetings that including canned tuna in the mercury advisory could cause sales to plummet nearly 25 percent, and that seafood producers "would face the distinct possibility of numerous class action lawsuits." fda focus groups also suggested that tuna consumption would fall. Sure enough, the final advisory—released after President Bush had taken office—didn't include canned tuna.
When the fda failed to come through on tougher regulations, some states stepped up with more stringent warnings. Washington, for example, warns that children under six should eat no more than half a can of albacore a week. Scientists, doctors, and environmental groups also continued to urge the fda to adopt more stringent federal warnings based on the epa's reference dose for safe mercury exposure.
In 2003, the fda did revise the mercury advisory for several kinds of fish, but again it bent the science to accommodate the industry's interests. Clark Carrington, an fda official, told the agency's Food Advisory Committee that in drawing up three categories for fish—high, medium, and low mercury—agency staffers had crafted the boundaries so that canned light tuna would end up in the low mercury group "in order to keep the market share at a reasonable level." (Canned light represents some 75 percent of the US tuna market; the rest is albacore, or white tuna, which tends to be higher in mercury.)
The new fda advisory warned pregnant and nursing women to eat no more than 6 ounces of albacore, and no more than 12 ounces of chunk light tuna, per week. The fda recommended following the same guidelines for children, with the vague suggestion that they eat "smaller portions." A 44-pound preschooler who follows the fda guideline would consume four times the mercury the epa considers safe.
The fda relayed its advisory mostly through brochures in doctors' offices, never requiring warnings in stores or on tuna cans. Still, the industry has blamed the advisory for a 10 percent drop in sales within a year, and it's worked hard to mute the message. In 2005, the tuna companies launched a $25 million campaign to counteract the fda's advisory, with full-page newspaper ads touting the brain-building benefits of omega-3 fatty acids ("Tuna: A Smart Catch") and reassuring women that "No government study has ever found unsafe levels of mercury in women or young children who eat canned tuna." (True, but none has ever looked.) David Burney, then the executive director of the US Tuna Foundation, told the New York Times in 2005 that his wife ate a can of albacore tuna almost every day while pregnant, and that his nine-year-old triplets ate several cans of albacore a week.
The US Tuna Foundation (which recently merged with the National Fisheries Institute) also enlisted spokespeople such as celebrity pediatrician Dr. Lillian Beard, who earned $6,000 a month for two days of work promoting canned tuna, plus $10,000 to serve on a nutrition advisory council for six months. In October 2004, Beard wrote a column in Pediatric News that suggested giving children "a little warm milk or tuna fish before bedtime" to help make them sleepy. She made no mention of her industry ties.
The US Tuna Foundation also underwrote science to help make its case, in one instance picking up nearly the entire $500,000 cost of a 2005 Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study and using the results to suggest that Americans weren't eating enough fish. The Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit founded by the tobacco industry to fight restaurant smoking bans, similarly rose in tuna's defense, creating a website, FishScam.com, that claims the fda standards are actually overcautious.
Meanwhile, reporters who have written about mercury in tuna have found themselves in hot water with the industry. The National Fisheries Institute and the US Tuna Foundation have waged aggressive and public attacks on people like Marian Burros at the New York Times (who earlier this year published a story warning of mercury in sushi tuna) and Larry Wheeler at USA Today. When I contacted the Fisheries Institute, its spokesman, Gavin Gibbons, first grilled me about whether this story had been prompted by an environmental group (it wasn't) and then warned that all our conversations would be recorded and the transcripts posted on the organization's website, along with any correspondence. In response to my specific questions, Gibbons emailed that linking high blood mercury levels to any kind of symptoms "is an unproven assertion that flies in the face of independent and proven scientific knowledge about canned tuna and all seafood's proven benefits...It is irresponsible to perpetuate anecdotal tales of high seafood consumption causing health concerns when those types of stories contradict published science showing the health benefits of eating fish at least twice per week."
luke lindley is one of the people Gibbons says it would be irresponsible to write about. As an undergrad at Stanford, the now-24-year-old medical student was "deeply immersed" in bodybuilding, so he ate "tuna for breakfast, tuna for lunch, tuna for dinner" for years. In 2003, he began having trouble with his memory. His hair fell out and he suffered gastrointestinal problems so severe he ended up taking a year off med school. Finally—after seeing a news report on mercury in tuna—he asked his doctor to test a sample of his hair. According to another doctor who reviewed the records, it had mercury levels higher than in any patient the doctor had ever seen. "I thought I was eating a low-fat, healthy diet," says Lindley. "As it turned out, I was ingesting enough mercury to make my hair fall out."
Dr. Jane Hightower has made something of a cottage industry out of treating fish consumers suffering from elevated mercury levels. In 2003 the San Francisco physician published a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives after surveying her entire patient load and testing more than 100 people whose questionnaires suggested they consumed a lot of fish. The majority had blood mercury levels well above what the epa considers safe. One was a 10-year-old named Matthew Davis who suffered serious neurological problems his doctors suspected were from the three to six ounces of canned albacore he ate daily. His fingers curled involuntarily, and his hands shook when he tried to write. The problems mostly resolved after he quit eating tuna.
Dr. Michael Gochfeld, a professor in environmental and occupational health sciences at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, says that mercury poisoning from fish is probably underreported because doctors don't know to look for it. His clinic at the medical school, he says, has been seeing more cases—at least half a dozen a year. People come in complaining of slurred speech, clumsiness, and vision problems. "It is usually related to fish," he says.
Yet, like the tuna industry, the fda says there's nothing to worry about. "There are no confirmed cases of adverse effects from methylmercury in commercial fish in the United States," says Stephanie Kwisnek, an fda spokeswoman. "There are infrequent anecdotal reports in the media that are virtually impossible to confirm. The fda does not track them on any kind of a formal basis."
deborah landvik-fellner's Chicken of the Sea lawsuit should have been fairly straightforward. That she ate a lot of canned tuna is indisputable, as is the fact that she had steeply elevated levels of mercury in her blood. Whether mercury caused all of her symptoms, whether Tri-Union ought to be held responsible for the effects of what they call her "abnormal consumption," even the definition of "abnormal," are the kind of disputed facts usually left to a jury. But so far, Landvik-Fellner hasn't come anywhere near a jury—in good part because the Bush fda has worked to protect industry from claims like hers.
In the Landvik-Fellner case, Tri-Union has used an increasingly popular legal strategy, arguing that her claim was "preempted" by federal law. The argument goes like this: If a product is regulated by the federal government, however weakly, consumers shouldn't be allowed to sue—and states should be prohibited from passing regulations or issuing health and safety warnings more stringent than the feds'.
But Tri-Union went one step further. It argued that Landvik-Fellner's case was preempted because the fda had refused to require warning labels on tuna—in other words, when the feds fail to regulate a product, that, too, can preempt state law. It was an argument familiar to top officials at the fda. In fact, Daniel Troy, the agency's chief counsel from 2001 to 2004, was a lawyer who'd spent most of his career in the private sector suing the fda on behalf of drug and food companies. Troy, who was a leading proponent of the preemption doctrine, essentially ran the agency for more than a year before President Bush appointed Lester Crawford, a former vice president of the National Food Processors Association, as fda commissioner. During his tenure, Troy invited big companies to bring him cases in which the agency could help defeat anti-industry lawsuits using the preemption argument. One of those cases involved a suit by the California attorney general's office seeking to force tuna companies to disclose their product's mercury content on the label. A lawyer representing the companies suggested to Troy that a letter from Crawford might help the industry's preemption argument. The lawyer helpfully enclosed a lengthy memo outlining the points the commissioner should include.
In August 2005, a letter precisely hitting all of the tuna lawyer's points arrived on the desk of California attorney general Bill Lockyer. Tuna companies quickly introduced it in court. Barely a month later, Crawford resigned from the fda in connection with criminal charges that he'd misreported his ownership of stock in fda-regulated companies.
