MEC&F Expert Engineers : 03/27/21

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Drinking water supplied by New Jersey utilities between 2012 and 2017 contained 107 contaminants

 


NJ Drinking Water Contaminants Increase, Survey Says

Jon Hurdle, Contributing writer | October 23, 2019 | Energy & Environment, Water
Advocacy group says some substances top recommended health limits; most samples met standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

The latest tally of contaminants was 26 more than in the last report by the Environmental Working Group.

Drinking water supplied by New Jersey utilities between 2012 and 2017 contained 107 contaminants — some of which were at levels that advocates say are harmful to human health, according to a survey published on Wednesday.

The advocacy organization Environmental Working Group used data from the state Department of Environmental Protection on drinking water quality at New Jersey’s 579 utilities, as part of its national U.S. Tap Water Database, a biennial report. The latest tally of contaminants was 26 more than in the last report, covering the years 2010-2015, which was released two years ago.

In New Jersey, the report found some samples from larger utilities contained contaminants at levels that exceeded health limits as recommended by other states or by the nonprofit itself, although nearly all samples met standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Although the samples were taken as long ago as 2012, the contamination levels found are probably the same now unless a supply has been treated, said Chris Campbell, vice president for information technology at EWG.

“It is likely, barring installation of some form of treatment, that the levels now are similar to 2015-2017, which is the timeframe used on most contaminants,” he said.

The ‘Erin Brokovich’ chemical

The most common contaminant in New Jersey was hexavalent chromium, the so-called “Erin Brockovich Chemical” — named after the well-known public-health campaigner in California — that is used in the manufacture of dyes, paints, inks and plastics, and can cause lung cancer if regularly inhaled, according to federal health experts. The chemical was found at above EWG-recommended health limits in the water of 202 New Jersey utilities serving some 7.5 million people, the report said.

The second most common contaminant was bromodichloromethane, a chemical formed when chlorine is used to disinfect drinking water, and which has been linked in animal studies to cancer of the liver, kidneys and intestines, according to federal scientists. In New Jersey, there were 193 utilities serving some 5.1 million people where the chemical was found at above EWG’s recommended health limits, the report said.

EWG bases many of its health recommendations on standards set by California, or its own research. In New Jersey, there were 10 contaminants that exceeded the EWG-recommended health levels but only two that exceeded federal legal limits, the report said.

Utilities where multiple contaminants were found included Atlantic City, which had 10 chemicals that exceeded EWG’s health standards — the same number as in the 2017 survey. Still, the city’s water met all federal health requirements between January and March this year, the report said.

The Atlantic City contaminants included PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfate), one of the potentially carcinogenic PFAS family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, at 33 times EWG’s recommended limit, and the related chemical PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) at 12 times the limit. The PFOA level was just within a new health limit that’s being adopted by the Department of Environmental Protection, while the PFOS level exceeded the state standard. EWG said it had no information on the source of contamination at Atlantic City.

Meeting federal standards

Atlantic City’s water also contained arsenic at 31 times EWG’s health guideline, and chloroform that was 40 times higher than the recommended EWG health limit. Arsenic is the only one of the 10 contaminants in the city’s water that’s subject to a federal legal limit of 10 micrograms per liter.

Still, Atlantic City, whose water system serves about 152,000 customers, complied with federal standards on lead, the survey found. Only 3.2% of the households sampled in Atlantic City exceeded the EPA’s lead health limit of 15 parts per billion (ppb) during the latest testing in 2017.

Among other utilities, New Jersey American Water’s western region system, serving some 264,000 people, also exceeded EWG’s health guidelines for 10 contaminants including hexavalent chromium and chloroform, neither of which have a legal limit.

New Jersey American Water said the substances identified by EWG in its water are mostly by-products of water disinfectants, which meet all regulatory requirements, and were previously reported to the DEP. Others are chemicals in source water at levels well below “recognized” state or federal drinking water standards.

