Walter Yu, P.E., LEED AP

Drinking water that's not suited to drink!

The Toxic Waters article series by the New York Times focuses on the worsening impact of pollutant on the nation’s drinking water.

Its most recent article focuses on outdated laws from the Safe Drinking Water Act that regulates 91 of the 60,000 chemicals documented by the EPA as potential pollutants in drinking water.

Many pollutants are carcinogens even in small quantities (in the parts per million magnitude) due to more potent compounds being created by evolving industry processes.

Some chemicals have been found to be harmful to health at smaller quantities than previously thought while others have not been added or updated onthe list of regulated pollutants.

The main issue is that tighter regulations have met resistance from industry lobbying while many continue to consume water from local water districts that may contain polluted water sources.

Complicating the issue is that many health effects such as cancer or birth defects do not appear for years due to the small dosages involved. Testingg drinking water for pollutants from outdated regulations still allows harmful dosages to pass into drinking water.

This holds true in other cases such as air pollution or lead in drinking water: consumption of small doses takes years for effects to appear. Proving the adverse health effects from consuming polluted drinking water is difficult to do, which has made tighter regulations more difficult to pass.

Testing itself is a challenge given that there are approximately 57,400 water systems delivering varying qualities of water. Many water districts still follow the outdated regulations, which may contain either lawful yet harmful chemicals or dosages that are now found to be harmful.

From an environmental engineering perspective, drinking quality has meant developing new technologies to better filtrate water for pollutants and helping water districts implement them. From a sustainability perspective, poor drinking quality not only affects health but reflects the worsening state of our waterways, which have experienced increased pollution.

On an individual level, we can use activated carbon filters (or similar devices) to protect ourselves against possible pollutants as recommended in the book Green, Greener, Greenest by Lori Bongiorno. As with many “green” issues involving health and the environment, we can often chart our own course to affect our own lives.