Why it matters:

Because the E.P.A.’s “Safe Drinking Water” Act was passed in 1974 (5 years before I was born) and hasn’t been updated since the year 2000, when N’ Sync ruled the airwaves.

Recap:

A recent piece by the New York Times couldn’t be clearer: just because drinking water is considered “safe” by law, it can still contain known toxins in concentrations now considered dangerous, and any combination of tens of thousands of unregulated industrial chemicals in any concentration.

After extensive lab work, studies, and other research, the Times has laid bare the inadequacies of the nation’s regulations on drinking water. “The Safe Drinking Water Act” was a welcome breath of fresh air (or glass of fresh water, to be more precise) when it was enacted in 1974. After decades, drinking whatever swill sputtered from their faucets, lawmakers and scientists in the mid seventies asked themselves a rather poignant question, “My tap water is brown and smells like hot trash. Should I really be drinking this stuff?”

And so the “Safe Water Act” was born and water utilities around the nation were suddenly required to keep tabs on 20 chemicals. By 2000 that list had ballooned wildly to… 91 chemicals. Unfortunately, according to EPA estimates nearly 60,000 chemicals are used in the U.S. Which means the agency regulates roughly .001 percent of the chemicals that may be in our drinking water.

That’s scary.

Commentary:

What’s scarier is that science has advanced since 1974. And in much the same way that  iTunes replaced 8 Tracks and cell phones replaced… what? Walkie-Talkies? Scientists and doctors were conducting ever-advancing research on the effects of chemicals on the human body.

What they’ve found in many cases in that these 91 chemicals are much more dangerous than previously thought, and in much smaller doses than predicted. In the case of arsenic, for example, EPA scientists proposed lowering the permitted concentration to 5 parts per billion (”roughly one drop in 50 drums of water”), but extensive lobbying diluted (Hey-yo!) the new regulations to 10 parts per billion.

But while lobbyists are busy conspiring against us, some of us are conspiring against ourselves. In Los Angeles scientists discovered the presence of bromates (a carcinogen) in the tap water. Bromates are regulated by the SDWA “but officials are required to test for them only when water leaves a treatment plant.”

In the case of LA’s water supply in 2007, Bromates were somehow appearing after testing. Scientists tracked the problem to LA’s reservoirs (including Silver Lake) where exposure to the sun was causing the development of the chemical. Officials solved the problem by covering the reservoirs in billions of plastic balls (much like those found in the ball bin at Micky-D’s, and hopefully sans phthalates, BPA, and kiddie boogers). Yet, with their gorgeous man-made reservoir now covered in plastic balls to protect them from cancer, local residents unleashed on DWP officials insisting the move was a ploy to hike water rates.

So with 59,990 chemicals left to regulate, lax regulations on the 91 chemicals we do regulate, and residents cutting off their noses to spite their faces, we’re in quite a pickle.

Luckily, despite the EPA’s wimpy regulations on drinking water, many city officials are getting tough. LA DWP’s Dr. Pankaj Parekh was part of the city’s solution to the bromate problem. Under his watchful eye the city has made strides to beat the SDWA by a good margin, but LA DWP is a public utility. A full 3/4’s of water utilities are privately held and are only restricted by the decades-old science of the SDWA.

What to do, what to do…

Creative Solutions:

• Ban BPA
• Ban phthalates
• Use a water filter
• Check out the NRDC’s drinking water FAQs
• And the USGS’s Water Quality page

Tagged as: arsenic, benefits, bpa, brita, bromate, drinking water, dwp, epa, filters, health benefits, kangen, phthalate, safe drinking water act, safe water, Water, water filters, weight loss