New Low-Cost Filter Could Bring Water to Millions
16 Mar 2009
An inexpensive new type of filter being developed in the U.S. has the potential to bring drinkable water to millions — particularly in developing countries.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte think they’ve hit upon a simple and cheap way to filter drinking water in underdeveloped nations.
The process — which utilizes sand, a short section of PVC pipe, and common purification chemicals — can be produced onsite by minimally trained workers. Dr. James Amburgey says he hopes the low-tech solution will make fresh water available to millions who are now without safe drinking sources.
Amburgey has been experimenting with ways to add low-cost ferric chloride and a pH buffer to a traditional sand filter. The chemicals force contaminants such as Cryptosporidium oocysts to stick to the sand. The Cryptosporidium’s tiny 5 micron diameter would otherwise allow it to pass through the comparatively porous filtration layer.
The UNC method has the additional advantage of speed. The chemical pretreatment yields filtration rates 30 to 50 times faster than more expensive methods, and can also be adapted to local varieties of sand and crushed rock.
A UNESCO report released today at the start of an international water conference in Istanbul defines fresh water access as one of the world’s most pressing health issues. In Africa, half a billion people lack access to a reliable source of safe drinking water. Some 5,000 children die each day from diseases directly related to unsanitary water.
In prototype testing at UNC Charlotte labs, the new filter design removed 99 percent of Cryptosporidium-sized particles in water sampled from local creeks and rivers.
Showing posts with label technology: water filters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology: water filters. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2009
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.
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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