Is There Lead in Your Kid’s School Water? NBC Surveys 20 Big Cities
by Tracy Connor, originally posted on May 5, 2016
The expert who blew the whistle on the Flint water crisis says the only way to protect the nation’s school children against lead in drinking water is regular testing of virtually every fountain or sink they might use during the day.
But an NBC News survey of the country’s 20 biggest cities shows that very few school districts have met that standard.
Some, like Los Angeles, have not done district-wide testing in years; others, like Houston, have tested only a handful of schools. The uneven approach could leave hundreds of thousands of kids at risk of exposure to a toxin that can stunt intellectual development and cause physical and behavioral problems.
“As long as we have lead in the plumbing, this poses a health risks to students,” said Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who uncovered elevated lead levels in Washington D.C. in 2003 and in Flint, Michigan, last year.
“Schools need to be testing to protect the students.”
Chicago – which has a lead-poisoning rate at least twice the national average – had no record of testing its 600-plus schools until launching a pilot program with just 28 buildings last week, and it has not gotten the results.
Chicago schools spokeswoman Emily Bittner said buildings were not tested in the past because there’s no state or federal requirement and because Chicago’s municipal water supply meets all standards. The furor over Flint’s lead levels was the impetus for the new effort, she said.
“It’s part of a national conversation,” Bittner said. “It’s to reassure people.”
It’s true that schools that rely on a municipal water supply and don’t run their own system are not required by federal regulators to test what comes out of their taps for lead; efforts to mandate such testing have failed in Congress.
But Edwards points out that just because the water that leaves a city treatment plant is lead-free doesn’t mean it won’t contain lead when it pours from a faucet in a kindergarten classroom, after traveling through plumbing systems.
Even though most schools aren’t connected to pure lead service lines, any plumbing installed before a 2014 lead-free law could contain some of the heavy metal – in the solder or fixtures, for instance – which could leach into the water as the result of corrosion or aging, he said.
The link between lead and aging infrastructure means that one-time testing isn’t enough, Edwards said. A school that was deemed safe a decade ago could yield elevated lead today as pipes corrode and disgorge loose fragments into the water, he said.
“These problems are getting worse with time, not better,” he said.
There is no safe level of lead exposure, experts say, and young children are most vulnerable to its effects. The Environmental Protection Agency says action should be taken any time a level higher than 15 parts per billion is found in a public water system or 20 ppb from a school fixture.
Across the country, cities big and small that have tested schools for lead in the wake of the Flint scandal have gotten troubling results. In Newark, New Jersey, a lab found elevated levels in almost half its schools in March, and fountains were shut down. Last week, in Howland, Ohio, four out of six schools tested above the limit.
Here’s how the 20 most populous cities in the nation have handled testing:
New York
In the country’s biggest school system, with more than 1 million students, testing is ongoing since 2002. Of about 89,000 samples, 1.13 percent exceeded EPA guidelines on first-draw samples, and that dropped to less than a tenth of a percent on second draw, after the faucet was running to eliminate stagnant water. Remediation includes flushing and equipment replacement. The city removed all lead service lines to schools between 2008 and 2010.
Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 640,000 students, tested 850 sites in 2008. At least 11 percent of drinking fountains had lead above the action level, but officials say only 2 percent were still too high after flushing protocols were used – and those were shut off. Because of budget issues, it wasn’t until a bond approval last year that LA launched a cleanup plan, including pipe or fountain replacement, for the other 9 percent; it won’t be complete for another 18 months. The school district plans to start random testing next year, saying it would be too expensive to do them all again.
Chicago
The city, which has 396,000 students enrolled in public school, began its first documented testing last week, taking samples from 28 buildings in what it referred to as a “pilot project.” Once those results are analyzed in mid-May, Chicago schools will “develop a comprehensive lead testing approach,” according to City Hall, which indicated in a press release that it’s banking on proposals for new federal testing programs to take up the slack.
