Why some cities still aren’t taking lead poisoning seriously.

-Arthur Delaney, Tyler Tynesa and Robert Baldwin III, originally posted on April 4, 2016

by Susan Montoya Bryan, originally posted on April 4, 2016

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The tribal community of San Ildefonso Pueblo sits in the shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s premier laboratories and the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

The tribe is on the front lines of a battle to rein in contamination left behind by decades of bomb-making and nuclear research.

Pueblo Gov. James Mountain says he’s encouraged that New Mexico regulators, under a revamped cleanup proposal, have identified as a priority a plume of chromium contamination at the tribe’s border with the lab.

San Ildefonso Pueblo, in northern New Mexico’s high desert, has a tribal enrollment of about 750. Its members are known for their artistry, creating jewelry, paintings, traditional black-on-black pottery and other works.

Groundwater sampling shows increasing chromium concentrations at the edges of the plume, indicating it’s migrating through an area considered sacred by the tribe and closer to the Rio Grande, which provides drinking water to communities throughout the region.

The plume has stretched about 1 mile into the upper part of the regional aquifer, and is about a half-mile wide and 100 feet thick.

It’s about a half-mile from the closest drinking water well.

“Without a doubt, it definitely raises concerns,” Mountain said.

The contamination was first detected more than a decade ago, and officials traced it to potassium dichromate used to prevent corrosion inside cooling towers at Los Alamos lab’s power plant. As part of regular maintenance from 1956 to 1972, the chemicals were discharged into canyons below.

The lab has spent years trying to better understand the plume to ensure actions taken to address the contamination don’t make matters worse.

Federal officials last fall proposed using a combination of extraction and injection wells to keep the plume from making it to tribal land. The first of the injection wells were drilled in March.

Under the draft cleanup proposal unveiled by the state, a series of reports would be required, and initial pumping and treatment could begin next fiscal year.

Officials would then have to develop a final corrective action plan. Implementation could take four to five years.

The U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is asking for $189 million for work at the lab next fiscal year. That would pay for handling radioactive waste stored at the lab, as well as completing the chromium investigation.

Ryan Flynn, head of the New Mexico Environment Department, has said the amount the federal government needs to funnel to contamination at Los Alamos should be closer to $255 million a year. He said the potential effect of chromium on the groundwater supply is just one reason the project is a priority.

“The essence is groundwater is precious in New Mexico so we take threats to groundwater very seriously,” he said. “We certainly think there’s an elevated risk associated with any contamination to groundwater.”

The current plan calls for extracting up to 230 million gallons a year over several years, treating that water so it meets health standards and injecting it back into the aquifer or spreading it in select areas using water trucks or irrigation systems.

All the work would be done on lab property, which boasts dozens of archaeological sites — from dwellings carved into the canyon walls to a large pueblo that once had 100-plus rooms, a plaza and kiva.

The area also is home to flaked stone tools, ceramic shards and even a wagon road that dates back to the homestead period of the 1800s.

“It’s a very important area to the pueblo,” Mountain said. “And it’s not just on the parameters of physical inhabitation. There’s an effect on the pueblo’s health and welfare, on our mental well-being, our spiritual well-being.”

Independent consultants present Ajax conclusions at public forum

-originally posted on April 4, 2016

An expert in contaminant hydrology says the Peterson Creek aquifer should be declared contaminated if the Ajax Mine proceeds.

Kevin Morin, whose consulting firm Minesite Drainage Assessment Group was commissioned by the Sierra Club of B.C. to review KGHM’s mine application, said the document greatly underestimates the flow of contaminated groundwater.

“The volume of contaminated water flowing from the (proposed) east mine rock storage facility into the groundwater will be at least 16 times higher than modelled,” according to Morin’s report. He believes the contaminated water would flow into the Peterson Creek aquifer.

Morin is one of three experts who will present their findings Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., at a public forum at TRU’s Alumni Theatre. A question and answer session will follow.

“As a contamination hydrogeologist with a PhD in this field, I strongly recommend to people using water from the Peterson Creek aquifer to have the well water tested (1) very frequently and (2) in perpetuity, now and in the future if the mine is built. Or, to be more cautious, to avoid using the aquifer water,” Morin notes in his report.

He concludes that “likely impacts, damage and harm to human health and environmental quality are significantly underestimated in the Ajax EIS.”

Anna Simeon, a spokeswoman for Sierra Club, said Morin’s conclusion —  that the intentional contamination of the Peterson Creek Aquifer fails to meet British Columbia’s Water Sustainability Act and the Ground Water Protection Regulation — is disturbing and unacceptable.

A separate report prepared by Morin’s consultancy for Kamloops Area Preservation Association reached conclusions not unlike those of SLR Consulting. Working as the City’s independent consultant, SLR identified significant gaps in its preliminary review of the KGHM environmental assessment.