But his letter lived on in the courts: In the California case, a lengthy trial featuring various industry spokespeople—including pediatrician Beard, who was paid $5,000 to testify that if people got worried about mercury in tuna, they might eat more junk food—ended with the judge citing Crawford's letter as a key factor in ruling for the tuna companies. And the letter made another appearance in Landvik-Fellner's case: Tri-Union's lawyers have brought it up as evidence that her lawsuit is preempted by federal regulations. After a year of legal wrangling, in January 2007 a US District Court judge agreed with the industry—and once again the ruling cited what the judge called Crawford's "persuasive" letter.
Fellner appealed the case to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, and on August 19, just after this story was published in our print edition, the court handed down a remarkable decision in her favor. A three-judge panel agreed with her arguments that a letter from the FDA commissioner written at the behest of the tuna company's lawyers was not the sort of federal action that could trump the state law. The court also scoffed at the notion that the FDA's advisory on mercury in fish qualified as a federal regulation, which requires formal proceedings, public criticism, and other serious vetting. "[W]e fail to see how an educational campaign might preempt Fellner's lawsuit," the panel wrote.
In fact, the court found that the New Jersey laws that Fellner sued under complemented, rather than conflicted with, the federal guidelines on mercury. And in a conclusion that is no doubt giving the tuna industry fits, the court noted that contrary to the industry's pleas, it would be fairly simple to come up with a warning label that would comply with both the FDA and New Jersey law. That last point may have implications beyond Fellner's case.
The original Proposition 65 litigation in California, brought by the state attorney general to force the tuna companies to put warning labels on tuna cans, is currently on appeal in the California state courts. Oral arguments haven't been scheduled yet, but lawyers in the attorney general's office have already alerted the appellate court of the decision in the Fellner case. The California courts don't have to follow the federal ones, but they usually give them quite a bit of deference. If the California courts do align with the 3rd Circuit, they could open the door to states requiring warning labels about mercury on tuna cans. Fellner, for her part, is thrilled with the outcome. "People are feeding their children tuna fish. There are still a lot of people out there who don't know," she says.
Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter at the Mother Jones Washington, DC, Bureau.
The Bush FDA helped industry suppress the bad news about mercury. Still want fish for dinner?
Stephanie Mencimer
September 02, 2008
Source: motherjones.com
First, Deborah Landvik-Fellner's hair started falling out. Then her speech began to slur and her memory grew unreliable. Her heart started fluttering, and her hands shook. One day she walked out of the supermarket and woke up surrounded by a crowd of people. She'd collapsed in the parking lot for no apparent reason. Landvik-Fellner, then 45, went to one doctor, then another, and another. None could figure out what was wrong. Finally, in 2004, after five years of weird symptoms, her husband Mike saw a TV show about a man who was poisoning his business partner with mercury, a potent toxin that can damage the heart, nervous system, and kidneys. The business partner's symptoms—shaky hands, staggering gait—reminded Mike of his wife's. On a lark, he suggested that she have her blood tested. When the results came back, they were both stunned: 48 parts per billion of mercury, nearly 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe.
A few Google searches later, the Fellners, who own an auto shop in Rockaway, New Jersey, had solved Deborah's health mystery. For some 12 years, she'd been eating a can of albacore tuna every day, because it was one of the few foods that didn't exacerbate her Crohn's disease. (Her family, of Norwegian extraction, consumed a lot of fish anyway. "We'd think nothing of putting a piece of cod on a piece of flatbread for breakfast.") She'd never realized that most tuna sold in the United States is contaminated with the toxic heavy metal—some up to double the epa's safety benchmark.
Landvik-Fellner stopped eating tuna, and within about a year, her symptoms began to subside. But by now she was angry, and confused. If eating tuna could make your hair fall out, shouldn't the label tell you so? In 2006, she filed a lawsuit against Tri-Union Seafoods, parent company of Chicken of the Sea, alleging that the company had violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act by failing to disclose that its product contained mercury.
"Toxic tort" cases are notoriously hard to win, and Landvik-Fellner faced long odds against the deep-pocketed industry. That much she knew. What she didn't anticipate was that her biggest obstacle would turn out to be the US Food and Drug Administration—the very agency responsible for protecting the public from mercury in the first place.
tuna is big business. Americans eat nearly three pounds of canned tuna per capita every year, making it the nation's second most popular seafood (behind shrimp). The government promotes it via school lunch programs, wic (the federal food program for poor women and children), and even in the fda and US Department of Agriculture dietary recommendations. It's a staple of low-carb diets. Bodybuilders binge on it. Low in fat, high in protein, canned tuna contains lots of omega-3 fatty acids that are thought to protect against heart disease and boost brain development early in life. Some tuna cans come stamped with the American Heart Association seal of approval.
But thanks to emissions from power plants and garbage incinerators, tuna also absorbs significant amounts of methylmercury, a form of mercury that concentrates in the fatty tissues of big fish and humans. Fatal in high doses, mercury at lower levels has been linked to heart disease in older men and developmental problems in babies. Tuna is not the highest-mercury fish we eat—that honor belongs to swordfish and tilefish—but it is by far the most widely consumed. "Tuna is the largest source of mercury in the diet because people eat so much of it," says Edward Groth, a scientist who has written a report on mercury in fish for the environmental groups Oceana and Mercury Policy Project.
None of this is news to federal regulators. In 1970, a New York chemistry professor tested a can of tuna in his pantry and discovered that it contained significantly more mercury than what the fda then considered safe. After running tests of its own, the agency recalled nearly 1 million cans of tuna. It also issued an "action level" under which fish with more than 0.5 parts per million (ppm) of methylmercury could be pulled from the market.
An action level is not a regulation. It doesn't require anyone to do anything. Even so, the fishing industry found the new benchmark so intolerable that it sued the fda. In 1979, drawing mostly on a National Marine Fisheries Service assessment that relaxing the guideline would "provide economic benefit" to industry, the fda doubled the level to 1 ppm, making it twice as high as what the epa (which issues mercury advisories for anglers) and the European Union consider safe. The action level in China is 0.3 ppm—more than three times more stringent than the fda's. (Tuna often exceeds even the weak US standard: In 2006, for instance, the group Defenders of Wildlife tested cans of tuna straight out of grocery stores and found that 1 in 20, particularly those imported from Latin America, had mercury above the fda action level and could, in theory, be pulled from the shelves.)
After its initial burst of activity in the 1970s, the fda seemed to lose interest in tuna. In the 1990s, it even stopped its occasional tests of store-bought fish. But after years of criticism from environmental groups and scientists, it drafted an advisory in 2000 that warned pregnant women about mercury. The original draft listed canned tuna as a high-mercury product. But then, fda officials met privately with representatives of the country's three largest tuna companies (Bumble Bee, Tri-Union, and StarKist), the US Tuna Foundation, and the National Food Processors Association.
The companies were very worried. The Tuna Foundation had warned the agency in private meetings that including canned tuna in the mercury advisory could cause sales to plummet nearly 25 percent, and that seafood producers "would face the distinct possibility of numerous class action lawsuits." fda focus groups also suggested that tuna consumption would fall. Sure enough, the final advisory—released after President Bush had taken office—didn't include canned tuna.
When the fda failed to come through on tougher regulations, some states stepped up with more stringent warnings. Washington, for example, warns that children under six should eat no more than half a can of albacore a week. Scientists, doctors, and environmental groups also continued to urge the fda to adopt more stringent federal warnings based on the epa's reference dose for safe mercury exposure.
In 2003, the fda did revise the mercury advisory for several kinds of fish, but again it bent the science to accommodate the industry's interests. Clark Carrington, an fda official, told the agency's Food Advisory Committee that in drawing up three categories for fish—high, medium, and low mercury—agency staffers had crafted the boundaries so that canned light tuna would end up in the low mercury group "in order to keep the market share at a reasonable level." (Canned light represents some 75 percent of the US tuna market; the rest is albacore, or white tuna, which tends to be higher in mercury.)
The new fda advisory warned pregnant and nursing women to eat no more than 6 ounces of albacore, and no more than 12 ounces of chunk light tuna, per week. The fda recommended following the same guidelines for children, with the vague suggestion that they eat "smaller portions." A 44-pound preschooler who follows the fda guideline would consume four times the mercury the epa considers safe.