Houston
The city has 283 public schools, with 215,000 students, but has tested just five of them. None of the sites, which were chosen at random, had lead levels above the action level, officials said. At one school, the amount of lead in fountain water was higher than in other parts of the building so the equipment will be replaced.
Philadelphia
More than 20,000 outlets in 308 buildings were tested for lead between 1999 and 2009. Any that tested elevated were subject to remediation – including plumbing replacement – and repeatedly retested until they were normal. No testing has been done since the initial $5 million program, but the city, which has 134,000 public-school students, plans to do some random testing this year.
Phoenix
The city leaves testing up to 33 school districts. Deer Valley Unified School District, which has 33,927 students and 38 schools, said it tests only the one that has its own water supply and the results were normal. The Pendergast district (10,000 students on a dozen campuses), Paradise Valley (32,000 children in 42 schools) and Alhambra (14,200 students in 15 schools) reported they do no testing.
San Antonio
The San Antonio Water System said none of its residential testing last year showed elevated lead levels but that it’s up to schools districts to check educational buildings. Northside Independent School District (104,000 students), San Antonio Independent School District (53,000) and South San Antonio Independent School District (10,000) students, reported they do no testing. The North East Independent School District, which had 68,000 students, said it has not tested but is planning a random survey “to alleviate people’s fears.”
San Diego
The San Diego Unified School District, which encompasses 130,000 students at 226 facilities, does not do random or routine testing because the city has eliminated lead service lines and the schools have lead-free plumbing, a spokesperson said. About 20 years ago, there was a district-wide sampling, and no results were over the limit, though the records were not archived.
Dallas
The school district, which has 160,000 students on 227 campuses, does not routinely test for lead in the water but will test when it believes there is an issue, said spokesman Andre Riley. Since Jan. 2015, they have tested at least four schools, all of which had results well below the action level, Riley said.
San Jose
Since 2006, every school is tested every year at two sites, usually one faucet and one water fountain. The 2016 results have not come in but last year, of the 40 schools tested, none had results over 15 ppb. Starting next year, all schools will be tested twice.
Austin
The Austin Independent School District, which has 83,000 students at 130 schools, said it tested 47 schools between April 12 and April 27 and “all were within the acceptable level so there is no cause for concern.”
Jacksonville
The city has not tested since 2000. Between 1988 and 2000, it tested every drinking water outlet in 150 schools, and 40 schools had results above the action level. “All non-compliant fixtures and sources were eliminated,” Duval County Public Schools said. “Schools constructed after the year 2000 have met all current specifications for lead free piping, fittings and fixtures.”
Indianapolis
The city has 11 school districts. The largest, Indianapolis Public Schools, with 30,000 students, said it tests “periodically,” but did not provide specifics. Two schools have been tested “in recent months” and both were well below the action level, a spokeswoman said, adding that lead piping was removed in the district. The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, which has 15,000 students, tested 20 buildings between February and March and said it got negative results on all.
San Francisco
San Francisco Public Schools, which enrolls 57,000 students at 156 schools, said its last district-wide test for lead was “a few years ago,” but did not provide an exact time. Five schools are currently out of compliance and have been placed on a bottled-water program until renovations and retesting are complete.
Columbus
All schools in the city, which has 51,000 students, were tested in 2008. Sixteen of 122 schools had results above action level. New water coolers were installed and the water was retested.
Fort Worth
The school district, which has 86,000 students in 130 schools, says “no need for testing for lead has been identified to date.” One school, Arlington Heights High School, has been part of the city’s testing program since 2009; the 2015 result from that sample was 6.2 ppb, below the action level.
Charlotte
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which has 146,000 students, said testing is regularly done at only one school, which has its own water system; the last results there, in August 2015, found no elevated lead. For the other 167 schools in the city, “there may be occasions we test for lead levels due to parent/school concerns but on these few occasions the results were negative,” the district said in a statement.