Morin found that several laboratory methods used by the proponent’s consultants to determine composition and amounts of toxic substances in the mine’s ore and waste rock may underestimate the levels of these substances being emitted into air and water.

The report looked specifically at analytical techniques for chemical elements and concluded, for example, “If the amount of a parameter such as copper is not accurately estimated, then the impact to the surrounding environment and human health cannot be estimated.”

This lack of accurate baseline data led. Morin to be critical of KGHM’s refusal to disclose its assay data and how this data was derived.

“So what are the levels of metals and other potentially toxic elements in Ajax rock, tailings and overburden? We do not know accurately and the company will not tell us. The company claims the environmental analyses in the EIS tell us, but they are wrong.”

“We have been requesting to the government assessment agencies, without success, for four years that KGHM release not only all of their assay data, but how these assays were done,” said John Schleiermacher, KAPA spokesman. “The government assessment agencies must now determine whether the scientific data presented by KGHM is so inaccurate that it invalidates all of their water, air and health studies,” he said.

“KGHM promises us zero-harm and former Environment Minister Terry Lake promised us a rigorous environmental assessment,” Schleiermacher said. “Instead, we have report after report exposing more and more fundamental scientific flaws in KGHM’s Application, to the point that their commitments to zero-harm and the precautionary principle sounds more like a slick sales slogan than sound, credible science.”

Morin will be presenting the finding in the two reports at a public forum on the Ajax mine at the TRU ClockTower building, 7:30 p.m., April 6. Douw Steyn, UBC professor emeritus of atmospheric science, will present his review of air quality modelling, and Kent Watson, a soils specialist will look at the mine’s impacts on soil.

Steyn was hired by Kamloops Moms for Clean Air.

“The people of Kamloops, and especially people in the community with young children and aging parents, deserve to hear as many expert reports as they can regarding any industrial activity that could potentially contribute further burden to the current air pollution load in Kamloops,” said Gina Morris, a member of the group.

DES asked company to fully reimburse state for all costs incurred to date

-originally posted on April 4, 2016

MERRIMACK, N.H – State officials are asking Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics to provide bottled water to people affected by perfluorooctanoic acid contamination.

Meanwhile, chemical industry’s own research indicates that “safer substitutes” are also potentially hazardous

by Sharon Kelly, originally posted on April 4, 2016

New information emerged last month about toxic contamination from chemicals used to manufacture Teflon pots and pans and many other consumer, military, and industrial products. Water tests in several states have revealed a growing number of sites where the groundwater is polluted by the most well studied of these chemicals — C8 or PFOA — prompting calls from a group of state governors for federal action.

Meanwhile there are new indications that another perfluorinated chemical (PFC), heavily promoted by chemical manufacturers as a safer substitute for C8, is also toxic and just as persistent in the environment as C8, raising questions about the adequacy of a voluntary C8 phase-out agreement promoted for the past decade by the Environmental Protection Agency.

First created in a lab in 1947, C8 has managed to spread extraordinarily far and wide. Built from one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry, the tie between carbon and fluorine atoms, the chemical that acts as a surfactant was, until recently, used not just in Teflon cookware, but in hundreds of other consumer products including fast food wrappers, waterproof clothing, electrical cables, and pizza boxes.

As with many other PFCs, C8 is impervious to breaking down or biodegrading. It can also accumulate in the human body over time and has been linked to at least six serious health conditions, including kidney cancer, ulcerative colitis, and thyroid diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the chemical can now be found in trace amounts in the blood of roughly 98 percent of Americans.

Ongoing legal battles surrounding C8 contamination by a former DuPont plant in West Virginia have drawn renewed attention to the risks associated with the chemical. (Read “Teflon’s Toxic Legacy,” our in-depth report on how DuPont hid information that C8 was making people sick.) And now this toxic chemical is being found at potentially hazardous levels in places ranging from small New Hampshire towns to the lead-laced waters of Flint, Michigan.

In New York’s Hoosick Falls, where in 2014 local authorities refused to conduct tests until one resident provided them with lab results from his own water showing high levels of C8, a Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant was recently declared a Superfund site.

“Every time I think about it, I just feel like crying,” Virginia Barber of North Bennington, VT, where over 100 water wells have tested positive for C8 contamination, told The New York Times. Barber now relies on bottled water.

In 2012, EPA added C8 and five other PFCs to its list of unregulated contaminants that public water systems should test for under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Testing between 2013 and 2015 showed over seven million people in 27 states had trace amounts of C8 in their tap water, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis published last month.

So, is all of that water unsafe to drink? Depends on whom you ask.

