A new survey shows arsenic levels in public water are disproportionately high in certain U.S. communities, despite national regulatory standards designed to protect people from the harmful chemical.
Researchers studied approximately 13 million records from 2006 to 2011 covering 139,000 public water systems in 46 states, Washington D.C., and Native American tribes. The records cover water service for 290 million people, representing 95 percent of all public water systems and 92 percent of the total population served by public water systems. Researchers found that, while average public water arsenic concentrations decreased by an average of 10 percent nationwide over the time studied, that decrease was not equal across all areas or demographic groups. Arsenic levels remained higher in water systems serving Hispanic communities and areas of the Southwestern U.S. Their findings were published this month in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Arsenic is a highly toxic carcinogen, and is “the most significant chemical contaminant in drinking water, globally,” according to the World Health Organization. Chronic exposure to arsenic has been shown to damage almost every system in the human body, resulting in conditions like heart disease, diarrhea, cognitive impairment, cirrhosis and lung disease, among others.
“We actually know very little about inequalities in public drinking water quality across the U.S.,” Anne Nigra, environmental health scientist at Columbia University and the lead author of the paper, told EHN. She added that these contamination levels across different communities are really important data points to collect — with these measurements you can see where inequalities lie, and further study how that exposure is related to disease.
Primarily Hispanic communities, smaller populations of about 1,000, and areas in the Southwest were more likely to have arsenic concentrations in drinking water that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum contaminant level, raising environmental justice concerns. The maximum contaminant level is the highest concentration of a contaminant that is allowed in drinking water. The EPA determines these levels by considering the public’s health, but also the costs and feasibility of achieving and enforcing that standard.
Nigra and her team studied records from 2006 to 2011 because that was when the EPA began following up and enforcing their new, lowered thresholds for arsenic in water. The EPA announced in 2001 that the maximum contaminant level would go from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion, to be enforced by 2006.
Ten parts per billion may be significantly lower than 50 parts per billion, but Nigra said that’s not enough. “The Netherlands has established a regulatory limit of 1 part per billion in drinking water. Denmark, New Hampshire, and the state of New Jersey, have all established a regulatory standard of five parts per billion,” she said.
Many counties exceed even that. The study results showed that there are still close to 500 counties whose arsenic levels crossed that threshold. It’s a great health concern, said Nigra, because “there is no safe level of arsenic in drinking water.”
The EPA’s maximum contaminant level goal is zero parts per billion.
Arsenic may not accumulate in the body the way other elements, like lead or mercury do, said Nigra, but if you are being exposed to arsenic through drinking water, that exposure is chronic, and “chronic exposure, even at low to moderate levels of exposure, is a real problem, and it’s a real threat to health.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy