Can You Spot The Toxic Water?

While You Can't Always See What's In Your Water, You Can Advocate For Better Regulations & Follow-Up.

Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash

Let’s start today by defining toxins.

You may see me use the terms contaminant, pollutant, toxic substance, toxic chemical, or even poison. Let’s define these terms as any substance that on ingestion, inhalation, absorption, or exposure within the body, even in relatively small amounts, can cause disorder or harm.

Any chemical can be toxic or harmful under the right conditions. Many factors will impact how harmful a substance can be, including how much and by what means a person is exposed and how sensitive that person may be to a substance.

Each person is different in terms of constitution, immunity, and more, which is why people display different health problems and issues from the same substance. Some people may not show any signs for years, or ever, after exposure to a toxin, while others may become sick more quickly.

Each water system is also unique, but some of the most toxic offenders today include hexavalent chromium (an anticorrosive agent), perfluorinated chemicals (PFAS)­ which include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, used to make Teflon pans) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS, a key ingredient in Scotchgard), trichloroethylene (TCE, used in dry cleaning and refrigeration), lead, fracking chemicals, chloramines (a water disinfectant), and more.

Many of these chemicals are undetectable for those drinking the water. Hexavalent chromium is an exception, as it typically turns the water green at high doses and water heavily treated with chloramines usually has an odor.

Like a blood test for disease, you can only find what you test for. If you don’t order a specific test for one of these chemicals, you won’t know what’s there—and you can’t treat water, unless you know what’s in it.

Many of these substances cause irreversible health problems when ingested and people in communities throughout the country are dealing with these repercussions.

It’s Time To Take A Multi-Contaminant Approach

A new peer-reviewed study demonstrates that drinking water treatment that pursues a multi-contaminant approach, tackling several pollutants at once, could prevent more than 50,000 lifetime cancer cases in the U.S.

When I hear a number like that, I think about each person and their family and friends, and how many people we could save from having to deal with that devastating news and treatment.

The study findings challenge the merits of regulating one tap water contaminant at a time, the long-standing practice of both states and the federal government.

Scientists analyzed more than a decade of data from about 17,000 community water systems. They found that two cancer-causing chemicals, arsenic and hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, often appear together in systems and can be treated using the same technologies.

“Drinking water is contaminated mostly in mixtures, but our regulatory system still acts like they appear one at a time,” said Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D., a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group and lead author of the study. “This research shows that treating multiple contaminants together could prevent tens of thousands of cancer cases.”

Chromium-6 and arsenic are commonly found in drinking water across the U.S. Chromium-6 has been found in drinking water served to 251 million Americans. Studies show even low levels of it in drinking water can increase the risk of stomach cancer, liver damage, and reproductive harm.

Yet, the EPA still doesn’t limit the amount of chromium-6 in drinking water. Instead, it regulates total chromium, which includes chromium-6 and the mostly harmless chromium-3. Total chromium is set at 100 parts per billion, or ppb, for drinking water.

Arsenic is found in drinking water in all 50 states. It occurs in natural deposits and as a result of human activities such as mining and pesticide use. Long-term exposure is linked to serious health issues, including bladder, lung and skin cancers, as well as cardiovascular and developmental harm.

The legal federal limit for arsenic in drinking water is 10 ppb, set in 2001 based on outdated cost estimates for treatment, not on what’s safest for health. California’s public health goal is just 0.004 ppb, the level scientists say would pose no significant cancer risk over a lifetime

In California alone, nearly eight out of 10 preventable cancer cases are linked to arsenic exposure. Arizona, California and Texas bear the highest burden of arsenic pollution and would gain the most from multi-contaminant water treatment efforts.

Small and rural water systems often face the steepest per-person costs to implement new treatment technologies, but they’re among the most exposed to pollutants and associated risks.

These systems frequently lack the funding and technical support to upgrade aging infrastructure, leaving residents exposed to serious health threats. This level of vulnerability calls for new strategies for these communities—a boost in funding coupled with more effective regulations and enforcement of those regs.

While We Wait For The Environmental Procrastination Agency…

I’m a big believer that science is for everyone, not just people in white lab coats.

The first step in the scientific method is simply asking a question based on something you observe. You know the basic questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, or How? Start with these basic questions and from there you can start researching.