Detroit
Detroit Public Schools, home to about 52,000 students, took first-draw and after-flushing samples from three sites at each of its 62 elementary schools this spring; 19 schools, nearly a third, had results over the action level. The highest was 1,500 ppb, or 10 times the cutoff. All those schools are on bottled water while retesting and remediation is done, and testing of the city’s 38 middle and high schools is now underway.
El Paso
The city has 60,000 public school students on 94 campuses. It tested 10 of them in 2009 and none were above the EPA action level. They tested 15 this year and none required action, although one sample came back at 10 ppb and the district has asked the school to investigate.
Seattle
Since 2004, each of the city’s 98 public schools – where 54,000 students are enrolled — have been tested at least every three years, and measured against a cutoff that is more stringent than the EPA’s. In the most recent results, 99.5 percent of samples from the first-draw of water were lower than 15 ppb and 99.7 of samples taken after 30-seconds of flushing were below the EPA threshold. Edwards said that Seattle’s program “is a model, among the best in the country.”
Kemp Lane homeowners to pay double the rate to access clean water
by Sylvia Carignan, originally posted on May 5, 2016
After enduring more than a decade of uncertainty about contamination in their tap water, the owners of five Kemp Lane homes will pay double the city’s usual rate to get clean, safe water.
Frederick’s aldermen voted Thursday to approve a request from Fort Detrick to connect the five homes to a municipal water line.
As part of an agreement the homeowners signed with Fort Detrick, they will pay twice as much for their water than other city residents, and are responsible for the cost of any repairs to their water line connections.
Residents of the five Kemp Lane homes have been receiving shipments of bottled water for more than 10 years.
While testing groundwater around Fort Detrick in 2005, the Army Corps of Engineers found perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene in three residential wells along Kemp Lane, which is adjacent to Area B, a 399-acre federal property near Fort Detrick’s main post.
The Army Corps of Engineers has sampled groundwater around the post for years to watch for toxins seeping through the bottom of Fort Detrick’s capped landfills at Area B.
Those landfills contain sludge from its former decontamination plants, ashes from its incinerators, potentially radioactive sludge from a sewage disposal plant, drums of the industrial solvent trichloroethylene, chemical materials, biological materials and herbicides.
In response to those findings, the Army has paid for shipments of bottled water for each of the homes for a decade.
They still have tap water, which comes from wells on their properties. The bottled water is intended for cooking and drinking, though some are concerned that bathing and washing clothes in the tap water also exposes the residents to contamination.
Kathy Whitmore and her husband built their home, one of the five on Kemp Lane receiving a supply of bottled water. The Whitmores and their eight children have lived in the house since 1995.
“We had no idea we were going to raise our family on a street that had contaminants,” she said.
Whitmore was the only resident of the Kemp Lane homes to speak up in the public hearing Thursday.
“I don’t want to drink the [tap] water. I don’t want my kids to drink the water,” she said.
The Kemp Lane homes sit on the edge of Area B and are outside Frederick’s corporate limits.
Since they are county and not city residents, they are subject to doubled water rates if they are connected to the city’s water supply, according to Tracy Coleman, deputy director of the engineering division of Frederick’s Department of Public Works.
The doubled rate compensates for the fact that the county residents don’t pay city taxes, but are using a city service, Coleman said.
At the public hearing, Whitmore pleaded for the mayor and aldermen to reconsider their water rates.
“We’ve been showering and raising our kids there and watering our gardens, and we just ask for some graciousness in trying to bring a solution to this,” Whitmore said.
Frederick’s aldermen were concerned Thursday that the other Kemp Lane homeowners were unaware of their doubled water rates and their responsibility to maintain water lines on their property.
Though Alderman Michael O’Connor believed connecting them to city water was “the right thing to do,” he said there was little room for an alternative.
“I don’t think they have much recourse to say no at this point,” he said.