The levels of C8 in municipal water supplies were all below 400 parts per trillion, concentrations that the EPA, in a 2009 provisional health advisory, suggests should be safe if you were drinking that water for just a few weeks. (The agency has yet to issue any binding regulations capping C8 levels in public water supplies). Officials in Vermont, however, say that tap water should contain less than 20 parts per trillion of C8, a threshold that takes the impacts on infants and small children into account. The levels of C8 in the tap water were higher than that in every one of the places that tested positive for the chemical.

But even as authorities continue to realize how far C8 has spread, public health experts are calling attention to dozens of related, unregulated chemicals that may pose similar threats but about which the public knows very little.

Under a federally-backed agreement, American chemical manufacturers agreed to phase out their use of C8 and a handful of related chemicals by the end of 2015. But while the eight C8 manufacturers — some of the largest chemical makers in the US — that participated in the voluntary agreement say they stopped using C8 at the end of 2015, environmental groups warn that the substitutes they’ve adopted are under-studied and likely to be dangerous as well.

DuPont, for instance, introduced one such substitute, called GenX, in 2010, describing it as a chemical “technology” that “enables the company to make high-performance fluoropolymers without the use of PFOA.”

But as with the case of C8, DuPont’s own research, starting 50 years ago, showed troubling indications that GenX  may be little better for human health or the environment than C8, despite being heavily promoted as a safer substitute. According to research reported to the EPA between 2006 and 2013 and newly obtained by The Intercept via open records requests, DuPont had evidence as early as 1963 that GenX might pose a “substantial risk of injury to health or the environment since.

In 2005, the EPA had announced that DuPont agreed to pay the largest civil administrative penalty in the agency’s history — over $16.25 million in penalties and research funding — because DuPont had concealed evidence of C8’s toxic effects on people and animals. The GenX filings — required under the same provision of the Toxic Substances Control Act that DuPont stood accused of breaking — revealed troubling signs that animals exposed to GenX became ill, developing liver and kidney problems, cancer, reproductive problems, and impacted immune systems.

Despite this evidence, the EPA has yet to require DuPont or its spin off company, Chemours, to conduct further testing of GenX. In part, this is because the Toxic Substances Control Act provides little latitude for the EPA to ban or restrict chemicals even when health risks are discovered. It is not uncommon for reports like these to prompt no action by the EPA.  The agency has only ever required companies to conduct further study of a couple hundred chemicals out of over 85,000 chemicals allowed on the market.

“A lot of them do just get filed away,” Vincent Cogliano, director of the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, told The Intercept, in reference to the studies that that the industry turns in to the agency.

DuPont’s findings on GenX were based on research on lab animals, not humans. But if the research proves relevant for humans, it could have profound the implications for the entire chemicals industry.

Here’s the thing: GenX is what’s called a “short-chain PFC,” unlike C8 which is a “long-chain PFC. As awareness of the risks associated with C8 rose, industry groups pushed successfully for regulators to approach short- and long-chain PFCs differently, arguing that because the short-chain versions exit the human body faster, they should be considered safer substitutes for the long-chain versions.

These short-chain PFCs are used in a variety of goods including water-repellant clothing and outdoor gear, in fire-fighting foam used by the military, and in fast food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags.

The rise of GenX and other short-chain PFCs highlights how, under current chemical laws, steps to protect the public against one harmful chemical may inadvertently promote the proliferation of dozens of others that prove to be similarly or even potentially more dangerous.

“The painfully slow process of reducing the public’s exposures to PFCs reflects one of the biggest flaws of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act – that the EPA assesses health hazards chemical by chemical, rather than as a family,” Environmental Working Group wrote last year.

Current federal laws allow chemicals like GenX to spread even when there are signs that they might be toxic and dangerous. “With decades of experience, not just with C8, that chemicals have these negative health effects, our law still says you can introduce these new chemicals into the marketplace without testing,” Bill Walker, an investigator with EWG, told Earth Island Journal.

And GenX may be only the tip of the iceberg. EWG’s review of similar research filings to the EPA by chemical companies on more than 100 PFCs found several reports of worrisome animal testing results.

But the publicly available information on these substitutes often lacks crucial information. “We found that roughly 85 percent did not even tell you the name that a chemical was marketed under,” Walker said. “Something like 55 percent didn’t even disclose the name of the company in the public record that was available.”

Concern about the continued unregulated expansion of fluorinated chemicals like GenX prompted more than 200 scientists to sign a warning called The Madrid Statement last year.

“While some shorter-chain fluorinated alternatives seem to be less bioaccumulative, they are still as environmentally persistent as long-chain substances or have persistent degradation products,” the group of scientists wrote in a piece published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives. “In addition, because some of the shorter-chain [PFCs] are less effective, larger quantities may be needed to provide the same performance.”

Meanwhile, state officials are turning to the federal government, calling for guidance on how to understand the hazards of PFCs and how best to respond when water pollution is discovered.

