Mae Wu's Blog: Health and the Environment

More money to improve drinking water

2010-05-12T18:53:01Z

And now some good news on drinking water.

It seems like I don’t often get to write about good things happening in the drinking water world, so today is a nice change of pace. Rep. Waxman, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Markey, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, on Monday introduced the Assistance, Quality, and Affordability Act of 2010 (AQUA) that if enacted, will add some great provisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act.

As I’ve mentioned before, our drinking water infrastructure is aging and in desperate need of upgrading. It will take some serious money to do that; in 2007, EPA estimated that we need $334 billion over the next 20 years to protect public health and ensure compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. The primary source of that money has been the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DW SRF), which provides funds to states for infrastructure improvement projects.

The AQUA would authorize a much needed increase in funding for the DW SRF ($1.5 billion in 2011, $2 billion in 2012 and 2013, $3.2 billion in 2014, and $6 billion in 2015.) Even though this is a very small percentage of the total need, it is a vast improvement over the previous years, where the amount of funds actually appropriated by Congress never reached $900 million.

But that’s not all. AQUA also provides incentives for public drinking water systems to ensure that they can better provide clean and affordable drinking water to their customers well into the future. Greater weight will be given to applications for funding that include, for example, measures to improve a system’s efficiency or reduce its environmental impact. AQUA also gives special priority to poor communities that have a harder time meeting drinking water standards.

These are all good things. Hopefully it means we’ll be hearing less about massive water main breaks that keep millions of people out of drinking water for days and more about innovative plans to conserve our precious drinking water.

Spring Means Weedkiller In Our Water

2010-05-03T14:44:17Z

So you eat organic, avoid using bug sprays around the house, and keep the yard looking good with elbow grease rather than chemicals. That’s great! Does that mean you are safe from pesticides? Unfortunately, maybe not. You could very well be swimming in it or drinking it.

Atrazine is a popular weed-killer that is used on mainly corn, sugar cane, lawns, and golf courses. Last fall, our report Poisoning the Well found that atrazine was detected in most watersheds and drinking water systems that were monitored across the Midwest and the South.

We have now updated our report with Still Poisoning the Well with more recent monitoring data and more recent scientific findings about the harms associated with atrazine exposure. My colleague, Jen Sass, has done a great job of keeping track of all the dangers with atrazine, and our update adds to that growing list.

Whenever there are heavy rains after atrazine is applied to a field or lawn, much of it is washed into nearby rivers and streams. So it doesn’t come as much surprise that all the watersheds that were monitored found atrazine contamination. What was surprising was that atrazine was showing up in drinking water coming out of the tap – sometimes at alarmingly high levels.

EPA regulates how much atrazine can be in our drinking water (no more than 3 parts per billion), but compliance with the standard is based on the average of 4 samples taken over the course of a year. The data in our report were from samples taken much more frequently (up to once a week during the growing seasons in the spring and summer) – sometimes up to 30 times a years.

And what did we find? High spikes of atrazine in drinking water! Turns out that when you sample the water more frequently, you can catch spikes of atrazine that last a few weeks, while sampling only once every 3 months (as required by the EPA rules) means it’s easy to miss these spikes. In fact, of the 153 water systems that were sampled between 2005 and 2008, 100 drinking water systems had spikes of atrazine in their untreated water that exceeded 3 ppb. Two-thirds of these 100 systems had spikes of atrazine greater than 3 ppb in the treated water. Most troubling, six water systems had high enough atrazine levels to exceed the EPA drinking water standard of 3 ppb.

And here’s a little secret that Syngenta (the manufacturer of atrazine) doesn’t want people to know: we don’t actually need atrazine. Studies have shown that not using atrazine might only cause a loss of corn yields as little at 1.19%. And on the flip side, water systems are spending tens of thousands of dollars treating water to remove contaminants like atrazine.

So check out our report and see if your system is keeping atrazine out of your water. If it doesn’t, contact them and ask them why not.

Clean up in Aisle 3

2010-04-13T22:26:39Z

Last week, I wrote about our work with Congressman Markey to push FDA to take action on the endocrine disrupting chemicals triclosan and triclocarban. As a result, we got a bit of a boost with FDA's announcement that the products that use these chemicals for their “antibacterial” properties were no more effective than washing your hands with regular soap and water. FDA also acknowledged evidence of their potential harmful health effects and their role in developing antibiotic resistance. But it wasn't enough.

Today, Markey sent letters to 13 companies that are known to make products that contain triclosan (such as Rubbermaid, Colgate-Palmolive, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever) urging them to voluntarily remove them from consumer soaps, products especially marketed for children, and products that come into contact with food.