“While we do not specifically treat for these unregulated compounds, their presence is affected by the overall treatment process,” the company said in a statement. “New Jersey American Water treats and delivers water that meets or surpasses EPA and New Jersey drinking water standards.”

Using California’s public health goals

The company’s president, Cheryl Norton, said the health limits advocated by EWG often use California’s public health goals that are a lot stricter than implemented state standards that take into account other factors like detectability and the cost of treatment. For example, she said California’s enforceable limit for arsenic is 2,500 times higher than its public health goal and matches the federal level.

At Woodbridge-based Middlesex Water, serving about 233,000 customers, hexavalent chromium and PFOA were both found at above recommended levels.

Middlesex’s chief executive, Dennis Doll, said the report was in line with the company’s own findings. “We don’t agree with the EWG’s methodology but the results they are reporting are not an unreasonable representation of our numbers,” he wrote in an email.

He noted that EWG’s health limits are recommendations, not regulations, and so the reported levels do not violate any legal limit. He called EWG’s proposed limit of 1 part per trillion (ppt) for PFOA “outrageously low and not based on sound science.” The PFOA level in the EWG report is based on only one Middlesex well, and so represents a very small part of the company’s overall system, he said.

While the PFOA level in the Middlesex system topped EWG’s recommendation, it was within the level that is being adopted by the DEP.

Unsound science driving ‘race to zero’?

The Water Research Foundation, a national group that Doll chairs, believes pressure on utilities and regulators from EWG and other advocates is resulting in “a race to zero” that he said is not being driven by sound science or EPA policy.

Still, EWG said the data shows that the EPA should set stricter standards on drinking water contaminants. “Legal does not necessarily equal safe,” the group said. “Getting a passing grade from the federal government does not mean the water meets the latest health guidelines.”

For its part, the EPA said it has set enforceable maximum contaminant limits (MCLs) for some chemicals including arsenic and chloroform, and has issued a number of regulations since the 1995 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act to reduce the risks of pathogens in ground water and surface water, and from disinfection by-products.

On PFAS, the agency reiterated that it will decide by the end of this year whether to begin regulating PFOA and PFOS, and is evaluating other PFAS chemicals for possible regulation.

Andrea Drinkard, a spokeswoman for EPA, said the agency distinguishes between the enforcement levels and “Maximum Contaminant Limit Goals” (MCLGs), as set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. For example, the MCLG for arsenic is zero because there is no level of arsenic in water that is without risk, but the EPA has set 10 micrograms per liter as the enforcement level “in accordance with SDWA requirements that EPA consider the feasibility, costs, and benefits when establishing regulations,” she said.

Different standards

Arsenic is one of 14 contaminants for which New Jersey has stricter limits than the EPA, according to the DEP’s Annual Compliance Report for 2018, which describes the different standards that water utilities are required to meet. That report names 49 water systems that exceeded maximum contaminant limits for different chemicals during the year, and another 29 that topped the EPA’s “action levels” on lead and copper.

The survey comes as New Jersey lawmakers and advocates step up their efforts to renew aging water pipes and sewers that leak drinking water and spill raw sewage during rainstorms. Municipal and investor-owned water utilities are also working to ensure that public water supplies are free of contaminants such as the lead that comes from antiquated pipes, and the PFAS chemicals that persist in many water systems long after their industrial uses have ended.

On Oct. 10, Gov. Phil Murphy set a target of replacing the state’s estimated 350,000 lead service lines — pipes that connect individual homes with water transmission lines — within 10 years. He proposed a $500 million bond to help utilities comply with the target, which is expected to cost some $2 billion in total.

Murphy’s initiative came on the same day as a major report on lead from Jersey Water Works, a consortium dedicated to renewing the state’s antiquated water infrastructure, and followed recent alarm over lead contamination in Newark where authorities are already replacing lead lines and helping residents install in-home filters.

