Progressive Wednesday

The Grandeur of Earth Day: Water

April 11th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

Water:

It turns out, our tap water’s in a wee bit of trouble. According to data gathered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and analyzed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, as many as “56 million people [drink] water with arsenic at unsafe levels.” Those figures only represent the 25 states included in the EPA study. And, of course, that’s just arsenic.

What else is floating around in my cup of homemade sweetened iced tea?

Chlorine is added to most tap water to kill bacteria, but it also morphs into trihalomethanes, which “have been linked to a wide range of human health maladies ranging from asthma and eczema to bladder cancer and heart disease, [as well as] higher miscarriage and birth defects rates.”

Then there’s good old-fashioned fluoride. According to a peer-reviewed study conducted by Harvard, boys who drink fluoridated tap water are five times more likely to get a rare form of bone cancer.

Of course, and unfortunately, there’s more. A study conducted by the Environmental Working Group “of tap water tests from 1998 through 2003 for more than 39,000 communities nationwide shows that 260 pollutants were detected in the nation’s drinking water.” That might not be a problem if the levels were limbo-stick low. But, of course, there’s a “but.” But the study concluded that the population exposed to levels of contaminants over the health-based limits totals (ugly sounding drum roll please…) 195,275,315. Let’s put that into words: one hundred ninety-five million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand, three hundred and fifteen. That’s approximately 65% of the country, my people.

Oh, and by the way, some tap water even contains gasoline and rocket fuel. Yes, you read that right. Rocket fuel.

Okay, okay, okay. Enough doom and enough gloom. What’s a progressive like yourself to do? Well, to be honest, after shaking off the initial heebies and jeebies, we were stumped for quite a while because the problem is three-fold:

1. The federal government doesn’t properly enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act.
2. The federal government doesn’t have enforceable safety limits for 141 contaminants found in our drinking water.
3. Many, if not most, local water suppliers suck… hard.

So, this Wednesday do we work from the top down or the bottom up? We’re going to choose the latter. Below you’ll find a letter we recommend sending to your city or town council representatives, and your state senators and representatives.

Dear [Whomever]:

I’ve recently learned about studies conducted by the EPA and the Environmental Working Group that suggests most tap water contains unhealthy levels of contaminants. According to the EPA study, at least 56 million Americans drink and bath their children in water with unsafe levels of arsenic. According to the EWG, over 190 million of us drink water containing levels of contaminants over the health-based limits totals. The problem seems compounded because the EPA doesn’t have enforceable safety limits for 141 contaminants found in our drinking water.

All this has me deeply troubled both for myself and my family, but also for those who live both in my area and across the country.

I’m writing to ask you to work toward providing my area with a water treatment facility that runs a reverse-osmosis filtration or a distillation of water. Both of these methods would remove most of the aforementioned contaminants without the need for other chemicals such as chlorine, which has been linked to raised levels of bone cancer in boys.

I would appreciate a response as soon as possible regarding the status of my water treatment facility, and what your office is doing to remedy this growing problem.

Sincerely,

[You]

What can you do in the meantime? You could hope you’re not one of the 195 million, but we wouldn’t recommend it. There’s a lot of debate about filtration systems and distillation of water because these methods remove minerals in water that are good for us. Personally, we lean toward the contaminate-free agua over the mineral-free version. So, you can buy a home filtration system recommended by NSF International, The Public Health and Safety Company, a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization. By clicking this sentence, you’ll be taken to the NSF’s page regarding home water treatments.

As suggested by NFS International, we’d also recommend contacting your municipal water supplier and request a free copy of their Annual Water Quality Report (or Consumer Confidence Report). Once you have this in your hot little hands, you can “contact your local or state public health department, personal physician, or the EPA’s safe drinking water hotline at 1-800-426-4791 for further information on the health effects and potential sources of the various contaminants found in drinking water supplies.”