“It is clear that [C8] contamination is not a state problem or a regional problem,” the governors of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire wrote in a March letter addressed to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, “it’s a national problem that requires federal guidelines and a consistent, science-based approach.”

by Rocky Barker, originally posted on April 3, 2016

originally posted on April 3, 2016

Residents in the rural southern Nevada town of Goodsprings have been drinking lead-contaminated water at their community center.

Testing on the water was done in September and confirmed no later than February, but it was not until a recent report by the RGJ’s Jason Hidalgo that anyone decided to test the students at the adjacent school for lead exposure.

The data was obtained by the RGJ through a public records request to the state of Nevada. This is just the latest such request to spur government officials into action. Another recent example was RGJ reporter Anjeanette Damon’s look into squalid conditions at Reno-Sparks assisted living homes that prompted the state to immediately inspect group homes for the mentally ill.

While no public water systems in Washoe County were found to have lead problems, other contaminants came up.

• The Mount Rose Bowl Homeowners Association had noncompliant levels of copper.

• The Silver Knolls Mutual Water Co. had noncompliant levels of arsenic.

• And the Rosemont Water Co. had noncompliant levels of uranium.

Additional scrutiny on these systems — and perhaps of the people who have used water there — is warranted. The Washoe County Health District should weigh in on how much scrutiny.

Even those who had no contact with those public water systems should pay attention

The Truckee Meadows Water Authority’s system serving most Reno-Sparks residents was EPA compliant, but the safety examinations looked only at water in public pipes. Once that water goes into a private home, it can become contaminated. For example, buildings constructed before 1989 may have lead solder on pipes.

Contaminants can reach excessive levels when water has been sitting in pipes for extended periods. Despite drought concerns, experts recommend letting water run for a while first thing in the morning or after getting back from vacation, especially if living in an older home.

Also, hundreds of Washoe County residents live on properties with private wells, which were not covered in the testing. They should seriously consider doing their own.

A number of local companies do water analysis, and tests that people can conduct themselves are available online and at home improvement stores.

In Goodsprings, 38 miles south of Las Vegas, the Southern Nevada Health District is offering to test the blood of anyone who drank the community center’s water. For those who test positive for lead, it will do a free analysis of water in their homes.

Even more widespread testing may be necessary if examination shows the community center’s old pipes are not the sole source of lead. That region has a history of lead mining, and it would not be a surprise if private wells — the area’s main source of water — also have elevated lead levels.

The RGJ’s joint investigation with the USA Today Network of water quality revealed 23 non-compliant water systems in Nevada. The larger water systems did not show contamination problems. This is good news.

But local health agencies in areas where problems were discovered — such as Marigold Mine Potable Water System in Humboldt County and the Fort Churchill Power Plant in Lyon County, both of which had too much lead — should step up to address concerns.

Nevadans near noncompliant water systems deserve more information to help them understand if they should have their blood tested or if their home wells are at a higher risk for contaminants.

by Lucas Rodgers, originally posted on April 2, 2016

The water crisis in Flint, Mich., made national and international headlines when high concentrations of lead were found in the city’s water system, but additional reporting has revealed that every state in America has a problem with lead exposure in public tap water to some degree.

Pennsylvania is around the top of the list of states found to have a high number of public water systems with excessive levels of lead, according to a recent report by USA Today.

The report found that in the past few years, Pennsylvania had more instances of high lead content in the water systems of schools and day cares than any other state.

USA Today analyzed data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Drinking Water Information System of water tests conducted from 2012 through 2015, and found 37 instances in this time period of water supplied to schools and day cares in Pennsylvania containing high levels of lead.

According to the EPA’s drinking water requirements for states and public water systems, lead exposure in water is considered to be at an “action level” if the lead content exceeds 15 parts per billion (ppb).

USA Today found that Pennsylvania was second only to Texas in terms of the overall number of exceedances for public water systems in the state. Texas was found to have 183 exceedances, and Pennsylvania was found to have 157 exceedances.

Other states near the top of the list are New York, California and New Jersey. By comparison, Michigan is right around the middle of the list, with 42 exceedances, even though Flint has become infamous for having lead in its public water system. Hawaii, Kentucky and South Dakota are at the bottom of the list, with only one instance of a lead exceedance in each of those states.

A high concentration of lead in a water system does not necessarily mean that the initial water source is contaminated, but the water can leach lead from a building’s pipes.

Parents can’t always be assured that lead isn’t seeping into a school’s water system from the building’s solder or fixtures either, since the EPA estimates that around 90,000 schools and half a million day cares aren’t regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act because they depend on other water sources, such as municipal utilities, that are expected to test their own water, according to USA Today.