The fda relayed its advisory mostly through brochures in doctors' offices, never requiring warnings in stores or on tuna cans. Still, the industry has blamed the advisory for a 10 percent drop in sales within a year, and it's worked hard to mute the message. In 2005, the tuna companies launched a $25 million campaign to counteract the fda's advisory, with full-page newspaper ads touting the brain-building benefits of omega-3 fatty acids ("Tuna: A Smart Catch") and reassuring women that "No government study has ever found unsafe levels of mercury in women or young children who eat canned tuna." (True, but none has ever looked.) David Burney, then the executive director of the US Tuna Foundation, told the New York Times in 2005 that his wife ate a can of albacore tuna almost every day while pregnant, and that his nine-year-old triplets ate several cans of albacore a week.
The US Tuna Foundation (which recently merged with the National Fisheries Institute) also enlisted spokespeople such as celebrity pediatrician Dr. Lillian Beard, who earned $6,000 a month for two days of work promoting canned tuna, plus $10,000 to serve on a nutrition advisory council for six months. In October 2004, Beard wrote a column in Pediatric News that suggested giving children "a little warm milk or tuna fish before bedtime" to help make them sleepy. She made no mention of her industry ties.
The US Tuna Foundation also underwrote science to help make its case, in one instance picking up nearly the entire $500,000 cost of a 2005 Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study and using the results to suggest that Americans weren't eating enough fish. The Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit founded by the tobacco industry to fight restaurant smoking bans, similarly rose in tuna's defense, creating a website, FishScam.com, that claims the fda standards are actually overcautious.
Meanwhile, reporters who have written about mercury in tuna have found themselves in hot water with the industry. The National Fisheries Institute and the US Tuna Foundation have waged aggressive and public attacks on people like Marian Burros at the New York Times (who earlier this year published a story warning of mercury in sushi tuna) and Larry Wheeler at USA Today. When I contacted the Fisheries Institute, its spokesman, Gavin Gibbons, first grilled me about whether this story had been prompted by an environmental group (it wasn't) and then warned that all our conversations would be recorded and the transcripts posted on the organization's website, along with any correspondence. In response to my specific questions, Gibbons emailed that linking high blood mercury levels to any kind of symptoms "is an unproven assertion that flies in the face of independent and proven scientific knowledge about canned tuna and all seafood's proven benefits...It is irresponsible to perpetuate anecdotal tales of high seafood consumption causing health concerns when those types of stories contradict published science showing the health benefits of eating fish at least twice per week."
luke lindley is one of the people Gibbons says it would be irresponsible to write about. As an undergrad at Stanford, the now-24-year-old medical student was "deeply immersed" in bodybuilding, so he ate "tuna for breakfast, tuna for lunch, tuna for dinner" for years. In 2003, he began having trouble with his memory. His hair fell out and he suffered gastrointestinal problems so severe he ended up taking a year off med school. Finally—after seeing a news report on mercury in tuna—he asked his doctor to test a sample of his hair. According to another doctor who reviewed the records, it had mercury levels higher than in any patient the doctor had ever seen. "I thought I was eating a low-fat, healthy diet," says Lindley. "As it turned out, I was ingesting enough mercury to make my hair fall out."
Dr. Jane Hightower has made something of a cottage industry out of treating fish consumers suffering from elevated mercury levels. In 2003 the San Francisco physician published a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives after surveying her entire patient load and testing more than 100 people whose questionnaires suggested they consumed a lot of fish. The majority had blood mercury levels well above what the epa considers safe. One was a 10-year-old named Matthew Davis who suffered serious neurological problems his doctors suspected were from the three to six ounces of canned albacore he ate daily. His fingers curled involuntarily, and his hands shook when he tried to write. The problems mostly resolved after he quit eating tuna.
Dr. Michael Gochfeld, a professor in environmental and occupational health sciences at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, says that mercury poisoning from fish is probably underreported because doctors don't know to look for it. His clinic at the medical school, he says, has been seeing more cases—at least half a dozen a year. People come in complaining of slurred speech, clumsiness, and vision problems. "It is usually related to fish," he says.
Yet, like the tuna industry, the fda says there's nothing to worry about. "There are no confirmed cases of adverse effects from methylmercury in commercial fish in the United States," says Stephanie Kwisnek, an fda spokeswoman. "There are infrequent anecdotal reports in the media that are virtually impossible to confirm. The fda does not track them on any kind of a formal basis."
deborah landvik-fellner's Chicken of the Sea lawsuit should have been fairly straightforward. That she ate a lot of canned tuna is indisputable, as is the fact that she had steeply elevated levels of mercury in her blood. Whether mercury caused all of her symptoms, whether Tri-Union ought to be held responsible for the effects of what they call her "abnormal consumption," even the definition of "abnormal," are the kind of disputed facts usually left to a jury. But so far, Landvik-Fellner hasn't come anywhere near a jury—in good part because the Bush fda has worked to protect industry from claims like hers.
In the Landvik-Fellner case, Tri-Union has used an increasingly popular legal strategy, arguing that her claim was "preempted" by federal law. The argument goes like this: If a product is regulated by the federal government, however weakly, consumers shouldn't be allowed to sue—and states should be prohibited from passing regulations or issuing health and safety warnings more stringent than the feds'.
But Tri-Union went one step further. It argued that Landvik-Fellner's case was preempted because the fda had refused to require warning labels on tuna—in other words, when the feds fail to regulate a product, that, too, can preempt state law. It was an argument familiar to top officials at the fda. In fact, Daniel Troy, the agency's chief counsel from 2001 to 2004, was a lawyer who'd spent most of his career in the private sector suing the fda on behalf of drug and food companies. Troy, who was a leading proponent of the preemption doctrine, essentially ran the agency for more than a year before President Bush appointed Lester Crawford, a former vice president of the National Food Processors Association, as fda commissioner. During his tenure, Troy invited big companies to bring him cases in which the agency could help defeat anti-industry lawsuits using the preemption argument. One of those cases involved a suit by the California attorney general's office seeking to force tuna companies to disclose their product's mercury content on the label. A lawyer representing the companies suggested to Troy that a letter from Crawford might help the industry's preemption argument. The lawyer helpfully enclosed a lengthy memo outlining the points the commissioner should include.
In August 2005, a letter precisely hitting all of the tuna lawyer's points arrived on the desk of California attorney general Bill Lockyer. Tuna companies quickly introduced it in court. Barely a month later, Crawford resigned from the fda in connection with criminal charges that he'd misreported his ownership of stock in fda-regulated companies.
But his letter lived on in the courts: In the California case, a lengthy trial featuring various industry spokespeople—including pediatrician Beard, who was paid $5,000 to testify that if people got worried about mercury in tuna, they might eat more junk food—ended with the judge citing Crawford's letter as a key factor in ruling for the tuna companies. And the letter made another appearance in Landvik-Fellner's case: Tri-Union's lawyers have brought it up as evidence that her lawsuit is preempted by federal regulations. After a year of legal wrangling, in January 2007 a US District Court judge agreed with the industry—and once again the ruling cited what the judge called Crawford's "persuasive" letter.
Fellner appealed the case to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, and on August 19, just after this story was published in our print edition, the court handed down a remarkable decision in her favor. A three-judge panel agreed with her arguments that a letter from the FDA commissioner written at the behest of the tuna company's lawyers was not the sort of federal action that could trump the state law. The court also scoffed at the notion that the FDA's advisory on mercury in fish qualified as a federal regulation, which requires formal proceedings, public criticism, and other serious vetting. "[W]e fail to see how an educational campaign might preempt Fellner's lawsuit," the panel wrote.
In fact, the court found that the New Jersey laws that Fellner sued under complemented, rather than conflicted with, the federal guidelines on mercury. And in a conclusion that is no doubt giving the tuna industry fits, the court noted that contrary to the industry's pleas, it would be fairly simple to come up with a warning label that would comply with both the FDA and New Jersey law. That last point may have implications beyond Fellner's case.