It's been more than 30 years, and we're still waiting for a lackluster FDA to take some real action. So I urge these companies to set the bar for FDA and everyone else by removing triclosan and triclocarban from their products. We need to get these chemicals off of the shelves and out of our homes, and I’m happy to see Congressman Markey pushing companies to just that.

Hopefully, there will come a time when we don't have to be vigilant about reading labels and can just know that we are safe. In the meantime, my colleague Gina Solomon has some advice on how you can limit your exposure.

FDA Shows Signs of a Pulse, But No Real Movement

2010-04-08T17:30:58Z

Come on, FDA.

Like I mentioned in my recent blog on soaps, we are really concerned about the use of triclosan and triclocarban in “antibacterial” soaps. We had been trying to get some answers from FDA for a year now, to no avail. Lots of stonewalling. So we brought our concerns to Representative Markey, who immediately saw that this was a huge problem. It appears that FDA was more responsive to Congress and actually answered his questions about regulation of the chemicals. It even made an announcement today about triclosan.

Way too little.

Consider this: when my mother was still pregnant with me, FDA had begun collecting data on these chemicals to determine whether they should be allowed in consumer products like hand soaps. Now, I’m pregnant with my mother’s first grandchild, and FDA is still trying to figure out what it wants to do with these chemicals. So, without giving my age away, let’s just say that FDA has done essentially nothing on this issue for more than 30 years, and its announcement today hasn’t really done anything to move this along. In fact, FDA’s statement today boils down to: “after more than 30 years, we need at least another year.” That’s unacceptable.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see that FDA has finally publicly acknowledged that these products are no better than using regular soap and water. But waiting another year before it simply “communicates its findings to the public” is just more of the same delay. FDA has already spent more than 30 years looking at triclosan and triclocarban, and with today’s announcement, it’s one more year that consumers have to do their own investigations into what is safe and effective to buy and what is not.

No good, FDA.

If FDA can’t get out of its bad habit of simply dragging its feet, Congress needs to step in and take action. Representative Markey is planning to introduce legislation that will move antimicrobial regulation along. He’s also working on improving the testing program for all endocrine disrupting chemicals in drinking water, which we’ll blog about soon. Something needs to happen to protect public health and the environment from unsafe chemicals, and I hope it’s before my first grandchild is on the way.

Finding Safe and Effective Soaps

2010-03-31T18:34:20Z

Just got an email from my husband - he’s heading home early from work because he’s got a cold. Which means that I’ve got to be vigilant to avoid catching his cold, so I’m going to be washing my hands all the time.

But what I’m not going to do is buy tubs of “antibacterial” soap. For one thing, there’s no one looking out for us to make sure that “antibacterial” soaps are safe and effective. I bet many people who buy these products assume that they are regulated by some government agency.

Wrong.

Check the back of any antibacterial soap that you can buy at the store. Chances are the active ingredient is either “triclosan” or “triclocarban” – antimicrobial chemicals that are used in the vast majority of liquid soaps, as well as in other products like body wash, detergent, toothpaste, and cosmetics.

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) job is to make sure that “drugs” that are on the market are both safe and effective. Products that make claims like “antibacterial” fall into that category, and if a chemical is not found to be safe and effective, it can’t be sold on the market.

Back in 1978, FDA proposed a regulation, determining that triclosan and triclocarban were not safe nor effective in soaps, and would therefore not be permitted on the market once the regulation was finalized. But nothing happened. In 1994, FDA published a new proposed regulation that again, when finalized, would not have permitted these chemicals to be in soaps. Again, FDA did nothing. We are now 32 years out, we are spending a billion dollars a year on these products and they are everywhere. And still, FDA not finalized its proposed rules that would take triclosan and triclocarban out of these products. While we wait for FDA to finalize the rule, though, these chemicals can be sold on the market unregulated.

The real kicker is that these products are neither safe nor effective. Studies have shown that the "antibacterial" soaps are no more effective than using regular soap and water. One study saw that people in households using an “antibacterial” bar soap had a similar risk of respiratory infections compared to those using regular soap.

Also, triclosan and triclocarban have been shown to interfere with hormones. Because hormones work at very low levels, a very small amount of triclosan or triclocarban can disrupt important stages of development, especially in fetuses, infants and children. Plus, it’s possible that the use of these products is contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

[UPDATE: Check out the most recent factsheet here.]

We have all these “antibacterial” soap products on the shelves that are no more effective than regular soap and water, and which may cause some serious health problems. And the agency that is supposed to protect us hasn’t found the time in 32 years to do something about it. This proposed regulation is old enough to vote. Is FDA going to wait until it’s old enough to get an AARP membership before doing something about it? I hope not. But in the meantime, be careful when you’re buying soap for your family – and don’t assume that the government is watching out for you.