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Facts About the World Water Crisis

 


10 Facts About the World Water Crisis

  1. 784 million people around the world are without basic water access. That’s more than twice the population of the United States.
  2. More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war.
  3. Two billion people, or about 1 in 4, lack access to a toilet or latrine.
  4. Diarrheal diseases, caused primarily by unsafe water and poor sanitation, kill more children under 5 years old than malaria, AIDS, and measles combined.
  5. Diarrheal disease kills one child every 60 seconds.
  6. About a quarter (22%) of health facilities in Least Developed Countries have no safe water.
  7. In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls spend an estimated 40 billions hours a year collecting water.
  8. An estimated 400 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases, with 272 million lost to diarrhea alone.
  9. Lost time gathering water significantly reduces productive farming time for women in parts of the developing world. With safe water nearby, it’s estimated that women could feed 150 million of the world’s hungry.
  10. For every $1 invested in safe water and sanitation, a yield of $5 to $28 USD is returned in increased economic activity and reduced health care costs. Access to safe water stimulates the economy for the long-term.
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UN: the inability to recognize the value of water is the main cause of water waste and misuse

 


Launch of UN World Water Development Report 2021: determining the true value of the “blue gold” we need to protect.

Paris, 22 March — The United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR) 2021, published by UNESCO on behalf of UN-Water, shows that the inability to recognize the value of water is the main cause of water waste and misuse. Despite the difficulty of attributing an objective and indisputable value to a resource which is fundamental to life, it seems necessary to examine water’s various dimensions in order to understand the various aspects of its “value”. This is especially true in times of growing scarcity and against the backdrop of population growth and climate change.

“Water is our most precious resource, a ‘blue gold’ to which more than 2 billion people do not have direct access. It is not only essential for survival, but also plays a sanitary, social and cultural role at the heart of human societies,” says the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay.

This year’s WWDR addresses the question of the value of water. It shows that waste and careless use stems from the fact we all too often think of water exclusively in terms of its cost price, without realizing its tremendous value, which is impossible to price.

“The devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic remind us of the importance of having access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, and highlight that far too many people are still without them. Many of our problems arise because we do not value water highly enough; all too often water is not valued at all,” says Gilbert F. Houngbo, Chair of UN-Water and President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The value of water is certainly incalculable and limitless, since life cannot exist without it and it has no replacement. This is perhaps best illustrated by the widespread enthusiasm for the idea that traces of water can be found on Mars, or the fact that we think of water and life as interchangeable when studying other planets.

The report emphasizes the great need to broaden the notion of the “value” of water stressing that we cannot confuse the concepts of “price”, “cost” and “value”.

Although price and cost are potentially quantifiable, the concept of “value” is much wider and includes social and cultural dimensions.

Indeed, water is not like other raw materials which can be treated as commodities and openly traded through stock markets. The challenge is to determine a value for a resource whose importance varies in different areas of economic activity, at different times, without forgetting to take into account its social, environmental and cultural dimensions.

Tools and methodologies for valuing water are both imperfect and misapplied

The tools we have today tend to reduce the value of water to its economic aspect.

The economic value of water cannot be denied considering its myriad uses in food, electricity and industrial production, to name just a few.

While monetary valuation has the advantage of convenience and easy legibility in agriculture and industry, it presents the disadvantage of underestimating, even excluding, other aspects which are more difficult to monetize. How do we quantify the meaning of the 443 million schooldays missed annually due to water-related diseases?

Furthermore, some societies reject the idea of viewing nature and its benefits from an economic perspective, putting the rights of “Mother Earth” to the fore, thus rendering such economic readings of the value of water woefully inadequate.

In India, for example, the Ganges is revered by Hindus as a living entity with the same rights as human beings. Similarly, in New Zealand, the Te Awa Tupua Act of 2017 recognizes the Whanganui River as “an indivisible and living whole from the mountains to the sea” and guarantees the river’s protection by the local Maori population. “The fate of humans and water is inextricably linked. In the words of the Whanganui River Tribe’s proverb, Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au, I am the river, the river is me”, notes Audrey Azoulay.