The original Proposition 65 litigation in California, brought by the state attorney general to force the tuna companies to put warning labels on tuna cans, is currently on appeal in the California state courts. Oral arguments haven't been scheduled yet, but lawyers in the attorney general's office have already alerted the appellate court of the decision in the Fellner case. The California courts don't have to follow the federal ones, but they usually give them quite a bit of deference. If the California courts do align with the 3rd Circuit, they could open the door to states requiring warning labels about mercury on tuna cans. Fellner, for her part, is thrilled with the outcome. "People are feeding their children tuna fish. There are still a lot of people out there who don't know," she says.
Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter at the Mother Jones Washington, DC, Bureau.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Rich World Behind Much of Global Pollution
Rich world behind much of global pollution
By Timothy Gardner
Wed Oct 22, 2008
http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-36084620081021
http://in.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=INIndia-36084620081021
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rich countries are partly responsible for pollution from poor ones, including poisonous mining discharge, because they buy many of the raw materials and goods that produce the waste, environmental groups said.
"In our part of the world, these problems have been fixed for the most part," said Richard Fuller, founder of the New York-based Blacksmith Institute, which has compiled a database of 600 of the world's worst polluted places.
"We have exported our industry overseas and yet there's no pollution controls in these places or the pollution controls are terribly inadequate."
Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland, which works to clean up contamination from industrial and military disasters, released a report on Tuesday called "The World's Worst Polluted Places" -- available at www.worstpolluted.org.
It found that artisanal gold mining, contaminated surface water, radioactive waste processing and uranium mining and the recycling of used lead acid batteries, most of which occur in poor countries from Africa to Asia, are some of the world's top 10 sources of pollution dangerous to human health.
Millions of people are poisoned or killed each year by industrial pollution and emissions, it said.
To be sure, the developing world is also rife with problems that are not caused by the processing or manufacture of goods used in rich countries.
Indoor air pollution from cooking fires, which occurs mostly in Africa, is one key example, the report said. And many of the products made or processed in rapidly developing countries, such as China and India, are used domestically.
Still, children in developing countries are hit by pollution from many of the industries that make or process things used mostly by rich countries, including metals smelting and processing, lead battery recycling and the industrial mining of both common and precious materials, it said.
Children are more vulnerable to disease from toxic pollution than adults.
Rich countries should help mop up pollution sources not only because they are the world's largest consumers but because some pollution can travel over oceans through the atmosphere, eventually reaching consumers throughout the world.
"Mercury from artisanal gold mining can end up in tuna that we end up eating, poisoning our own children," Fuller said.
Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland helped launch the Health and Pollution Fund last year with representatives from the United States, Germany, China, Russia and other countries.
The planned $400 million fund will be dedicated to cleaning up toxic hotspots in developing countries. Fuller said. Blacksmith is trying to work with the U.S. Department of Treasury to help with clean-ups.
By Timothy Gardner
Wed Oct 22, 2008
http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-36084620081021
http://in.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=INIndia-36084620081021
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rich countries are partly responsible for pollution from poor ones, including poisonous mining discharge, because they buy many of the raw materials and goods that produce the waste, environmental groups said.
"In our part of the world, these problems have been fixed for the most part," said Richard Fuller, founder of the New York-based Blacksmith Institute, which has compiled a database of 600 of the world's worst polluted places.
"We have exported our industry overseas and yet there's no pollution controls in these places or the pollution controls are terribly inadequate."
Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland, which works to clean up contamination from industrial and military disasters, released a report on Tuesday called "The World's Worst Polluted Places" -- available at www.worstpolluted.org.
It found that artisanal gold mining, contaminated surface water, radioactive waste processing and uranium mining and the recycling of used lead acid batteries, most of which occur in poor countries from Africa to Asia, are some of the world's top 10 sources of pollution dangerous to human health.
Millions of people are poisoned or killed each year by industrial pollution and emissions, it said.
To be sure, the developing world is also rife with problems that are not caused by the processing or manufacture of goods used in rich countries.
Indoor air pollution from cooking fires, which occurs mostly in Africa, is one key example, the report said. And many of the products made or processed in rapidly developing countries, such as China and India, are used domestically.
Still, children in developing countries are hit by pollution from many of the industries that make or process things used mostly by rich countries, including metals smelting and processing, lead battery recycling and the industrial mining of both common and precious materials, it said.
Children are more vulnerable to disease from toxic pollution than adults.
Rich countries should help mop up pollution sources not only because they are the world's largest consumers but because some pollution can travel over oceans through the atmosphere, eventually reaching consumers throughout the world.
"Mercury from artisanal gold mining can end up in tuna that we end up eating, poisoning our own children," Fuller said.
Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland helped launch the Health and Pollution Fund last year with representatives from the United States, Germany, China, Russia and other countries.
The planned $400 million fund will be dedicated to cleaning up toxic hotspots in developing countries. Fuller said. Blacksmith is trying to work with the U.S. Department of Treasury to help with clean-ups.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
water filters buying guide
Water Filters Buying Guide
source:
http://www.thegreenguide.com/products/print_pr.mhtml?id=169
http://www.thegreenguide.com/products/Kitchen/Water_Filters?source=email_gg_20081001&email=gg&EID=
What To Look For
Filters only reduce selected contaminants. Therefore, be sure you know which pollutants you're targeting before purchase, and select a filter certified by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), as all the above filters are. When a product effectively reduces at least 93 percent of a particular contaminant, NSF certifies the filter for reduction of that contaminant.
Following are basic criteria to use when choosing a water filter:
Type
Carafe: Portable pour-through carafes are the simplest and cheapest filtration option. They use carbon filters, and most models require a filter change about every two months. For basic filtering and taste improvement, Brita pitchers work fine. Pur filters remove a wider variety of contaminants, but they've been found to clog easily. However, in areas with herbicides or other chemical contaminants that Brita filters can't remove, Pur is the least costly option.
Faucet Mount: Faucet mounted filtration systems also use carbon filters but eliminate the wait-time associated with carafes. The filter cartridges should be changed every three months.
Counter Top: Counter-top models are either manual-fill units, or they're filled via a tube connected to your faucet. They generally use either carbon filters or distillation.
Under Counter: Under-counter systems attach to the water pipes under your sink and provide hot or cold filtered water through your existing tap or a separate faucet (filter units requiring a separate faucet usually have high installation costs). The water flow with these systems tends to be better than with faucet-mounted systems, and filters generally only need changing twice a year.
Whole House: Whole house systems filter all household water, whether used for bathing, washing or drinking, before it comes into the home. When sediment in water is a problem, whole house systems can in fact prolong the life of major appliances, but they usually are ineffective at removing lead, chloroform, pesticides, and bacteria.
Portable Filters: Some reusable water bottles come equipped with a filtration system inside the bottle. Most remove chlorine, bad tastes and odors, as well as an assortment of heavy metals including lead, mercury, and copper.
Filtration Method
Carbon: These use activated carbon to adsorb lead, chlorine byproducts, certain parasites, radon, solvents, some pesticides and herbicides, and some organic chemicals as well as odors and bad tastes. They won't remove heavy metals, arsenic, nitrites, bacteria or microbes.
Distiller: Distillers boil water into steam, then condense it back into water in a separate chamber, leaving behind particles and total dissolved solids. Since water is heated, distillers kill microbes. They eliminate many other pollutants including trivalent arsenic, fluoride, lead and mercury , but not volatile organic chemicals and chlorine, which are usually removed by an accompanying carbon filter. Upfront costs for distillers are steep, between $200 and $1500. They also use considerable amounts of energy: It takes one kilowatt-hour to produce one liter of distilled water. Because the average person uses 100 gallons of water per day, a whole-house distiller can increase daily home energy use by 378 kWh. If heavy metals are a problem, consider a counter top distiller for your drinking water only. Distilled water contains less dissolved oxygen, and many find that the water tastes flat.
Reverse Osmosis: Reverse-osmosis systems, typically expensive and difficult to install, operate by pushing water through a membrane, then flushing away a few gallons of contaminant-containing water for every gallon purified. These systems are the only filters that remove nitrates and perchlorate. They also remove industrial chemicals, heavy metals, chlorine byproducts, arsenic and asbestos but not radon or 100 percent of pesticides, which can be removed by an additional carbon filter. (As these filters waste enormous amounts of water and flush contaminants back into the water supply, they should be considered a solution to water contamination only if nitrates and perchlorate are problems in your area). The membrane generally needs to be replaced every two to three years.