Many times, as I go along in my investigation, I use the concept of Occam’s razor, which is just a fancy way of saying “keep it simple.” Usually, the simplest solution is also the correct one. If the water looks or smells funny, most likely something is in the water making it look or smell that way. Plain and simple. If someone was dumping a substance into the water, and now you notice changes, then most likely the culprit is that substance.

A few good questions to ask when dealing with water issues are:

• What has changed in the surrounding area?

• Has the source of drinking water changed?

• Are changes happening in the way we treat our water?

• Have big storms or other weather events caused more turbidity (dirt) or interrupted water treatment?

• Is it possible someone has been discharging substances into our water?

• Are there any new businesses in town or old ones that may have polluted and left town?

These small changes have a big impact on our water systems.

I’ll never forget the day I was standing in the hot sun collecting samples of water and doing field research when a PG&E lackey came up to me and said, “You’re not a doctor. Do you even have a college degree? You have no right to comment on green water.”

Don’t even get me started on the two-headed frogs!

I realized at that moment how much intimidation is used in toxic cases. The more I kept pursuing leads and talking to people, the more clues I found. The closer I got to the truth, the more PG&E tried to bully me.

Companies (or even local governments) may try to bully you too. They don’t want you to discover the truth, so they will try to make you feel small, bad, or wrong. I looked right back at that PG&E rep and told him, “I didn’t know I needed all that to be a human.”

For me, dealing with dyslexia throughout my life has made me indignant when people tell me I can’t do something, and I hate when people tell me that what I see isn’t real.

Many people in the communities I have worked with experience these same frustrations. It makes sense to be upset when you are told the water is fine, especially when you know it’s not. No one wants to be labeled as irrational or unwise. It upsets our natural instincts, which is the first way we can begin to help ourselves.

I just got an email late last night from someone in Indiana.

She writes, “Sorry to email you so late. I live in the Town of New Pekin. Our water is outsourced from the Neighboring Town of Salem, Indiana. We are at the point now that we are not able to drink the water. Animals are dying. It literally tastes like algae. It's terrible. They keep telling us it is from storms, that they have fixed it.”

Now, these people need help. They need testing and local officials who listen to their concerns.

Don’t let anyone convince you that brown, murky water is good to drink—or water that tastes like algae is drinkable either.

Your most basic right is to protect your health and well-being. Many of the issues we face today have huge implications for both our bodies and our environment. You’re not too small to stand up to these challenges, you are much mightier than you can imagine.

We need that might because these cases will continue to pop up everywhere as no one is really guarding the hen house. We just don’t have enough oomph behind our regulations or enforcement. Most of the time we find out about drinking water issues because people get sick.

Case in point: Three people have died and more than 60 have been sickened in a fast-growing outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Harlem that has health officials still searching for the source more than a week after people began turning up ill.

Legionella outbreaks are on the rise in the last two decades. Legionella is a type of bacteria found naturally in freshwater like lakes and streams, but it has become more widespread in man-made water systems like showers, faucets, and plumbing systems.

Legionnaire’s is not contagious; people contract it by breathing in droplets of water contaminated with Legionella pneumophilia bacteria. Some of these cases can be traced to water systems where conditions are favorable for bacterial growth, such as cooling towers, hot tubs, humidifiers, and large air-­ conditioning systems, but CDC research has shown that people can easily be exposed to Legionella from hot water that comes out of faucets and shower heads.

I’m not trying to scare anyone, but it’s important to know that we have a lack of epidemiological data on the underlying drivers of increasing legionellosis incidence in this country. Without that info, we can’t even begin to create protections.

It’s the same for so many contaminants whether they are physical contaminants (like sediment), chemical contaminants (such as pesticides and heavy metals), biological contaminants (like bacteria and viruses), or radiological contaminants (such as radium and uranium).

Without strong protection and enforcement for toxic substances, we are essentially giving polluters (and other bad players) a green light to continue poisoning our water and communities without consequence.

But I do believe in individuals to realize their own superpowers—meaning anyone can become a powerhouse and advocate for change.

I often feel like Batman (Batwoman?) getting distress signals from across the country—and the world. I can’t always respond to every single call, but I can tell you that when communities work together, change is possible.

A Lame-Ass Offer

Can you believe it’s been 25 years since the movie came out? This scene reminds me (and I hope you too) why I got started on this work and why it’s so important all these years later. Contaminants in our drinking water can cause all kinds of health problems, especially when they go unregulated and without proper enforcement of regs.

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With serious shortcomings in current protections for our drinking water, what steps are you taking to ensure your health?