In Pennsylvania, Lancaster County was found to have the highest number of lead exceedances in the state, with 17 water systems containing a concentration of lead higher than 15 ppb; some of these systems exceeded that limit in multiple tests, according to USA Today.

Chester County had the second highest number of lead exceedances, with 13 water systems found to have a concentration of lead higher than 15 ppb, according to the report.

Other counties in the greater Philadelphia area were reported to have much lower numbers of lead exceedances: Berks County had five; Bucks County had seven; Delaware County had one; Montgomery County had two; and Philadelphia County had none, according to USA Today.

Water systems in Chester County that were reported to have lead exceedances include Pikeland Village Square shopping center; Maplewood mobile home park; Taylors mobile home park; Lazy Acres mobile home park; Echo Valley mobile home park; Cochranville mobile home park; Spring Run Estates water treatment plant; Montessori school; Curiosity Corner Children’s Academy; Wagontown Country Day Care; Creative Kids of Downingtown; Sandy Hill Preschool; and East Fallowfield Elementary School, according to USA Today.

Water tests reportedly indicated that lead exposure in water samples from all of these sites exceeded 15 ppb, but the lead content in some sites was higher than in others.

East Fallowfield Elementary, which is part of the Coatesville Area School District, was found to have a lead concentration of 18.5 ppb in its water system, according to USA Today. The school’s water system serves about 380 people, according to the EPA.

According to a spokesperson from the school district, the district has a two tier testing regimen that tests for lead and copper.

The first tier consists of an annual test conducted at the well head. The second tier of the testing regimen includes testing three times per week on any facility that has an on-site well to ensure that chlorination and pH are proper.

The testing includes samples from different locations on each site, one of which usually includes a drinking fountain. Testing is completed by an independent company, Cawley Environmental Systems.

The district added that Cawley Environmental indicated that in 2012 the district had been attempting to collect their own water samples, but that the sample collection was not documented properly and it was not possible to verify the accuracy of the samples. As a result Cawley Environmental Systems was brought in to ensure that testing would be handled appropriately. They have been handling tests ever since.

“The district takes the utmost precautions to ensure that our water is safe for students. We have a thorough testing regimen that samples water weekly at various fountains and sinks within the schools,” said Superintendent Cathy Taschner.

“We have the utmost confidence in our independent water testing company and Aramark facilities management who work together to closely monitor our water. We are confident that our water is safe for children and staff.”

Pikeland Village Square, located in East Pikeland, had the highest number of lead exceedances in Chester County over the four-year testing period, according to USA Today.

A total of three tests of water samples from Pikeland Village Square were found to have lead concentrations between 20 ppb to 39 ppb, according to the report.

Digital First Media also reported last month that business owners at the shopping center were notified by the Pennsylvania DEP that a “boil-water advisory” had been issued after water samples tested positive for E. coli. All commercial businesses are required to provide alternate water to their customers, such as bottled water, until the advisory is lifted.

A follow-up report by Digital First Media about Pikeland Village Square’s water system included a statement by Christopher L. Meszaros, the property manager of the shopping center.

“The DEP notice concerns a positive test result for the presence of E. coli in the source- raw water coming from Pikeland Village’s lower well before treatment,” Meszaros said. “The raw water source of the lower well goes through a treatment process which includes ultra violet light treatment. After treatment, the water enters and is used by each business. The test results reported by an independent lab indicated no E. coli presence.”

He said the DEP notice is a precautionary measure, and the DEP has a protocol to notify the public and tenants through the boiling notice.

“Pikeland Village well equipment and water systems are regularly checked, tested and maintained by our well operator, Clean Stream,” Meszaros said. “Water testing is done by an independent lab. Water testing results are sent directly to DEP.”

Common-sense opinions tend to center on heavy snowfall and heavy rain leaching into the well, but not a lack of well maintenance, he said.

“Pikeland Village is working with Clean Stream and DEP to resolve this matter quickly,” Meszaros said. “We have been in constant communication with DEP about this unfortunate situation and quick resolution to this matter.

“There is no water contamination in our businesses water. Raw-source water is treated.”

Businesses located in Pikeland Village Square, at 513 Kimberton Road, include Rocco’s Pizza Shoppes, Re/Max Main Line, and Tips and Toes Nail Spa. The shopping center’s water system serves about 150 people, according to the EPA.

Each of the other sites listed in Chester County only had one incident of a lead exceedance in their water systems, except for the Maplewood mobile home park, which had two lead exceedances between 20 ppb to 45 ppb, according to the USA Today.

The two sites listed in Montgomery County with lead exceedances were St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, and the Limerick Generating Station, the nuclear power plant owned by Exelon Corp.

Limerick Generating Station’s was found to have one lead exceedance, with a water sample testing at 21 ppb, according to USA Today. The power plant’s water system serves about 1,650 people, according to the EPA.