[UPDATE: For a partial listing of products that contain triclosan and triclocarban, check out this database from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.]

Me? I am going to stick with regular old soap and keep washing my hands. And maybe make some chicken soup tonight.

Put Down That Bottled Water and Go Watch a Movie

2010-03-22T16:48:38Z

World Water Day – it’s a huge issue and is there anything one person can do to tackle such a big issue? Yes, and it’s an easy one: step away from the bottled water and go watch a movie.

We are in tough economic times and there are people all around the world unable to find safe drinking water, yet here we are spending billions of dollars on bottled water when we can get it for just pennies out of our tap. And the big surprise: bottled water may not be any safer, cleaner, or more pure than tap water.

On top of that, the energy costs that go into making the plastic bottle and shipping it either across the country or even across the globe (for those who love water from Pacific Island nations) are incredible. One study showed that bottled mineral water is responsible for more than 175 times more primary energy consumption, almost 170 times more crude oil use, and over 200 times more greenhouse gas emissions than tap water.

And since the vast majority of plastic bottles are not recycled, that plastic bottle you drank from for 5 minutes, ends up in a landfill for thousands of years.

For even more information, you can check out my testimony before the Senate on all the problems with bottled water.

But for something way more fun, you should check out the movie “Tapped” that goes through all of these issues and more. This is a great movie and is jam packed with information about why we need to stop our love affair with bottled water.

Also, our friends at Corporate Accountability International are working to get state governments to stop wasting precious tax money on bottled water. Like I mentioned earlier today, we can use all that money to fix our drinking water infrastructure and create jobs to boot.

So, as you go about your day today, think about how lucky we are to have some of the safest water in the world coming out of our tap. And think about how silly it is to throw good money away to buy a bottle of water.

Creating Jobs and Saving Water

2010-03-22T16:18:34Z

Happy World Water Day, yall.

This is the day that we stop and consider the fact that we are very lucky. We have some of the safest water in the world and don’t have to trek miles from our homes just to find water to cook with and to drink. That’s not the case for billions of people around the world.

So to mark World Water Day, I’ve got a 2 part blog. Part 1 is something we as a country can do to help conserve and protect our drinking water. And it will instantly create new jobs today, immediately improve the health of communicates across the country, and benefit the environment. We need to bring our aging drinking water infrastructure up-to-date.

Stories about breaks in 70-year-old water mains and steam explosions from broken water pipes are a sampling of the serious problems we will face as our drinking water infrastructure begins to reach the end of its lifespan. But until these problems arise, the state of that complicated network of pipes, mains, storage tanks, and treatment systems supplying water to our communities remains “out of sight, out of mind.”

We lose an estimated 7 billion gallons of water a day from leaking pipes, with some cities losing as much as 30% of their water. At the same time, an often overlooked consequence of these cracks is that we are being exposed to an increasing number of waterborne diseases and contaminants sneaking in through those gaps. This means utilities face a double whammy as they try to provide both adequate and safe drinking water to their customers.

Upgrading our infrastructure would save trillions of gallons of water a year and make our water safer to drink.

But the best part is that, according to the American Water Works Association, there are already enough shovel-ready drinking water projects around the U.S. that would create work for more than 400,000 Americans, including almost 90,000 direct construction jobs – jobs that would be welcomed with open arms in towns and cities all across the U.S. In any other context, this would be a no-brainer.

The U.S. has some of the safest water in the world, but it will take some TLC to keep it that way.

Part 2 is about something we can do as individuals.

Disposing of Pharmaceuticals

2010-02-26T19:20:02Z

Cough, cough, cough. It’s that time of the year again: cold and flu season. It means that I’ve already spent a few days at home to avoid spreading too many germs to my colleagues. It also means that I’ve been walking the aisles of the drug store, trying to decide which medicine is going to tackle my newest symptoms. And that means that I have a small but growing stockpile of expired drugs in my house.

What do I do with my expired medicine?

It’s a good question, because there are environmental and human health consequences to what is done. Here in the U.S., we have a “toilet to tap” system. The things that we flush down the toilet and sink get treated at a wastewater plant, which then puts the treated water into the rivers and streams that we use to get our drinking water. Since we have no regulations requiring wastewater treatment plants to treat for pharmaceuticals, this means that flushing drugs down the toilet or washing them down the sink is a sure way to make sure they end up in our drinking water.

But then again, throwing them in the trash isn’t an answer either. As it turns out, researchers have also found pharmaceuticals leaching from landfills, so throwing the into the trash doesn’t help either.