Alderwoman Donna Kuzemchak said a short delay may be necessary to ensure the homeowners knew what they were getting into.
“I think that delay would be a maximum of a month,” she said.
Alderwoman Kelly Russell was uncomfortable with delaying the process any longer.
“I am not in favor in making these folks wait one more minute longer than they have to for clean, safe drinking water from their taps,” she said.
Frederick resident George Rudy, who is a member of the Fort Detrick Restoration Advisory Board, spoke up in the public hearing.
“You’ve got to get these people off of bottled water,” Rudy told the mayor and aldermen. “The solution that the Army presented to them was inadequate.”
Kuzemchak said the Army should be responsible for repairs to the water lines, if they are needed in the future.
“The Army should be paying for what it costs,” she said.
Each of the aldermen except Kuzemchak voted for the city to approve the water line connection.
After the Corps of Engineers found perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene in the Kemp Lane homes’ wells, the Army started paying for bottled water shipments.
Randy White, president of the Kristen Renee Foundation, said in an email that the foundation felt the city water connection is “too little, too late.”
White’s daughter, Frederick resident Kristen Renee White Hernandez, died of brain cancer at age 30 in 2008.
Family members suspect her death is tied to contamination from Fort Detrick. Family members formed the foundation in her memory.
White believes Fort Detrick should have spent more money to clean up environmental contamination from Area B sooner.
According to Lanessa Hill, a spokeswoman for the Fort Detrick garrison, the Army is paying $62,000 to connect the Kemp Lane homes to municipal water.
The construction process is expected to take two to three months.
The Army will continue to provide bottled water to those homes until the connection is made, Hill said. Those water shipments cost the Army about $2,700 per year.
Coliform bacteria found in elementary school’s drinking water
by Gus Burns, originally posted on May 5, 2016
LEONI TWP., MI — Nearly 500 students at East Jackson Elementary School are drinking crisp, clean water from cone paper cups.
That’s because the water supply to drinking fountains and sinks has shown signs of bacterial contamination. Water tested positive for potentially harmful coliform bacteria multiple times since March 18, most recently on Wednesday, May 4.
Administrators brought in dispensers and are providing purified water to students until the problem is corrected.
Nearly 11/2 months after first detecting the problem, East Jackson Community Schools, Jackson County Health Department and a third-party plumbing contractor haven’t isolated the cause of the recurring bacteria, said Jackson County Director of Environmental Services Don Hayduk.
Coliform bacteria is usually found in soil, vegetation, surface water and the intestines of warm-blooded animals, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.
“Because coliform bacteria are most commonly associated with sewage or surface waters, they are used as an indicator group to determine the sanitary quality of drinking water,” the DEQ says. “Most coliform bacteria do not cause illness. However, their presence in a water system is a public health concern because of the potential for disease-causing strains of bacteria, viruses, and protozoa to also be present.
“Waterborne disease from these organisms (including some strains of E. Colli) typically involves flu-like symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, fever, and diarrhea.”
One of five samples collected Wednesday tested positive for coliform, Hayduk said.
The school is supplied by well water and sat vacant for six years before being renovated and returned to service this past school year, East Jackson Community Schools Superintendent Pat Little said Thursday.
Tests showed the water supply was safe when the school opened.
“Probably the biggest thing is we were being very proactive,” Little said. “I have not had a single complaint and kids are still getting hydrated.”
Protocol requires the school district inform parents when the school chlorinates its system in response to contamination.
Little said notices were first sent to parents after the positive tests March 18.
After flushing the system, tests 24 hours apart on March 20 and March 21 were negative for coliform, Hayduk said.
But it returned by the next set of tests conducted April 20. Since then, drinking fountains have been shut off and alternative drinking water available to students.
“We’re almost 100 percent sure it is in the piping system,” Hayduk said, “not the well.”
Despite chlorinating the system again in May, tests still show the presence of coliform. Hayduk said a couple possibilities — among others — are contamination when sections of plumbing were replaced or a “dead-end” section of pipe where the bacteria is accumulating.