The only water system in Delaware County that was reportedly found to have a lead exceedance was that of Brinton Manor, which is an assisted living facility in Glen Mills that is owned and operated by Genesis Healthcare.

According to USA Today, Brinton Manor had one lead exceedance when a water sample was tested and indicated that the facility’s water system had a lead concentration of 271 ppb.

However, a representative of Genesis Healthcare said the test that found the lead exceedance was inaccurate due to a sampling error by the water testing company, and Brinton Manor never actually had any lead exceedances.

Brinton Manor’s water is supplied by a well, and the water supply is tested by an independent water testing company and carefully monitored by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Pa. DEP and the EPA, said Jeanne Moore, vice president of public relations and communications at Genesis Healthcare.

“In 2010, lead levels tested at zero (ppb),” Moore said. “In 2013, there was a sample that tested with high levels of lead, due to improper sampling. As a result, our water was tested on several consecutive days every six months for a time period recommended by the Pennsylvania DEP. Lead levels were zero (ppb) in the subsequent water samples. In 2016, lead levels were zero (ppb).”

She said lead levels at Brinton Manor are tested at least every three years, as is required by the DEP, and all the subsequent water tests after the sampling error have yielded results of zero ppb. The next water test is scheduled for this June, she added.

Brinton Manor’s water system serves about 196 people, according to the EPA.

USA Today reports that lead can be difficult to test for, which causes complications in addressing the health risks that are posed by exposure to water with high levels of lead.

In addition to being used for drinking and washing, lead-tainted water is often used for cooking school lunches or making baby formula, so these factors can cause a high risk for children and infants, according to USA Today.

Lead concentrations can increase as water goes unused but stays in contact with plumbing because schools and daycares are frequently left vacant for long periods of time, USA Today reports.

Furthermore, lead particles may be released intermittently, so a student could go for days drinking from a contaminated water fountain before ingesting lead toxins from the water, according to USA Today.

Testing for lead poisoning in kids can also be tricky, and blood testing for lead is usually done on babies but not school-aged children, USA Today reports.

Symptoms of lead poisoning often don’t appear until dangerous levels of toxins have accumulated, and even then the symptoms can be vague, so they might not be detected until after the damage has already been done, according to USA Today.

Lead poisoning can cause lowered IQ, behavioral problems and developmental delays for children, according to the report.

There is no simple and easy solution for fixing water systems contaminated with lead. Permanent solutions can be quite expensive, according to USA Today.

However, permanent solutions are indeed available.

NPR recently did a report on how Wisconsin’s capital, Madison’s decision to replace all of its lead pipes in 2001 was ultimately successful in enabling the city to avoid excessive levels of lead exposure in its water.

The project was so successful that another city, Lansing, Michigan, is now following the example set by Madison, and is working on replacing its own lead pipes, according to the report.

Bruni’s taps deliver poison to its poor, largely Hispanic residents but other rural towns in the state suffer with water that is black, brown or stinks of rotten eggs

-Tom Dart, originally posted on April 2, 2016

Julio Perez sprayed his yard with water from a garden hose. While the flowers were no doubt grateful for the refreshment on a warm afternoon, there was no chance of him quenching his own thirst with a gulp of tap water.

The 66-year-old lives in Bruni, a tiny Texas town notable for a very unwelcome reason: the quantity of arsenic in its water. In 2014-15 the average concentration of the carcinogen was 79.6 parts per billion: almost eight times the federal limit.

This was a mild improvement on the long-term average of 85.3 ppb since 2002, but Bruni was the runaway leader at the top of the Texas arsenic standings in a report compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project. The next-worst rate was 56.2 ppb in a district serving the 5,000-strong ranching community of Hebbronville, 13 miles from Bruni.

Using data from the state agency, the Texas commission on environmental quality (TCEQ), the report identified 65 Texas community water systems, serving over 82,000 people, which over the past two years have exceeded the arsenic standard set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. It found that some 51,000 of them in 34 communities have been exposed to drinking water with excessive levels of arsenic for at least a decade.

This is not news to the residents of Bruni, a poor, mostly Hispanic place 45 miles east of the border with Mexico. “Most of the people don’t drink the water any more,” said Perez, who has lived there for more than 25 years. “It looks cloudy,” said a woman in town who declined to give her name. “We don’t drink it,” said another.

The borderlands are replete with small, underresourced towns like Bruni where many residents have given up on using the water.

There are hundreds of privately run drive-up water mills in parking lots in the Rio Grande Valley and other disadvantaged areas of Texas: machines that dispense clean water to customers who bring their own containers.

“The quality of water and the fact that it’s taken years and years for [state and federal authorities] to even begin looking at this is atrocious and families in the … rural areas have to deal with so much more in addition to the water quality,” said Amber Arriaga-Salinas of Proyecto Azteca, a not-for-profit organisation that works to improve conditions for low-income families.