Faced with these views and those of investors, who consider that resources such as water can have an economic value put on them, it becomes difficult to develop a standard system to measure the value of water in all its aspects. Nevertheless, it is possible to develop an integrated approach that allows the different dimensions of water to be considered together, so as to identify appropriate policy choices. A key element of such an approach is to ensure that all stakeholders, regardless of background or gender, are involved in evaluations and decision-making. If we want to enrich our approach to water and stop reducing the resource to its mere monetary value, we must be enriched by the views held by all, especially the people directly concerned.

Overcoming differences of opinion and reaching the necessary compromises is one of the great challenges of water management. “The time has come for stakeholders to identify, articulate and share perspectives of the values of water,” emphasizes UN-Water Chair, Gilbert F. Houngbo. This implies developing mechanisms that allow stakeholders not only to express themselves but also to be heard.

When major infrastructure projects are studied, for example, it is essential to consider all these different dimensions, to ensure that their social, cultural and environmental consequences are not underestimated. A cost-benefit approach therefore requires considering the different “values” of water.

Similarly, we know that providing universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation in 140 low- and middle-income countries would cost $114 billion per year, whereas the multiple social and economic benefits of safe water are difficult to evaluate.

These issues are at the heart of this year’s edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR), UN-Water’s flagship publication on water and sanitation issues, which focuses on a different theme every year.

The report is published by UNESCO on behalf of UN-Water and its production is coordinate by the UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme. The report gives insight into the main trends concerning the state, use and management of freshwater and sanitation, based on work by members and partners of UN-Water.

Launched in conjunction with World Water Day, the report provides decision-makers with knowledge and tools to formulate and implement sustainable water policies. It also offers best practice examples and in-depth analyses to stimulate ideas and actions for better stewardship in the water sector and beyond.

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Human health can be influenced by many factors, including exposure to physical, chemical, biological, and radiological contaminants in the environment.

 

Human Exposure and Health


Human health can be influenced by many factors, including exposure to physical, chemical, biological, and radiological contaminants in the environment. Protecting human health from environmental contaminants is integral to EPA's mission.

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EPA scientists evaluate the extent to which people are exposed to contaminants in air, in water, and on land; how these exposures affect human health; and what levels of exposure are harmful. The Agency uses this information to develop guidelines for the safe production, handling, and management of hazardous substances, and to determine whether further study or public health intervention may be necessary.

EPA also tracks exposures and health condition across segments of the population (such as gender, race, or ethnicity) or geographic location to help identify differences across subgroups and guide public health decisions and strategies.

This is consistent with national public health goals aimed at eliminating health disparities, and helps the Agency work toward environmental justice by addressing a continuing concern that minority and/or economically disadvantaged communities frequently may be exposed disproportionately to environmental contaminants.

The ROE indicators address three fundamental questions regarding trends in human exposure and disease or conditions that may be associated with environmental factors. All three questions examined trends across the U.S. population as a whole, as well as across population subgroups and geographic regions:

Indicators: Exposure to Environmental Contaminant

Indicators: Health Status

Indicators: Disease and Conditions

The ROE exposure and health indicators are based on data sets representative of the national population (rather than data from targeted populations) and are not tied to specific exposures or releases. They do not directly link exposure with outcome and, consequently:

  • Cannot be used to demonstrate causal relationships between exposure to a contaminant and a particular health outcome.
  • Cannot be directly linked to any of the indicators of emissions or ambient pollutants in Air, Water, or Land.

However, when combined with other information, such as environmental monitoring data and data from toxicological, epidemiological, or clinical studies, these indicators can be an important key to better understanding the relationship between environmental contamination and health outcomes.

Environmental Public Health Paradigm

Development of disease is multi-faceted, and the relationship between environmental contamination, exposure, and disease is complex. The environmental public health paradigm shown in Exhibit 11 illustrates the broad continuum of factors or events that may be involved in the potential development of human disease following exposure to an environmental contaminant.

Exhibit 1. This exhibit shows the series of events that provide the conceptual basis for understanding and evaluating environmental health. For adverse health effects such as clinical disease or death to occur, a contaminant must first be released from it

The presence of a contaminant in the environment or within human tissue alone does not mean disease will occur. For adverse health effects (clinical disease or death) to occur, a contaminant must:

  • Be released from its source (block 1);
  • Reach human receptors (via air, water, or land) (blocks 2 and 3);
  • Enter the human body (via inhalation, ingestion, or skin contact) (block 4), and:
  • Be present in the body at sufficient doses to cause biological changes (block 5) that may ultimately result in an adverse health effect (Block 6).

This series of events serves as the conceptual basis for understanding and evaluating environmental health. Air, Water, and Land present indicators relevant to blocks 1-3. Indicators based on data from individuals, communities, or populations (blocks 4-6) are the domain of Human Exposure and Health.

The paradigm is a linear, schematic depiction of a process that is, in reality, complex and multi-factorial. For example:

  • Exposure to an environmental contaminant is rarely the sole cause of an adverse health outcome. Environmental contaminant exposure is just one of several factors that can contribute to the occurrence or severity of disease. Other factors include diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, individual genetic makeup, medications, and other pre-existing diseases. For example, asthma can be triggered by an environmental insult, but environmental exposures are not the “cause” of all asthma attacks. Consequently, the presence of a disease or health outcome for which environmental contaminants are risk factors does not mean exposure has occurred or contributed to that disease.
     
  • Different contaminants can be risk factors for the same disease. For example, both outdoor air pollution and certain indoor air pollutants, such as environmental tobacco smoke, can exacerbate asthma symptoms.
     
  • Susceptibility to disease is different for each person. Some individuals may experience effects from certain ambient exposure levels, while others may not.
     
  • Much remains unknown about the extent to which environmental contaminant exposures impact health. Some environmental contaminants are considered important risk factors. In other cases, available data suggest that environmental exposures are important, but proof is lacking. And in other cases, the relationship between the contaminant and human health, if any, is not known.

Connections Between Environmental Exposure and Health Outcomes

Relationships between environmental exposures and health outcomes can only be established through well-designed epidemiological, toxicological, and clinical studies. Developing evidence that environmental contaminants cause or contribute to the incidence of adverse health effects can be challenging, particularly for effects that occur in a relatively small proportion of the population or effects with multiple causes. For example:

  • In cases where exposure to an environmental contaminant results in a relatively modest increase in the incidence of a disease or disorder, a large sample size for the study would be needed to detect a true relationship.
     
  • There may be factors related to both the exposure and the health effect—confounding factors—that can make it difficult to detect a relationship between exposure to environmental contaminants and disease.
     
  • In many cases, findings from studies in humans and/or laboratory animals may provide suggestive (rather than conclusive) evidence that exposures to environmental contaminants contribute to the incidence of a disease or disorder.

Nevertheless, extensive and collaborative data collection and research across the scientific community continue to strengthen understanding of the relationships between environmental exposures and disease.

EPA uses the results of scientific research to help identify linkages between exposure to environmental contaminants and diseases, conditions, or other health outcomes. These linkages, in turn, identify environmental contaminants and health outcomes of potential Agency interest. Research has established a relationship between exposure and disease for some environmental contaminants including:

  • Radon and lung cancer.
  • Arsenic and cancer in several organs.
  • Lead and nervous system disorders.
  • Disease-causing bacteria (such as E. coli) and gastrointestinal illness and death.
  • Particulate matter and aggravation of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

These known linkages guided selection of the Human Exposure and Health indicators in the ROE. However, because these indicators are based on data sets representative of the national population (rather than data from targeted populations) and are not tied to specific exposures or releases, they do not directly link environmental exposure with outcome.

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References

[1] Adapted from: Sexton, K., S.G. Selevan, D.K. Wagener, and J.A. Lybarger. 1992. Estimating human exposures to environmental pollutants: Availability and utility of existing databases. Arch. Environ. Health 47(6):398-407.

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