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Water Q & A
If my municipal water company’s Annual Water Quality Report shows that it meets all EPA guidelines, does that mean the water is safe?
On October 1, 1999, a new federal law went into effect that requires water utilities to send each customer a detailed report showing what is in their water. This law was appropriately titled "The Right To Know Amendment." The most important thing to remember is that no matter how insistent these reports are that “contaminants in your water do not necessarily pose a health risk,” any level of contamination in our drinking water does in fact represent a danger to our health. Of the over 75,000 toxic chemicals used in our society, the EPA has only set standards (MCLs) for 86, and those 86 Maximum Contaminant Levels do not necessarily reflect "health effects".
The EPA considers limited health studies based on consumption of one certain chemical by a 175 lb. adult when setting its standards. No consideration is given to the effects on small children or the combined effects of two or more contaminants, which some studies show are magnified by as much as 1000 times. Water utilities are only required to test for the 86 contaminants that the EPA has set standards for. Nobody knows how many toxic chemicals may actually be in tap water. According to the Ralph Nader Research Group, after reviewing thousands of pages of EPA documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, more than 2100 toxic chemicals have already been detected in U.S. water supplies.
Virtually all public water systems contain some level of contamination. The water utilities are usually quick to point out that the chemicals found in their water are “below EPA’s Maximum Levels”, and, in most cases, they are. The fact is that even the smallest trace of a toxic chemical causes damage; science is just now starting to realize the extent of that damage. In a recent report from the National Cancer Institute to the Surgeon General, it was stated, “No level of exposure to a chemical carcinogen should be considered toxicologically insignificant to humans.” We are just now learning the hard truth of this statement.
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