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In May of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called for a lowering of the allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water, from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 5 ppb. The move followed National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations that the current standard could result in 1 person in 100 developing cancer over a lifetime of exposure.
But a rider attached by Congressman Jim Gibbons (R-NV) onto an appropriations bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others, delays EPA from taking any action to lower arsenic levels in drinking water. The action could postpone the lowering of allowable arsenic levels for another 6 months, and potentially longer.
Thursday, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) made a last ditch motion to remove the rider from the bill but was voted down by the majority Republican party.
"This was a bad process, and it produced bad policy," Boxer said in a statement released after the vote. "It demonstrates how much we need more people in the US Congress to stand up for the environment and public health."
Members of Congress were essentially given two choices, said Erik Olsen, a lawyer with The Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental and public health advocacy group based in New York City. They could either vote to "poison people with arsenic or vote to shut down a segment of the government" by not voting to pass the budget bill.
"We are still operating on an interim standard for arsenic that came about in 1975," Olsen told Reuters Health. He and his group are, in fact, currently suing the EPA in an effort to force them to stick to a deadline for lowering the standard. The EPA has missed their deadline three times before, the most recent being January 1, 2000. With the current situation in Congress, it now looks that any attempt to use the court system to speed things up will not pan out.
"If Congress passes a law that extends the deadline for lowering arsenic levels, I don't think the court will overturn what Congress says," Olsen said.
LONG TERM EXPOSURE LINKED TO CANCER
Arsenic occurs naturally in rocks, soil, water and air. Scientists say that most water sources in the United States contain levels less than 5 ppb, but the EPA cautions that "there may be hot spots with...higher than the predicted occurrence."
"More water systems in the western states that depend on underground sources of drinking water have naturally occurring levels of arsenic at levels greater than 10 ppb than in other parts of the US. Parts of the Midwest and New England have systems whose current arsenic levels range from 2 to 10 ppb," according to the EPA.
"Long-term exposure to low concentrations of arsenic in drinking water can lead to skin, bladder, lung and prostate cancer. Non-cancer effects of ingesting arsenic at low levels include cardiovascular disease, diabetes and anemia, as well as reproductive and developmental, immunological and neurological effects," according to the EPA proposal to lower the standard.
While the EPA notes that higher exposures to arsenic (those above the current 50 ppb standard) are rare, they estimate that lowering the standard to 5 ppb "will provide additional protection for 22.5 million Americans from cancer" and other health problems.
In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences released a report entitled "Arsenic in Drinking Water" and announced that the EPA "should develop a stricter standard for allowable levels of arsenic in the nation's drinking water as soon as possible."
The NAS based their recommendations after reviewing numerous studies including several based on populations outside the US.
"There have been observed increased risks of fatal cancer in populations in Taiwan, Chile and Argentina, that have consumed amounts of arsenic in drinking water that are less than 10 times higher than those permitted under the current standard of 50 ppb here in the United States," said Dr. Michael Kosnett of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and a member of the NAS committee that produced the arsenic report.
"The well-established approach to public health protection that has been taken by the EPA and other public health agencies is to establish standards that provide a margin of safety between drinking water standards and levels associated with fatal outcomes," Kosnett said in an interview with Reuters Health.
"You want a safety margin that is considerably greater than 10 times any observed risk," he said.
UNANIMOUS VIEW THAT LEVEL SHOULD DROP
Industries such as water utilities and mining operations would bear the brunt of the costs to monitor for arsenic and clean up the water to safe levels. Many in these groups do not believe that the existing research supports the EPA's recommendation of such a low level of arsenic in drinking water.
"We certainly don't believe that the standard should be 50 ppb. There is a unanimous view that the standard needs to come down and we have supported that from the beginning," said Doug Marsano, a spokesman for the American Water Works Association, an industry group that represents water utility companies in Denver, Colorado.
"What we did was run the numbers through the EPA's formula that they provided through the rule and it became clear to us after doing so that it is hard to justify a standard below 20 ppb," Marsano told Reuters Health.
Other groups, like the National Mining Association (NMA) in Washington, DC, contend that the research cited by EPA is insufficient and that more studies about health effects of arsenic in US populations need to be done.
They note that cancer rates are not higher in states that are known to have high levels of naturally occurring arsenic, such as Montana, New Hampshire and Utah--where in some cases levels exceed 190 ppb.
"You would think that you would have really high cancer levels in these places, but that does not seem to be true," said Karen Bennett, a spokesperson for the NMA. "We haven't looked at our own populations and really ascertained if the trend exists that the EPA is concerned about."
"Based on our interpretation of the study submitted by the NAS we believe that the level that would be protective of public health would be 5 ppb," said Charlie Fox, Assistant Administrator of the Office of Water at the EPA, in defense of the proposal. "We used their science to inform our decision making. I would seriously question the analysis of the AWWA."
"I feel very comfortable with the conclusion and that the current science does not justify that (an arsenic level) of 20 ppb is protective of public health," he said.
STRICTER LEVELS MEAN HIGHER COSTS
Nearly everyone agrees that many water utilities are already strapped for cash and are having difficulty meeting current water treatment regulations. As water in our nation's lakes, rivers and aquifers becomes more polluted, the technology needed to clean up the water becomes more and more expensive.
The EPA numbers would provide "as much as a $1.5 billion a year increase in cost" to clean the water," said the AWWA's Marsano, adding that, "it would cost $2,000 a year more per household in some small towns."
"At a standard below 20 ppb, you are just paying too much for health benefits that are circumspect," Marsano said.
But the EPA, in turn, believes that these cost estimates are too high, saying that "part of the value of the public comment period is that it provides us with an opportunity to compare industry's numbers with our numbers," according to Fox. "Our numbers were a fra
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