Thursday, December 17, 2009

Another NYT Scare Article On Water Quality

The New York Times continues its assault on drinking water in the US. It again claims that much of the country is drinking unsafe levels of chemicals and contaminants, many of which exceed safe health levels, even if they are below legal limits.

Of course, the Times ignores the costs of trying to even comply with these claimed levels or even attempting a cost benefit analysis that would show the folly of trying to lower the allowable limits on dozens of chemicals, many of which are naturally occurring. The law of diminishing returns also plays a role given the levels of some of the chemicals involved.

In Fair Lawn, we've got pretty clean water, and many of the chemicals in the water are actually by-products of the chlorination process to kill bacteria and other organisms. There is also naturally occurring incidences of certain radioelements, such as Radium, which are omnipresent in drinking water taken from certain geological formations (like aquifers located in granite formations). None are above the legal limits, and six are above what is claimed to be a healthy level.

Actually, looking at the chart, only four are above. One of the six items is actually a combination of two items that are naturally occurring in the region (radium 226/228).

Another item, uranium, is below the health limit in all the tests checked, and yet the Times counts it as being above the healthy level. The legal limit is 30 ppb and the health limit is 5 ppb. While all tests in Fair Lawn showed the presence of uranium, the maximum (and average) observed was 2 ppb. Neighboring Ridgewood has a similar water quality, and here too the observed uranium count was an average (and maximum) of 2 ppb, and yet lumped in with the chemicals above health guidelines.

Elevated presence of some of these chemicals could lead to a higher risk of certain diseases, including bladder cancer (even though the typical incidence is about 71,000 new cases a year and 14,000 deaths per year - out of a population of 350 million).

It would cost tens of billions of dollars annually to filter out these chemicals and contaminants, which municipalities simply can't afford. After all, there are thousands of municipalities failing to adhere to the current standards, so lowering allowable limits on existing chemicals or adding additional contaminants to those being tested will only add to the burden.

Stories like this get readers to thinking whether their tap water is safe. The Times claims that while the Safe Water Drinking Act hasn't been updated in years and many water systems are technically in compliance with the Federal Law, science suggests that they are increasing risks of illnesses due to concentrations of various chemicals and contaminants.

So, readers then decide to go and buy bottled water and/or buying home filter systems instead of trusting the quality of tap water, and which leads to still more pollution in the form of plastics that have to be created/recycled, and the energy costs related to the bottling of that water.

And that's assuming the Times is being honest with its methodologies, which I'm not sure of after seeing the issues with the uranium reporting above. Nevada, which was home to the overwhelming majority of nuclear weapons tests, has some interesting results. Uranium was found in various samples of the Las Vegas Valley water, with an average of 4.25 ppb and a maximum of 5.1 ppb. The health limit is 5 ppb, so only one test produced a higher than health guidelines outcome; yet the Times lumped that in with other chemicals as being within legal limits but not health guidelines.

Carson City correctly lists uranium as violating health and legal limits as samples exceeded both. The Times properly categorizes Carson City, but not the other cities checked.

That's just fishy, and bears further examination.

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