Ceramic: Ceramic filters, often combined with carbon filters, will remove bacteria, parasites, asbestos and sediments. As water passes through the pores of the ceramic, particles as small as .2 microns are trapped. When the water flow is reduced, the filter requires a light scrub under running water. Ceramic filters are available in both counter-top and under the counter models, and are often combined with another filtration method.
UV: These use a 60-watt ultraviolet light bulb to kill giardia, E.coli, and Cryptosporidium, and are currently the only systems certified by the NSF to do so. Although the bulb is continuously lit, UV systems are more energy-efficient than distillers and are available in under the counter models and whole house units. UV purifiers are not certified to remove pathogens uncommon to North America such as toxoplasma and entamoeba and should be used in conjunction with another filtration method.
Contaminants Removed
Contaminants vary for each water supply, but those most frequently found include:
2,4-D: a common herbicide and suspected hormone disruptor
Arsenic: a heavy metal that has been linked bladder, lung, kidney, prostate and skin cancer in animal tests, heart and nervous system damage and skin problems; can enter water through natural soil deposits or industrial and agricultural pollution. Very low levels of arsenic have also been found to disrupt hormone functions.
Atrazine: an herbicide used on corn; short-term exposure leads to lung, kidney and heart congestion while long-term exposure may cause cardiovascular disease. Atrazine is a suspected hormone disruptor.
Chloramine: a chlorine-ammonia compound used as a disinfectant in 29 percent of U.S. water utilities; has been associated with asthma, rashes and fainting
Coliform bacteria: Not harmful in themselves, they may indicate the presence of dangerous microbes such as Cryptosporidium, which can be life-threatening to people with weak immune systems.
Cysts: microorganisms including Cryptosporidium and Giardia that are carried by animal and human waste and linked to gastrointestinal illness. Crypto can be life-threatening for those with weakened immune systems.
E.coli: a type of fecal coliform bacteria that can cause gastrointestinal illness; about 2 to 7 percent of E.coli of infections lead to kidney failure.
Lead: a brain-damaging and neurotoxic heavy metal that can enter water via decaying pipes and taps; "Every homeowner, especially if they have children under six, should have their water tested for lead," warns Erik Olson, a senior attorney specializing in drinking water at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Lindane: used as an insecticide and in prescription medications for head and body lice; a known hormone disruptor
Mercury: a brain-damaging heavy metal that can also cause kidney damage
Misc. heavy metals: Carcinogenic chromium can also cause upset stomach, ulcers, kidney and liver damage and death. Short term exposure to selenium, cadmium and copper can nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and long term exposure to cadmium and copper can cause kidney disease.
MTBE: The gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) leaks into groundwater from underground fuel storage, spills and storm-water runoff and is a possible carcinogen. MTBE has been banned in many but not all states.
Nitrates: come from animal waste on cattle farms, on feedlots and in dairies, and can cause "blue-baby syndrome," which prevents blood from holding oxygen.
Perchlorate: contaminant derived from rocket fuel; causes thyroid damage and is a possible carcinogen
Perchloroethylene (PERC)/tetrachloroethylene: PERC, also commonly listed as tetrachloroethylene, is the main solvent used in most dry-cleaning processes. It is a known carcinogen that can cause neurological, kidney and liver effects, and has been associated with reproductive effects such as spontaneous abortion.
Simazine: a common pesticide; long-term exposure may lead to liver and kidney damage
Trihalomethanes (THMs): Chemicals formed when chlorine used to disinfect water reacts with organic matter, such as animal waste, treated sewage or leaves and soil. They can increase the risk of cancer and may damage the liver, kidneys and nervous system, and increase rates of miscarriage and birth defects.
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS): inorganic salts, such as calcium, sodium and sulfates, and small amounts of organic matter that are dissolved in water; the concentration of TDS in water is not a health hazard but can cause water to be corrosive or salty in taste and may lead to mineral build-up.
Toxaphene: a now-banned insecticide that breaks down slowly in the environment and is an EPA-classified probable carcinogen; high level exposure could damage the lungs, nervous system and kidneys.
VOCs: Including benzene, which can cause cancer and birth defects and toluene, which can cause nausea, weakness, confusion and hearing and vision loss.
Annual Filter Cost
The dollar amount refers to the cost of replacing filters for one year.
Shopping and Usage Tips
To ensure that the filter you buy is effective, find out which contaminants are specific to your water supply before you start shopping.
If you draw from a municipal supply, obtain a copy of your water quality report. Water utilities are required to send these to customers by July 1st of each year. If you have not received a copy, request it from your local supplier or the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline (800-426-4791), or you can view it online at www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.htm .
If your water source is a private well, check with your local health department to find out which contaminants are common where you live. The EPA recommends that you have it tested annually by a state-certified lab for nitrate and coliform bacteria, total dissolved solids and pH levels. Also, test for radon if that's a problem in your area (call 800-SOS-RADON to see if it's an issue) and for pesticides, if you live near a farm where crops are sprayed frequently. National Testing Labs can test for 95 contaminants, including 20 pesticides, by mail (www.ntllabs.com, 800-458-3330). For more information, call the Water Systems Council hotline (www.wellcarehotline.org, 888-395-1033).
Check for lead in your building's pipes. The NSF certifies reverse osmosis systems, carbon filters and distillers for the removal of lead, a neurotoxic heavy metal that gets into water as pipes decay. It's not present in all pipes, so find out if it's a problem before spending money on a costly filter. You can get the name of a state-certified laboratory from www.epa.gov/safewater/labs/index.html .
Usage Tips
Change the filter on time to ensure that water is being cleared of contaminants. If need be, mark a reminder on your calendar.
Continue to monitor your water reports or test your well water for contamination, especially in the event of unexplained illnesses, a chemical or fuel spill nearby, or if there is a change in water taste, odor, color or clarity.
Weigh in with your water utility and local environmental groups to urge better protection against industrial and agricultural contamination of your city's water source. Campaign to limit development around reservoir watersheds, and buy organic food to support farming methods that prevent pesticides from entering water. The cleaner your watershed, the less you have to rely on filters.
Product Comparisons
While America's drinking water supplies are tightly regulated and are among the healthiest in the world, health-threatening contaminants may occasionally enter drinking water from old pipes, wells or municipal water treatment disruptions. The filters below have been independently certified to remove major contaminants, so there are no worries about getting those requisite eight glasses of water a day.
Wondering what these table headings mean? They're the criteria we used to choose and evaluate the products in the chart below. Learn more about their importance in What To Look For.
