THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 13, 1995 TAG: 9512130008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY DR. ROBERT MORRIS
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
Sen. John Warner and some of his colleagues in the U.S. Senate decided recently that even if your drinking water is contaminated, the water company doesn't need to tell you. As an epidemiologist familiar with a devastating outbreak of waterborne illness in my home city of Milwaukee, I know that ignorance is far from bliss. It seems, however, these senators would prefer that you learn what's in your water from an epidemic, rather than from a report by your local water utility.
With the Safe Drinking Water Act up for re-authorization, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., offered an amendment requiring utilities to tell customers what's in their water and what standards of purity and safety are being violated. This ``community right to know'' provision didn't actually ask the water companies to do anything about the problems - just tell the public they existed. Unfortunately, with the aid of Sen. Warner, this amendment was defeated, so you still will have no clear idea how good or bad your water is. I suspect it's worse than you think - perhaps much worse.
In 1992, a parasite known as Cryptosporidium slipped through the water purification plants in Milwaukee. Ten years ago, doctors and scientists thought this pathogen was relatively harmless and rare. But in Milwaukee, it proved far from benign, sickening 400,000, hospitalizing 4,000 and killing 100 of the most vulnerable.
It's not rare, either. Most of the large American water supplies draw from lakes and rivers that contain Cryptosporidium. More than one out of four water-delivery systems still contain this parasite, even after the water has been treated. Not even chlorination kills Cryptosporidium.
Although the first large disease outbreak from the parasite occurred in 1987, six years before Milwaukee, there still is no federal standard to control it. Because it is so difficult to detect, water plants watch for it indirectly, by measuring the turbidity, or cloudiness from suspended particles, in the water. Yet the current limit for water turbidity is two and a half times the highest level reached during the Milwaukee outbreak.
The numbers vary, but even conservative estimates suggest there are over one million cases of waterborne infections annually in this country. There are other threats as well. Chlorinating our water kills many disease-causing organisms, but high levels of the byproducts of chlorination are associated with more than 10,000 cases of cancer each year in the United States. Arsenic, radon, weed killers and other cancer-causing agents are found in drinking water.
There always will be questions about the precise risks of these substances, but the right of consumers to know about what's in their water is essential if they are to make informed decisions. The Senate and the water companies, however, figure it's better to keep you in the dark.
If Congress and water utility protest that what comes out of the tap is perfectly safe, then they should have nothing to hide. So let them issue a report card. If they argue the public is too ignorant to understand, then educate them. We can learn a great deal from labels on our food, so why not get some labels on our water? Then, if a community knows what it's getting, it can make a reasoned choice about spending more money for safer water.
It has been suggested that the cost for advanced water treatment is too high, but can we afford the cost of waterborne illness? One thing we have found since the Milwaukee Cryptosporidium outbreak is that even relatively inexpensive changes in operational procedures can make a difference.
As an epidemiologist with experience in the largest waterborne disease outbreak in American history, I believe the Milwaukee catastrophe will happen again if we do not act to improve the quality of our drinking water. Before you dismiss this as environmental alarmist rhetoric, you should find out what's in your own water supply.
But the recent vote by John Warner and other senators makes that almost impossible, keeping the public from realizing the extent of the danger, and helping to assure that history will repeat itself. MEMO: Dr. Robert Morris is director of the Center for Environmental
Epidemiology and an associate professor in the Department of Family and
Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
by CNB