He said it’s now a matter of repeating tests throughout the plumbing system to “narrow down” the source of coliform.
“As soon as possible” but “it’s hard to say,” Hayduk said when the issue might be resolved. “I don’t want to give an estimate.”
Hayduk says coliform is a “broad class” of bacteria that includes “hundreds of thousands” of species, most of which aren’t harmful. Health officials are testing for some of the harmful strains, including E. Coli.
Concerned mothers meet with Hassan regarding Pease water contamination
Governor has asked EPA to sent up long-term monitoring, testing for families
originally posted on May 5, 2016
CONCORD, N.H. —
A group of worried mothers met with Gov. Maggie Hassan and state health officials Thursday, seeking reassurance the government is doing everything it can to help their families, who were exposed to contaminated water at Pease Air National Guard Base.
The women are worried about the future of their families after their loved ones were exposed at day care or work, and perflurochemicals turned up in their blood.
Andrea Amico’s husband and children were affected.
“They have all had their blood tested for PFCs, and they have elevated levels in their body,” she said.
Alaina Davis said her family was also contaminated.
“The biggest thing is the unknown because everyone keeps telling us there is limited science,” she said.
Michelle Dalton’s son, who attended day care at Pease, also has elevated levels of PFCs.
“It makes me nervous and concerned,” she said.
It’s the reason these three women asked for a meeting with Hassan and state officials.
PFCs can stay in the body for a long time, and these moms want the support of the state government as they face the unknown,
Hassan has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to set up long-term monitoring and testing for families exposed to contaminants.
“The EPA we are hoping will be issuing some guidelines soon, but that’s one of the things that we are concerned about,” Hassan said. “They’ve been delaying some of their issuing of guidelines.”
In the meantime, these families said they will wait and hope their families don’t suffer negative effects of chemical exposure.
“Especially looking at my children, they were exposed to contaminants at a really early time in their life, when their body was critically developing so now it makes me wonder if that has reprogrammed them in a different way,” Amico said.
A well at the base was shut down after testing showed high levels of contaminants in the water.
60 kids fall ill in Kanota, water contamination likely cause
originally posted on May 5, 2016
Jaipur: Close on the heels of 12 deaths of children with special needs, 60 children fell ill suffering from the same kind of symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea in Kanota area of Jaipur on Wednesday. Contaminated water is suspected as a cause of illness among children in Kanota.
Kanota is around 8-10 kilometres away from Jamdoli where more than 30 children with special needs had fallen ill from April 16 and at least nine of them are still undergoing treatment in J K Lon Hospital.
“It is a cause of worry as children fell ill in Kanota which is quite close to Jamdoli,” health minister Rajendra Rathore said, who rushed to J K Lon hospital, where 16 children were brought for treatment from Kanota on Wednesday afternoon.
Rathore visited the hospital and interacted with the parents of ill children. He tried to find out how children fell ill. “Do you eat same wheat flour? Did you people eat same food last night? Do you drink water from same water tank,” these were some of the questions Rathore asked to the parents of ill children apart from asking about the quality of treatment they are receiving from the patients.
“Are you getting free treatment here,” he asked to one of the parents.
The children, who were brought to the hospital, belonged to 4-14 year age category. After meeting the parents, Rathore said, “We are trying to find out the cause of illness among the children. Water samples have been taken. Also, the health department officials have taken samples of stool and swab.”
He said, “We are not ruling out any kind of contamination. Prima facie, it seems that children might have fallen ill due to contamination in food or drinking water.”
J K Lon superintendent Dr Ashok Gupta, who accompanied the minister during his visit, informed the minister about the treatment they are providing to the patients. Dr Gupta said, “The children have been admitted to the hospital and they are getting the treatment for vomiting and diarrhoea.”