In Bruni, Perez has installed a filter in his home but is not confident it blocks the toxins. Instead he drinks bottled water – one of the items readily available in Bruni’s modest general store – buying it by the gallon.

He worries that the water problems are contributing to the town’s decline. It had a population of 379 at the 2010 census, down from 698 in 1990.

And he speculated that the water has caused health problems locally. “For me, people do get sick because of it. I know it’s the water,” he said.

Scientists have linked high levels of arsenic in drinking water to increased risks of cancer, lung and cardiovascular diseases, skin conditions and diminished intellectual ability in children. Recent research suggests arsenic is more dangerous than previously thought. In 2001 the federal Environmental Protection Agency lowered its standard from 50 ppb to 10 ppb.

A new study by Dartmouth College indicates that even low levels of arsenic consumed by pregnant American women in drinking water and food may affect the size of babies’ heads at birth.

“My recommendation would be to not drink this water,” said Habibul Ahsan, an epidemiology professor at the University of Chicago who is an expert in the health effects of arsenic. He said that even quantities below the federal limit – let alone eight times over it – posed risks over a period of years. “These are not safe levels,” he said.

Texas regulators take a more laid-back attitude. Critics claim the TCEQ – previously accused of putting economics and politics ahead of environmental concerns – is downplaying the potential health threats of arsenic-laden water. Suppliers with contaminated water are required to issue public notices but the language they use can vary from state to state.

In Texas the mandatory wording reads in part: “This is not an emergency. However, some people who drink water containing arsenic in excess of the [limit] over many years could experience skin damage or problems with their circulatory system, and may have an increased risk of getting cancer. You do not need to use an alternative water supply. However, if you have health concerns, you may want to talk to your doctor to get more information about how this may affect you. You do not need to use an alternative water supply.”

In some other states the warnings are starker. As the Environmental Integrity Project report points out, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin and others advise private well owners not to drink water that exceeds 10 ppb.

The TCEQ said in a statement that it “agrees with US Environmental Protection Agency that arsenic levels typically found in the United States, specifically Texas, do not pose an immediate health threat.

“Drinking water standards are set to protect people drinking two litres of water per day for 70 years. The fact that typical Texas arsenic drinking water levels are not an immediate health threat is supported by the National Academy of Sciences and EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board. Studies of arsenic in drinking water in US populations (with much lower arsenic drinking water levels) do not consistently find associations with cancers.”

Tom Pelton, one of the report’s authors, said: “We’re not claiming it’s an immediate threat, it’s a chronic long-term health threat. It’s like smoking a cigarette. If you smoke one cigarette you’re not going to drop dead instantly. But if you smoke cigarettes over 10 years you will have an increased risk of cancer and that’s essentially what it’s like to drink water with this level of arsenic in it.”

Water quality across the country has been in the spotlight since it emerged that residents in Flint, Michigan, have been exposed to high levels of lead.

“The obvious parallel with Flint is that the state of Michigan knew about the drinking water contamination but essentially didn’t warn people and kind of brushed it off, like ‘hey, not a big deal’. We found the same troubling problem in Texas where Texas knows about all this drinking water contamination but is not clearly warning people to stop drinking the water,” Pelton said.

TCEQ’s website lists 94 violations by Bruni’s water supplier, mostly for arsenic and not following rules related to public notices; 91 of them occurred in the past 15 years. While all are listed as having been “addressed” either formally or informally, only 11 are characterised as “resolved”.

A spokesman said that the TCEQ “does not have any pending or recent enforcement actions regarding this facility” but that the EPA is currently pursuing enforcement action.

Efforts to contact the Bruni Rural Water Supply Corporation were unsuccessful. According to information on its website, which does not appear to have been updated since 2013, it is a non-profit that paid $26,157 in salaries and wages in 2011. In common with other hyperlocal rural suppliers, it is unlikely to have the funds or expertise on its own to solve the challenge of substantially removing an element that occurs naturally in groundwater in high concentrations in many parts of the US, including the north-east, upper midwest and California.

The report lists a number of mobile home parks, and even a prison, and calls for greater state and federal aid to improve facilities. Violators tended to be in “small rural communities without a lot of money”, Pelton said. The borderlands are replete with places that fit such a description, even if their troubles may never receive widespread media attention.

Drive north-west of Bruni for 130 miles and you reach Crystal City, population 7,500, which boasts proudly that it is “Spinach Capital of the World”. In February it drew glances for something other than its statue of Popeye: most of its civic leaders were arrested on corruption charges. Then black water started flowingfrom taps, seemingly the result of sediment being flushed through a system that had not been cleaned in two decades.

Two hours’ drive south of Bruni, in Hidalgo County, which has the state’s highest concentration of colonias, residents noticed brown water running from their faucets in 2014.

