Gaps In Public Health Endanger Tap Water Safety

Investigation reveals major gaps in our system of public health protections when it comes to Tap Water Safety.

Federal Tap Water Safety Programs

Federal programs that allocate grants and low-cost loans to prevent water pollution and protect the rivers, streams, and groundwater that we drink are sorely underfunded.

Just 5 percent of $6 billion granted to states under the Clean Water Act State Revolving Fund, went toward mitigating polluted runoff from farms, and urban and sprawl areas, which collectively account for 60 percent of water pollution.

And only $2.7 million has been allocated to conserve buffer zones along rivers and streams (1997-2003), over the six-year history of the source water protection program mobilized under the Safe Drinking Water Act State Revolving Fund.

This initiative has protected just 2,000 acres nationwide, although it is the most significant source water protection program in the history of the Safe Drinking Water Act (TPL and AWWA 2004).

By failing to clean up rivers and reservoirs that provide drinking water for hundreds of millions of Americans, EPA and the Congress have forced water utilities to decontaminate water that is polluted with industrial chemicals, factory farm waste, sewage, pesticides, fertilizer, and sediment.

In its most recent National Water Quality Inventory EPA found that 45 percent of lakes and 39 percent of streams and rivers are "impaired" — unsafe for drinking, fishing, or even swimming, in some cases (EPA 2000).

Even after water suppliers filter and disinfect the water, scores of contaminants remain, with conventional treatment regimes removing less than 20 percent of some contaminants (Faust and Aly 1998).

Tap Water Safety Standards

By failing to set tap water safety standards expeditiously or require and fund comprehensive testing, EPA allows widespread exposures to chemical mixtures posing unknown risks to human health.

Of the 141 unregulated contaminants utilities detected in water supplies between 1998 and 2003, 52 are linked to cancer, 41 to reproductive toxicity, 36 to developmental toxicity, and 16 to immune system damage, according to chemical listings in seven standard government and industry toxicity references.

Despite the potential health risks, any concentration of these chemicals in tap water is legal, no matter how high.

For 64 of the unregulated contaminants found in tap water, the government has not yet recommended unenforceable, health-based limits in tap water, let alone set an enforceable safety standard. For 46 of these chemicals, no health information whatsoever is available in standard government and academic references.

Unregulated chemicals that pollute public tap water supplies include:

• The gasoline additive MTBE;
  
• The rocket fuel component perchlorate;
  
• At least 15 chemical by-products of water disinfection;
  
• Four industrial plasticizers called phthalates linked to birth defects and reproductive toxicity;
  
• 78 chemicals used in industrial and consumer products;
  
• 20 chemical pollutants from gasoline, coal, and other fuel combustion.
  
• Water pollution from many sources — industry, agriculture, development, treatment

Tap Water Safety Number 1 Concern

A Harris Interactive poll published in October 2005 found that Americans rank water pollution as the number one environmental concern facing the country, topping global warming, ozone depletion, and air pollution (The Harris Poll 2005).

And yet we find a deep disconnect between what people care about and what the government is willing to act upon.

From agricultural pollution, to industrial waste, to pollution stemming from sprawl and urban runoff, a lack of political will materializes into poor planning and scarce funding that leads to pollution beginning upstream and ending at the tap.

EWG's analysis of tap water testing from 42 states validates the public's concern about tap water.

We found that between 1998 and 2003, water suppliers collectively identified in treated tap water:

• 83 agricultural pollutants, including pesticides and chemicals from fertilizer- and manure-laden runoff;
  
• 59 contaminants linked to sprawl and urban areas, from polluted runoff and wastewater treatment plants;
  
• 166 industrial chemicals from factory waste and consumer products;
  
• 44 pollutants that are by-products of the water treatment process or that leach from pipes and storage tanks.

Source: EWG analysis of water utility test data for 1998-2003, compiled and provided to EWG by state drinking water offices.

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