Name Type Filtration Method Contaminants Removed Annual Filter Cost MSRP Purchasing Information Reader Rating
Shaklee Perfect Pitcher Carafe Carbon 4 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor $90 $17 www.shaklee.com, 925-924-2000
Avg. Rating
Pur 2 Stage 7 Cup Oval Pitcher CR6000 Carafe Carbon 19 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, 2-4D, atrazine, VOCs, cadmium, copper, cysts, lindane, mercury, MTBE, simazene,tetrachloroethylene, toxaphene, TTHM $82 $30 www.purwaterfilter.com, 800-787-5463
Avg. Rating
Brita Super Saver Carafe Carbon 8 including chlorine, taste, odor, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead*, benzene* $54 $22.99 www.brita.com, 800-24-BRITA
Avg. Rating
Pur Horizontal FM 9400 Faucet Mount Carbon 30 including chlorine, particulates, tastes and odor, 2,4-D, atrazine, VOCs, cysts, lead, lindane, MTBE, mercury, simazene, TTHM, tetrachloroethylene, toxaphene $80 $40 www.purwaterfilter.com, 800-787-5463
Avg. Rating
GE Smartwater GXFM03C Faucet Mount Carbon 8 including atrazine, cysts, lead, lindane, mercury, turbidity, chlorine*, particulates* $64 $20 www.geappliances.com, 800-626-2005
Avg. Rating
Brita Disposable CKFF-100 Faucet Mount Carbon 13 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, atrazine, benzene, cysts, lead, mercury, toxaphene $0 $40 www.brita.com, 800-24-BRITA
Avg. Rating
Shaklee Best Water MTS2000 Counter Top Carbon 8 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, VOCs $105 $255 www.shaklee.com, 925-924-2000
Avg. Rating
Culligan CT-2 Counter Top Carbon 9 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, mercury $75 $50 www.culligan.com, 800-CULLIGAN
Avg. Rating
Sylvan Source Automatic Fill Distillation System M-600 Counter Top Distiller 10 including arsenic, cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, mercury, selenium, TDS $0 $38 www.sylvansource.com, 800-640-0469
Avg. Rating
Aqua Pure by Cuno AP-DWS1000 Under Counter Carbon 10 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, MTBE, VOCs, pesticides* $180 $350 www.cuno.com, 800-22-7880
Avg. Rating
GE Smartwater GXSV65F Under Counter Carbon 13 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, atrazine, cysts, lead, lindane, mercury, VOCs, rust* $80 $150 www.geappliances.com, 800-626-2005
Avg. Rating
Everpure H-300 Under Counter Carbon 14 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, VOCs, chloramine*, mold and algae*, oxidised iron*, manganese sulfides* $95 $300 www.everpure.com
Avg. Rating
Doulton Ultracarb IP200UC Under Counter Ceramic/carbon 7 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead est. $40 $319 www.doultonusa.com, 888-664-3336
Avg. Rating
Kenmore Elite 38556 Under Counter Reverse Osmosis 13 including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, cysts, lead, nitrates, selenium, TDS $80 $300 www.kenmore.com, 800-349-4358
Avg. Rating
Culligan Aqua-Cleer Good Water Machine AC-30 Under Counter Reverse Osmosis 10 including arsenic, cadmium, copper, cysts, fluoride, chromium, lead, radium, selenium, TDS $50 $900 www.culligan.com, 800-CULLIGAN
Avg. Rating
Whirlpool WHCF-DWHV Whole House Carbon particulates $24 $35 www.whirlpool.com, 866-698-2538
Avg. Rating
TrojanUVMax Pro 20 Whole House UV 5 including E.coli, giardia, cryptosporidium $0 est. $1,600 www.trojanuvmax.com, 888-220-6118
Avg. Rating
*Manufacturer claims the filter removes this contaminant, although the filter has not been certified by NSF to do so.
The Backstory
Many of us rely on our state and local officials to ensure that the water coming out of our taps is clean and safe. They test water quarterly for synthetic organic chemicals and hundreds of times a month for bacteria, and municipal testing is actually more stringent than that required for bottled water, which is only tested annually. Nevertheless, a few localized problems with municipal supplies cast doubt on the entire nation's, leading consumers to opt for bottled water. Popular also because it's more convenient and may taste better, bottled water still costs 1,000 times more per gallon than tap, isn't as closely regulated and contributes to a host of environmental hazards.
Environmental Issues
Bottled water consumes 1.5 million barrels of oil annually in the production of convenient, disposable, petroleum-based plastics. Even though most plastic water bottles are recyclable, they're usually thrown out. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that each day, more than 60 million plastic bottles are incinerated or tossed in landfills.
Meanwhile, the contents of those bottles may be no different than the water coming out of your tap. As much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually drawn from municipal water supplies. PepsiCo has recently admitted as much by labeling it's Aquafina as coming from "a public water source" and then shipped cross-country, spewing greenhouse gases and burning more non-renewable oil in the process.
Water filters themselves create solid waste in the form of disposed plastic cartridges, which add to landfill problems. Unfortunately, water filters aren't recyclable and manufacturers currently don't have take-back programs designed to keep used water filters out of landfills.
Personal Health
People often turn to bottles because of threats to municipal supplies, the greatest of which is development, whether agricultural or urban, around reservoirs. Urban development seals green spaces under impervious roadways and parking lots, resulting in increased pollution from topsoil, lawn pesticides and fertilizers, animal and human waste (especially if septic systems fail), roadway oil, soot, landfill run-off and salt. Additionally, agricultural run-off carries pesticides into water supplies. A February 2007 U.S. Geological Survey survey of 51 "hydrological systems" found that one or more pesticides have been detected in 97 percent of U.S. streams in urban and farming areas, and five percent of shallow wells that provide drinking water in urban areas have pesticide concentrations above EPA human-health benchmarks.
Aside from industrial and agricultural pollution, chemicals not removed from wastewater treatment plants can infiltrate water supplies as well. A May 2002 USGS study of the nation's stream water discovered chemicals found in drugs, detergents, disinfectants, insect repellents, plastics and personal care products, including 33 suspected hormone disruptors. Non-prescription drugs were detected more frequently than almost all other organic wastewater contaminants, and those drugs have been detected in drinking-water supplies in Montana and New Jersey.
The EPA reported in 1998 that 6 percent of the country's water systems had violated health standards for at least one of 90 regulated contaminants that year. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an estimated seven million Americans are made sick annually by contaminated tap water; in some rare cases, this results in death. One study published in the 2006 Journal of Water and Health found that, between 1991 and 2002, 4,400 people were hospitalized and 50 died from exposure to pathogens such as Cryptosporidium and E.coli in tap water.
Related Articles
From the Green Guide:
"Lead, Straight From the Tap," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/ask/leadwater
"American Waters: What Hurts, What Helps," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/121/water
"Three Simple Steps to Clean, Safe Drinking Water," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/101/threesteps
"Message in the Bottle: Drink Tap," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/101/watershed
From Outside Sources:
Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water: www.safe-drinking-water.org, 202-895-0432 x135
Clean Water Lead Testing Inc. provides lead testing for $24: www.leadtesting.org, 828-251-6800
EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline: www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.htm , 800-426-4791
National Drinking Water Clearinghouse: www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/ndwc_index.htm , 800-624-8301
National Testing Labs: www.ntlabs.com, 800-458-3330
National Sanitation Foundation: www.nsf.org, 800-673-6275
Radon Hotline: 800-SOS-RADON
Water Systems Council: www.wellcarehotline.org, 888-395-1033
"Making Sense out of Drinking Water 'Right to Know' Reports." www.safe-drinking-water.org/rtk.html
New York City residents can order free lead tests through the city's Department of Environmental Protection, 311.
Olson, Erik D. "Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" Natural Resources Defense Council. 1999. www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp
"Protecting Groundwater from Pesticides: A Clean Water Action Guide." Friends of the Earth. www.foe.org/safefood/groundwater
source:
http://www.thegreenguide.com/
http://www.thegreenguide.com/
What To Look For
Filters only reduce selected contaminants. Therefore, be sure you know which pollutants you're targeting before purchase, and select a filter certified by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), as all the above filters are. When a product effectively reduces at least 93 percent of a particular contaminant, NSF certifies the filter for reduction of that contaminant.
Following are basic criteria to use when choosing a water filter:
Type
Carafe: Portable pour-through carafes are the simplest and cheapest filtration option. They use carbon filters, and most models require a filter change about every two months. For basic filtering and taste improvement, Brita pitchers work fine. Pur filters remove a wider variety of contaminants, but they've been found to clog easily. However, in areas with herbicides or other chemical contaminants that Brita filters can't remove, Pur is the least costly option.
Faucet Mount: Faucet mounted filtration systems also use carbon filters but eliminate the wait-time associated with carafes. The filter cartridges should be changed every three months.
Counter Top: Counter-top models are either manual-fill units, or they're filled via a tube connected to your faucet. They generally use either carbon filters or distillation.
Under Counter: Under-counter systems attach to the water pipes under your sink and provide hot or cold filtered water through your existing tap or a separate faucet (filter units requiring a separate faucet usually have high installation costs). The water flow with these systems tends to be better than with faucet-mounted systems, and filters generally only need changing twice a year.
Whole House: Whole house systems filter all household water, whether used for bathing, washing or drinking, before it comes into the home. When sediment in water is a problem, whole house systems can in fact prolong the life of major appliances, but they usually are ineffective at removing lead, chloroform, pesticides, and bacteria.