An estimated 400,000 people live in colonias in Texas – economically deprived, largely Hispanic settlements along the border with Mexico where many residents are undocumented, do not have health insurance and endure ramshackle infrastructure that contributes to health issues. A few isolated places, particularly in far west Texas, still do not have running water, while many communities do not trust the liquid that spurts from their taps.

For those who live in the South Tower Estates colonia, seven miles north of the Rio Grande river that separates Mexico from the US, a longstanding worry is far more obvious than the invisible menace of arsenic in Bruni. Walking around feels like wearing a breathing apparatus connected to a tank of rotten eggs. For those not used to it the stench is immediately nauseating.

It comes from an outdated wastewater treatment lagoon that is only 150 metres from the nearest houses and relies on sunlight and oxygen to work properly. Or not work properly. “A lot of the time it stinks, it smells like dog poo. It smells bad, bad,” said one resident, Victoria. “Sometimes it gives me headaches.”

A community organisation, Arise, is leading a campaign for change amid a permit renewal process. “People don’t feel comfortable inviting friends and family over or letting their kids play outside,” said Andrea Landeros, a coordinator. She spoke last week in a meeting room five minutes’ walk from the plant. A template for how to complain was scrawled on a whiteboard. The windows were shut but the fetid odour permeated the building anyway.

“We’re going to do everything we can to alleviate and maybe at one point in the long term to do away with the lagoon system,” said Luciano Ozuna, city manager of Alamo City, which is responsible for the facility. He said that about $1.3m has already been spent trying to improve conditions.

“Next week we’ll approve the purchase of some additional aerators for the lagoon system that we have and we believe that with those aerators it will alleviate a lot of the smell. That’s very close to $200,000 to buy those aerators and hopefully here within the next month, month and a half, we’ll be able to install those things,” he said.

Residents are sceptical: the problem has endured for decades. Victor Guerrero has lived in the area for 25 years. “I smell it all day long,” he said through a translator, leaning on the counter of a colourful shack offering $1 tacos. “It affects health because the smell is so strong. Two of my family members have really bad allergies and it affects them.”

As for his water: “kind of brown, with sediment when you open the faucets”, he said. “I definitely don’t drink or cook with the water.”

by Tatiana C. Tatum Parker, originally posted on April 11, 2016

We live in a society where we have taken for granted the fact that we can turn on the tap and we will get plentiful, potable water. However, how safe is our drinking water?

This is a question that many Americans have been asking themselves in light of high levels of lead in Flint, Mich., and high levels of arsenic in parts of Texas. In the recent past, there have been some water contamination issues around the Chicago area. In 2005, a nuclear plant in Braidwood had a tritium leak that leaked millions of gallons of mildly radioactive water into area groundwater near the nuclear site. And, in 2009, the world learned of the 20-plus-year cover-up in Crestwood regarding a contaminated municipal well.

On Feb. 18, a lawsuit was filed against the city of Chicago accusing it of not adequately warning residents of the possibly elevated presence of lead in their water due to street water mains that had been replaced. One demand within the lawsuit is that thousands of lead service lines be removed. The lead levels increased when the crumbling infrastructure was replaced, disturbing the city’s lead supply lines during the installation of new street water mains. Approximately 80 percent of homes in Chicago are hooked up to lead service lines, the most in the nation. A Tribune investigation found hot spots of lead poisoning in some of the city’s poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods, where people are suffering from high amounts of exposure. This is a huge problem since exposure to even small amounts of lead causes subtle brain damage that can trigger learning disabilities and violent behavior later in life.

So, how does one take protective measures? There are numerous products on the market that can help and range from $20 to more than $1,000. How do you know which one is the right one for you and your family? The first consideration that you need to make is what contaminants are your main concern? Regular jug water filters, though popular, are ineffective for lead removal. Most jug filters have loose carbon granules, which slightly reduce lead levels but are rarely effective enough to be safe to drink. They are not certified by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) for lead removal. You can install a whole house water filter to cover your entire house, or install an under sink water filter if you’re in an apartment or on a tight budget. These products are generally carbon filters and reverse osmosis filters. When looking for a whole home or under sink water filter, make sure to stick to brands that are NSF rated. Installation is generally very quick and uncomplicated. It is a timely and cost-effective fix to a serious problem.

In the meantime, if you are concerned about your water, or are waiting to have it tested, there are a few things that you can do. Do not boil the water to remove lead. While boiling water kills bacteria and parasites, it will not help with lead. Lead is an element, so boiling will just result in even higher concentrations after water evaporates. Instead, run your taps for 1-2 minutes to flush out stagnant water. Also, only use cold water to drink and cook. Both of these techniques, while limiting the amount of lead leeching into your water, will not eliminate it.