The health department officials had received the information about the illness of the children at 8 pm on Tuesday. “There are people living in the area who work in brick kiln. When we received the information, we constituted two teams to control it,” Dr KK Sharma, joint director (Jaipur), health department said.
Ute tribe argues that uranium waste threatens water
Grand Canyon Trust releases video on contamination danger
by Jim Mimiaga, originally posted on May 3, 2016
In a video released Tuesday, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Grand Canyon Trust claim that the White Mesa uranium mill in southeast Utah puts local water sources at risk of contamination.
The 36-year-old mill is the only conventional uranium mill operating in the country. It also borders the White Mesa community, a satellite reservation of the Ute Mountain Ute reservation.
“Half Life: The Story of America’s Last Uranium Mill” states that insufficient liners under the mill’s older waste containment ponds threaten water aquifers and could migrate to local springs relied on by the tribe, local cities, livestock, plants and wildlife.
“Seeps and springs are the only water sources in the area, and the concern is that radioactive, toxic waste from tailing cell impoundments will migrate down and find its way to these springs,” said Colin Larrick, a water-quality specialist with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe.
There are two aquifers underneath the tailing ponds. A perched aquifer in the Burro Canyon formation is 100 feet under surface and feeds local springs.
The deeper Navajo aquifer lies 1200 feet below the surface and supplies drinking water for the towns of Blanding, White Mesa, Bluff, Tuba city and Hopi Villages, according to the film.
Groundwater in the area flows south from the uranium mill towards the White Mesa community.
To date no contamination has reached any of the four springs regularly monitored by the tribe. But in the video, the tribe says there is growing evidence of a heavy-metal plume migrating toward the springs.
“At a monitoring well, we’re seeing the groundwater become very acidic recently, and we are seeing a huge spike in a lot of the heavy metals which are in the tailings facility,” Larrick said.
Three of the mill’s waste impoundment ponds were built in the early 1980s and are a suspected cause, according to the video. The so-called “legacy impoundments” use a 30 mm PVC liner that the Grand Canyon Trust and tribe claim are in poor condition, with one having documented leaks.
Larrick said the liners at the bottom of the impoundments have a useful life of 20 years and are in direct contact with the perched aquifer 100 feet below the surface.
“They remain the only barrier between radioactive tailings and groundwater,” he says. “Any liquid migration through liners would introduce those fluids into aquifer. If contamination from the mill did show up at seeps, the resources would be unusable to tribe, and quite possibly toxic to wildlife and human use.”
Other waste-containment ponds at the mill are more modern and use double liners that are 60 mm each with a system for leak detection.
The White Mesa mill processes uranium ore into yellow cake that is then shipped and made into fuel rods for nuclear power plants. But it also process low-grade radioactive materials from federal atomic testing facilities and industrial sites across the country.
“In early ’90s, industry and the U.S. government cooked up the idea to send these radioactive waste dumps to (White Mesa),” said Travis Stills, an attorney for Energy and Conservation Law.
The ore and feeder wastes are milled for uranium, and waste material is stored in the containment ponds.
Malcolm Lehi represents the White Mesa Community on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council.
“Water is sacred to us and in White Mesa it is something we lack,” he said. “The state needs to take a closer look at the impacts. If the springs were to become contaminated, it would probably mean we would have to leave our homelands.”
The General Assembly Doesn’t Want You to Know What’s in Your Water
by Jane Porter, originally posted on May 4, 2016
Remember when North Carolina’s health department told people their coal ash-contaminated water is now totally fine to drink, because the state changed the standard of what it considers “acceptable” levels of chemicals hexavalent chromium and vanadium?
Yeah, expect more of that.
Last week, lawmakers introduced legislation that would prohibit state and local health departments from issuing public advisories regarding drinking water contamination to well users and people on public water systems, as long as the levels of contamination are below state or federal clean water standards.