Portable Filters: Some reusable water bottles come equipped with a filtration system inside the bottle. Most remove chlorine, bad tastes and odors, as well as an assortment of heavy metals including lead, mercury, and copper.
Filtration Method
Carbon: These use activated carbon to adsorb lead, chlorine byproducts, certain parasites, radon, solvents, some pesticides and herbicides, and some organic chemicals as well as odors and bad tastes. They won't remove heavy metals, arsenic, nitrites, bacteria or microbes.
Distiller: Distillers boil water into steam, then condense it back into water in a separate chamber, leaving behind particles and total dissolved solids. Since water is heated, distillers kill microbes. They eliminate many other pollutants including trivalent arsenic, fluoride, lead and mercury , but not volatile organic chemicals and chlorine, which are usually removed by an accompanying carbon filter. Upfront costs for distillers are steep, between $200 and $1500. They also use considerable amounts of energy: It takes one kilowatt-hour to produce one liter of distilled water. Because the average person uses 100 gallons of water per day, a whole-house distiller can increase daily home energy use by 378 kWh. If heavy metals are a problem, consider a counter top distiller for your drinking water only. Distilled water contains less dissolved oxygen, and many find that the water tastes flat.
Reverse Osmosis: Reverse-osmosis systems, typically expensive and difficult to install, operate by pushing water through a membrane, then flushing away a few gallons of contaminant-containing water for every gallon purified. These systems are the only filters that remove nitrates and perchlorate. They also remove industrial chemicals, heavy metals, chlorine byproducts, arsenic and asbestos but not radon or 100 percent of pesticides, which can be removed by an additional carbon filter. (As these filters waste enormous amounts of water and flush contaminants back into the water supply, they should be considered a solution to water contamination only if nitrates and perchlorate are problems in your area). The membrane generally needs to be replaced every two to three years.
Ceramic: Ceramic filters, often combined with carbon filters, will remove bacteria, parasites, asbestos and sediments. As water passes through the pores of the ceramic, particles as small as .2 microns are trapped. When the water flow is reduced, the filter requires a light scrub under running water. Ceramic filters are available in both counter-top and under the counter models, and are often combined with another filtration method.
UV: These use a 60-watt ultraviolet light bulb to kill giardia, E.coli, and Cryptosporidium, and are currently the only systems certified by the NSF to do so. Although the bulb is continuously lit, UV systems are more energy-efficient than distillers and are available in under the counter models and whole house units. UV purifiers are not certified to remove pathogens uncommon to North America such as toxoplasma and entamoeba and should be used in conjunction with another filtration method.
Contaminants Removed
Contaminants vary for each water supply, but those most frequently found include:
2,4-D: a common herbicide and suspected hormone disruptor
Arsenic: a heavy metal that has been linked bladder, lung, kidney, prostate and skin cancer in animal tests, heart and nervous system damage and skin problems; can enter water through natural soil deposits or industrial and agricultural pollution. Very low levels of arsenic have also been found to disrupt hormone functions.
Atrazine: an herbicide used on corn; short-term exposure leads to lung, kidney and heart congestion while long-term exposure may cause cardiovascular disease. Atrazine is a suspected hormone disruptor.
Chloramine: a chlorine-ammonia compound used as a disinfectant in 29 percent of U.S. water utilities; has been associated with asthma, rashes and fainting
Coliform bacteria: Not harmful in themselves, they may indicate the presence of dangerous microbes such as Cryptosporidium, which can be life-threatening to people with weak immune systems.
Cysts: microorganisms including Cryptosporidium and Giardia that are carried by animal and human waste and linked to gastrointestinal illness. Crypto can be life-threatening for those with weakened immune systems.
E.coli: a type of fecal coliform bacteria that can cause gastrointestinal illness; about 2 to 7 percent of E.coli of infections lead to kidney failure.
Lead: a brain-damaging and neurotoxic heavy metal that can enter water via decaying pipes and taps; "Every homeowner, especially if they have children under six, should have their water tested for lead," warns Erik Olson, a senior attorney specializing in drinking water at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Lindane: used as an insecticide and in prescription medications for head and body lice; a known hormone disruptor
Mercury: a brain-damaging heavy metal that can also cause kidney damage
Misc. heavy metals: Carcinogenic chromium can also cause upset stomach, ulcers, kidney and liver damage and death. Short term exposure to selenium, cadmium and copper can nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and long term exposure to cadmium and copper can cause kidney disease.
MTBE: The gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) leaks into groundwater from underground fuel storage, spills and storm-water runoff and is a possible carcinogen. MTBE has been banned in many but not all states.
Nitrates: come from animal waste on cattle farms, on feedlots and in dairies, and can cause "blue-baby syndrome," which prevents blood from holding oxygen.
Perchlorate: contaminant derived from rocket fuel; causes thyroid damage and is a possible carcinogen
Perchloroethylene (PERC)/tetrachloroethylene: PERC, also commonly listed as tetrachloroethylene, is the main solvent used in most dry-cleaning processes. It is a known carcinogen that can cause neurological, kidney and liver effects, and has been associated with reproductive effects such as spontaneous abortion.
Simazine: a common pesticide; long-term exposure may lead to liver and kidney damage
Trihalomethanes (THMs): Chemicals formed when chlorine used to disinfect water reacts with organic matter, such as animal waste, treated sewage or leaves and soil. They can increase the risk of cancer and may damage the liver, kidneys and nervous system, and increase rates of miscarriage and birth defects.
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS): inorganic salts, such as calcium, sodium and sulfates, and small amounts of organic matter that are dissolved in water; the concentration of TDS in water is not a health hazard but can cause water to be corrosive or salty in taste and may lead to mineral build-up.
Toxaphene: a now-banned insecticide that breaks down slowly in the environment and is an EPA-classified probable carcinogen; high level exposure could damage the lungs, nervous system and kidneys.
VOCs: Including benzene, which can cause cancer and birth defects and toluene, which can cause nausea, weakness, confusion and hearing and vision loss.
Annual Filter Cost
The dollar amount refers to the cost of replacing filters for one year.
Shopping and Usage Tips
To ensure that the filter you buy is effective, find out which contaminants are specific to your water supply before you start shopping.
If you draw from a municipal supply, obtain a copy of your water quality report. Water utilities are required to send these to customers by July 1st of each year. If you have not received a copy, request it from your local supplier or the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline (800-426-4791), or you can view it online at www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.
If your water source is a private well, check with your local health department to find out which contaminants are common where you live. The EPA recommends that you have it tested annually by a state-certified lab for nitrate and coliform bacteria, total dissolved solids and pH levels. Also, test for radon if that's a problem in your area (call 800-SOS-RADON to see if it's an issue) and for pesticides, if you live near a farm where crops are sprayed frequently. National Testing Labs can test for 95 contaminants, including 20 pesticides, by mail (www.ntllabs.com, 800-458-3330). For more information, call the Water Systems Council hotline (www.wellcarehotline.org, 888-395-1033).
Check for lead in your building's pipes. The NSF certifies reverse osmosis systems, carbon filters and distillers for the removal of lead, a neurotoxic heavy metal that gets into water as pipes decay. It's not present in all pipes, so find out if it's a problem before spending money on a costly filter. You can get the name of a state-certified laboratory from www.epa.gov/safewater/labs/
Usage Tips
Change the filter on time to ensure that water is being cleared of contaminants. If need be, mark a reminder on your calendar.
Continue to monitor your water reports or test your well water for contamination, especially in the event of unexplained illnesses, a chemical or fuel spill nearby, or if there is a change in water taste, odor, color or clarity.
Weigh in with your water utility and local environmental groups to urge better protection against industrial and agricultural contamination of your city's water source. Campaign to limit development around reservoir watersheds, and buy organic food to support farming methods that prevent pesticides from entering water. The cleaner your watershed, the less you have to rely on filters.
Product Comparisons
While America's drinking water supplies are tightly regulated and are among the healthiest in the world, health-threatening contaminants may occasionally enter drinking water from old pipes, wells or municipal water treatment disruptions. The filters below have been independently certified to remove major contaminants, so there are no worries about getting those requisite eight glasses of water a day.
Wondering what these table headings mean? They're the criteria we used to choose and evaluate the products in the chart below. Learn more about their importance in What To Look For.
Name Type Filtration Method Contaminants Removed Annual Filter Cost MSRP Purchasing Information Reader Rating
Shaklee Perfect Pitcher Carafe Carbon 4 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor $90 $17 www.shaklee.com, 925-924-2000
Avg. Rating
Pur 2 Stage 7 Cup Oval Pitcher CR6000 Carafe Carbon 19 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, 2-4D, atrazine, VOCs, cadmium, copper, cysts, lindane, mercury, MTBE, simazene,tetrachloroethylene, toxaphene, TTHM $82 $30 www.purwaterfilter.com, 800-787-5463
Avg. Rating
Brita Super Saver Carafe Carbon 8 including chlorine, taste, odor, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead*, benzene* $54 $22.99 www.brita.com, 800-24-BRITA
Avg. Rating
Pur Horizontal FM 9400 Faucet Mount Carbon 30 including chlorine, particulates, tastes and odor, 2,4-D, atrazine, VOCs, cysts, lead, lindane, MTBE, mercury, simazene, TTHM, tetrachloroethylene, toxaphene $80 $40 www.purwaterfilter.com, 800-787-5463
Avg. Rating
GE Smartwater GXFM03C Faucet Mount Carbon 8 including atrazine, cysts, lead, lindane, mercury, turbidity, chlorine*, particulates* $64 $20 www.geappliances.com, 800-626-2005
Avg. Rating
Brita Disposable CKFF-100 Faucet Mount Carbon 13 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, atrazine, benzene, cysts, lead, mercury, toxaphene $0 $40 www.brita.com, 800-24-BRITA
Avg. Rating
Shaklee Best Water MTS2000 Counter Top Carbon 8 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, VOCs $105 $255 www.shaklee.com, 925-924-2000
Avg. Rating
Culligan CT-2 Counter Top Carbon 9 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, mercury $75 $50 www.culligan.com, 800-CULLIGAN
Avg. Rating
Sylvan Source Automatic Fill Distillation System M-600 Counter Top Distiller 10 including arsenic, cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, mercury, selenium, TDS $0 $38 www.sylvansource.com, 800-640-0469
Avg. Rating
Aqua Pure by Cuno AP-DWS1000 Under Counter Carbon 10 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, MTBE, VOCs, pesticides* $180 $350 www.cuno.com, 800-22-7880
Avg. Rating
GE Smartwater GXSV65F Under Counter Carbon 13 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, atrazine, cysts, lead, lindane, mercury, VOCs, rust* $80 $150 www.geappliances.com, 800-626-2005
Avg. Rating
Everpure H-300 Under Counter Carbon 14 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead, VOCs, chloramine*, mold and algae*, oxidised iron*, manganese sulfides* $95 $300 www.everpure.com
Avg. Rating
Doulton Ultracarb IP200UC Under Counter Ceramic/carbon 7 including chlorine, particulates, taste and odor, cysts, lead est. $40 $319 www.doultonusa.com, 888-664-3336
Avg. Rating
Kenmore Elite 38556 Under Counter Reverse Osmosis 13 including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, cysts, lead, nitrates, selenium, TDS $80 $300 www.kenmore.com, 800-349-4358
Avg. Rating
Culligan Aqua-Cleer Good Water Machine AC-30 Under Counter Reverse Osmosis 10 including arsenic, cadmium, copper, cysts, fluoride, chromium, lead, radium, selenium, TDS $50 $900 www.culligan.com, 800-CULLIGAN
Avg. Rating
Whirlpool WHCF-DWHV Whole House Carbon particulates $24 $35 www.whirlpool.com, 866-698-2538
Avg. Rating
TrojanUVMax Pro 20 Whole House UV 5 including E.coli, giardia, cryptosporidium $0 est. $1,600 www.trojanuvmax.com, 888-220-6118
Avg. Rating
*Manufacturer claims the filter removes this contaminant, although the filter has not been certified by NSF to do so.
The Backstory
Many of us rely on our state and local officials to ensure that the water coming out of our taps is clean and safe. They test water quarterly for synthetic organic chemicals and hundreds of times a month for bacteria, and municipal testing is actually more stringent than that required for bottled water, which is only tested annually. Nevertheless, a few localized problems with municipal supplies cast doubt on the entire nation's, leading consumers to opt for bottled water. Popular also because it's more convenient and may taste better, bottled water still costs 1,000 times more per gallon than tap, isn't as closely regulated and contributes to a host of environmental hazards.
Environmental Issues
Bottled water consumes 1.5 million barrels of oil annually in the production of convenient, disposable, petroleum-based plastics. Even though most plastic water bottles are recyclable, they're usually thrown out. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that each day, more than 60 million plastic bottles are incinerated or tossed in landfills.
Meanwhile, the contents of those bottles may be no different than the water coming out of your tap. As much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually drawn from municipal water supplies. PepsiCo has recently admitted as much by labeling it's Aquafina as coming from "a public water source" and then shipped cross-country, spewing greenhouse gases and burning more non-renewable oil in the process.
Water filters themselves create solid waste in the form of disposed plastic cartridges, which add to landfill problems. Unfortunately, water filters aren't recyclable and manufacturers currently don't have take-back programs designed to keep used water filters out of landfills.
Personal Health
People often turn to bottles because of threats to municipal supplies, the greatest of which is development, whether agricultural or urban, around reservoirs. Urban development seals green spaces under impervious roadways and parking lots, resulting in increased pollution from topsoil, lawn pesticides and fertilizers, animal and human waste (especially if septic systems fail), roadway oil, soot, landfill run-off and salt. Additionally, agricultural run-off carries pesticides into water supplies. A February 2007 U.S. Geological Survey survey of 51 "hydrological systems" found that one or more pesticides have been detected in 97 percent of U.S. streams in urban and farming areas, and five percent of shallow wells that provide drinking water in urban areas have pesticide concentrations above EPA human-health benchmarks.
Aside from industrial and agricultural pollution, chemicals not removed from wastewater treatment plants can infiltrate water supplies as well. A May 2002 USGS study of the nation's stream water discovered chemicals found in drugs, detergents, disinfectants, insect repellents, plastics and personal care products, including 33 suspected hormone disruptors. Non-prescription drugs were detected more frequently than almost all other organic wastewater contaminants, and those drugs have been detected in drinking-water supplies in Montana and New Jersey.
The EPA reported in 1998 that 6 percent of the country's water systems had violated health standards for at least one of 90 regulated contaminants that year. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an estimated seven million Americans are made sick annually by contaminated tap water; in some rare cases, this results in death. One study published in the 2006 Journal of Water and Health found that, between 1991 and 2002, 4,400 people were hospitalized and 50 died from exposure to pathogens such as Cryptosporidium and E.coli in tap water.
Related Articles
From the Green Guide:
"Lead, Straight From the Tap," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/ask/
"American Waters: What Hurts, What Helps," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/121/
"Three Simple Steps to Clean, Safe Drinking Water," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/101/
"Message in the Bottle: Drink Tap," www.thegreenguide.com/doc/101/
From Outside Sources:
Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water: www.safe-drinking-water.org, 202-895-0432 x135
Clean Water Lead Testing Inc. provides lead testing for $24: www.leadtesting.org, 828-251-6800
EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline: www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.
National Drinking Water Clearinghouse: www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/ndwc_
National Testing Labs: www.ntlabs.com, 800-458-3330
National Sanitation Foundation: www.nsf.org, 800-673-6275
Radon Hotline: 800-SOS-RADON
Water Systems Council: www.wellcarehotline.org, 888-395-1033
"Making Sense out of Drinking Water 'Right to Know' Reports." www.safe-drinking-water.org/
New York City residents can order free lead tests through the city's Department of Environmental Protection, 311.
Olson, Erik D. "Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" Natural Resources Defense Council. 1999. www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/
"Protecting Groundwater from Pesticides: A Clean Water Action Guide." Friends of the Earth. www.foe.org/safefood/
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