This means that if there’s hexavalent chromium, arsenic, or any other toxic chemical building up in your drinking water, you won’t be notified until you unequivocally should not drink it. Before the toxins cross that threshold, you won’t even receive helpful suggestions like “Buy a filtration system” or “Find a different water supply.”
“This is a major intrusion on the authority of state and local health departments, and it’s unprecedented in its impact on them in doing what they feel they need to do in protecting the public health,” says Hope Taylor, the executive director of the nonprofit Clean Water for North Carolina. “It’s being willing to toss the public off a cliff.”
Bill sponsors in the House and Senate, including Senators Trudy Wade, Andrew Brock, and Brent Jackson, as well as Representative Jimmy Dixon, did not respond to the INDY‘s messages seeking comment.
“The public counts on state and local health departments to provide accurate information about public health risks,” says Cassie Gavin, the director of government relations for the Sierra Club. “If this proposal becomes law, health authorities could run into the problem of knowing that contamination found in a well presents a health concern and yet be prohibited from providing well users with that information so that they can take steps to protect themselves.”
Blood lead levels rise in two new mothers amid water contamination scandal
by Chantal Yuen, originally posted on May 4, 2016
Blood lead levels have risen in two women who were affected by contaminated water after they gave birth. Kwong Wah Hospital revealed data on Tuesday regarding four new mothers who were affected by the lead-in-water scandal last year.
A 27-year-old woman’s lead levels was found to have risen to 10 micrograms after giving birth. Another 33-year-old woman saw lead levels decrease to under 5 micrograms before rising to 8 micrograms again. The other two women did not see such rises and the babies of the four women did not have lead levels that were deemed significant.
The scandal led to a citywide panic over the safety of water and widespread testing of samples at public housing estates, particularly those built in recent years.
If more than five micrograms of lead is found in the blood of pregnant women or children, they will have to go through further examinations, according to Health Department guidelines.
Kwong Wah Hospital Consultant Obstetrician and Chief of Service at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Leung Wing-cheong said that the lead may have settled in the bones and that giving birth led to an increase in bone metabolism speed. This is because more calcium needs to be produced for breastfeeding milk.
Leung said that all four women had been drinking distilled water since their first check-ups at the hospital. Lead that has settled in the bone may take up to 25 years to completely disappear, he said.
Fix for California trailer park reflects uranium problem
by Ellen Knickmeyer, originally posted on May 3, 2016
California regulators approved a $3.2 million grant Tuesday to bring safe water to a California trailer park where three dozen households for years have been provided with tap water containing dangerous levels of uranium.
The grant from the California Water Resources Control Board will pay to install lines from a new well in a nearby town to the Double L Mobile Ranch Park outside Fresno, in the agriculturally rich Central Valley.
One in 10 public water systems and up to one in four private wells in some areas of the Central Valley now have raw water with unsafe levels of uranium, officials say.
“Uranium contamination is a fact and is a challenge, a gigantic challenge. There is no question about that,” said Frances Spivey-Weber, vice chairwoman of the water board.
The Double L Mobile Ranch Park was highlighted in a 2015 article by The Associated Press looking at the growing problem of uranium in the water of California’s farming heartland.
U.S. Geological Survey researchers believe irrigation is responsible for slowly rising levels of naturally occurring uranium in underground water supplies.
Uranium can damage kidneys and raise cancer risks if consumed long-term at concentrations above federal and state limits for drinking water.
The AP found that the mostly Spanish-speaking farm workers at the mobile home park had little understanding of the English-language warnings required by law about the tainted water. Some poorer families at the park had been drinking the tainted water for years, the AP found.
More broadly, the AP found public water systems ranging from mid-size cities to rural schools dealing with uranium-contaminated water in the Central Valley. Families using private wells, meanwhile, said they had no warning of the possible threat, and little if any aid was available to test or treat private wells for uranium contamination.
Voters’ 2014 passage of a $7.5 billion water bond means the state can now do more community outreach on water problems, including providing information in Spanish, said Jule Rizzardo, a supervising water engineer at the state water board.
Spivey-Weber, the board vice chairwoman, cited the more than $80,000-per-household cost of fixing the mobile home park’s drinking-water.
Contamination of groundwater in the West with substances ranging from nitrates to uranium is a growing concern, to the point the state can’t afford to rely on one-off fixes like the Double L is getting, she said.
“So we really need to have a sense of how big the problem is, and where it is,” Spivey-Weber said. “We need to get a fix on this so we can start to prioritize.”
Arsenic-Contaminated Well Water Boosts Bladder Cancer Risk
by Roxanne Nelson, originally posted on May 5, 2016
Drinking water derived from private wells, particularly those dating back to the early part of the twentieth century, could be related to high rates of bladder cancer in several New England states.
In fact, the incidence rates of bladder cancer in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are about 20% higher than rates in the rest of the United States.
The water in many of these older wells, which are not maintained by municipalities and therefore not subject to federal regulations, contain low to moderate levels of arsenic, report Debra Silverman, ScD, from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and her colleagues.
A high proportion of the population uses private wells for their drinking water, which is a “unique” feature of this particular region.
“Arsenic is an established cause of bladder cancer, largely based on observations from earlier studies in highly exposed populations,” said Dr Silverman in a statement. “However, emerging evidence suggests that low to moderate levels of exposure may also increase risk.”
The results were published online May 2 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Mortality rates related to bladder cancer have been high in northern New England for more than 50 years and are not explained by traditional risk factors for the disease, which include smoking and occupational exposures.
Arsenic contamination in the well water in northern New England comes from two possible sources, the researchers explain. It can naturally be released into water from rock deep beneath the surface of the earth, or it can be manmade and come from pesticide residue. Arsenic-based pesticides were used extensively on crops such as blueberries, apples, and potatoes in this region from the 1920s through to the 1950s.
Although previous studies have shown that the consumption of water containing high concentrations of arsenic increases the risk for bladder cancer, the effect of exposure to low to moderate levels has been unclear.
Possible Link to Arsenic
Dr Silverman and her colleagues conducted a population-based case–control study of arsenic levels in private wells in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The team compared 1213 patients with newly diagnosed bladder cancer with 1418 control subjects who resided in the same geographic area.
They looked at known and suspected bladder cancer risk factors, including smoking, occupation, ancestry, use of wood-burning stoves, and consumption of various foods. In addition, arsenic concentrations were estimated from water samples taken from current and previous homes.
Overall, the risk for bladder cancer increased with increasing water intake (P trend = .003), and for people with a history of using a private well, this trend was significant trend (P trend = .01).
If private wells were shallow dug wells, which are more vulnerable to contamination from manmade sources of arsenic, there was a trend toward an increased risk for bladder cancer (P trend = .002). However, if private wells were deeper drilled wells, this trend was not evident (P trend = .48).
If the wells were dug prior to 1960, when the arsenic-based pesticides were widely used in this region, the risk for bladder cancer was twice as high in heavy water consumers (>2.2 L/day) as in light water consumers (<1.1 L/day; P trend = .01).
“Although smoking and employment in high-risk occupations both showed their expected associations with bladder cancer risk in this population, they were similar to those found in other populations,” Dr Silverman reported. “This suggests that neither risk factor explains the excess occurrence of bladder cancer in northern New England.”
The most important limitation of the study is the ability to precisely measure arsenic exposure, the researchers note. This hampered the ability to detect an effect of average arsenic concentration in the study population and the ability to accurately quantify the contribution of arsenic exposure to the high rates of bladder cancer seen in this geographic location.
The team points out that the likelihood of exposure to arsenic from well water has declined in recent years because arsenic-based pesticides are no longer used in agriculture, and dug wells are much less common now.
However, arsenic in drinking water from wells drilled deep into fractured bedrock remains a public health concern.
This study was funded by the intramural program of the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute. The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.