That’s why we decided to look into the issue of pharmaceuticals a little more – especially how they are ending up in our drinking water. We finished an extensive report looking at the whole picture to try to determine what needs to be done. The answer is: A LOT. There are things that can be done at every step of the process – from designing better drugs to better manufacturing practices to how doctors prescribe drugs to how we dispose of them. Our report goes through all of that, and much more.

But back to the main question for the general public, what do I do with my expired drugs?

Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy answer. Some communities are lucky enough to have “take back” programs which will accept and properly dispose of their medicines. Some have mail back programs (like Maine) or drop off boxes at pharmacies (like Washington State) or one-day events (like in California). (We listed some others in our report, too.) But here in D.C., we aren’t that lucky yet. There is some legislation in the works, but until then, I am left hoarding these pills until I either travel somewhere that has a take back program, or D.C. creates one. It’s not a big deal for us right now because we don’t have that much, but I better stay healthy if we don’t want my pile to grow anymore.

Getting the Lead Out

2009-11-02T21:40:14Z

And the results are in: there's lead in our home's water.

More precisely, there's lead in our home's pipes, and it is leaching into our water. I'm not terribly surprised although it did feel like I got a bad report card. Our building was built back in the 1940s, so even though it underwent major renovations, the pipes did not get converted. Also, even with new pipes, the solder used to weld the pipes together can contain lead in them too that can leach into the water. (This is why NRDC supported California's bill 3 years ago to change the definition of "lead-free" pipes and pipe fittings from containing 8% lead to 0.25% lead.)

So here are our results. The first draw sample showed 4 parts per billion (ppb) of lead. The second draw - taken after the water ran for 2 minutes - showed ND or non-detect. This means that when water is sitting in our pipes over night or all day while we're at work, the lead from the pipes is leaching into the water. The ND means that when "fresh" water is coming from the main line, there is no lead. While 4 ppb isn't too bad (15 ppb is the EPA "action level" for lead), it's still best to have zero.

Since we're thinking about starting a family, the reverse osmosis (RO) filter would be playing it ultra-safe. But we have some space issues to work around. So as a stop gap, we decided to get a pitcher filter. We looked at the NSF website, found the filter that would remove lead, and headed to the store to buy it. Interestingly, we saw that some filters say they are certified to remove lead, but weren't listed on the NSF website. I talked to NSF, and they said that the website listing is more accurate and up-to-date than the labels on the boxes.

We've also started running the water in the morning and when we first come home from work to run the water for 2 minutes - maybe to wash the dishes from breakfast or water the plants - just in case.

And the hardest part about doing this testing? Remembering to take the samples first thing in the morning. It took me two weeks before I remembered to take my sample before using the water for other things. I'm too bleary-eyed in the morning, so I ended up taking the sample when I came home from work. Glad I did!

Shopping for a water filter

2009-10-09T17:18:52Z

I work in the public health program here at NRDC, mostly on toxic chemicals in consumer products, drinking water, and pesticides. But instead of focusing on my work, I'm going to write about trying to take the things that I know from my job home with me. I'm a "30 something" living in D.C. with my new husband. We bought a condo a few months ago and are now in the process of furnishing our home. I suspect that some of the things that I will be thinking about doing to our home will be things that other new, and maybe not so new, homeowners might be curious about. So I'm sharing our real-life adventures with you.

First stop: water filters.

We live in Washington, D.C. and our building was first built in the 1940s. Since it was completely converted in 2000, I'm not worried about lead paint. But I am concerned about lead in the drinking water. The recent AP story about lead in schools is just as relevant to homes with old pipes (that is, homes built before the 1950s). And D.C. had a notorious problem with lead in the drinking water in the early 2000s that is still being argued about today.

Since bottled water is out of the question, the husband has been pushing me to get a water filter for the house, and so I began researching. First, I checked the NSF International website to see which types of filters are certified ANSI Standard 53 (health standard) to remove different contaminants. We use mostly our kitchen sink to drink, and because of its configuration, faucet mounted filters were out. Here at work, all our kitchens are equipped with point-of-entry reverse osmosis filters, which definitely provide us with super clean water. The problem is that my little condo cabinet under the sink won't accommodate everything I need for that type of treatment system.

So pitcher filter it is. Turns out there is only one "pour through" filter that is certified by NSF to remove lead. However, it's not certified to remove VOCs (volatile organic compounds) like atrazine, benzene, and MTBE. The filter that is certified to get rid of those chemicals isn't certified for lead. So what's a girl to do? Test the water. If I have a lead problem, it's something that we should be concerned about if children are going to be in the picture. If lead isn't a problem, then maybe the other filter will be best.

Finding a certified laboratory in D.C. to test my water turned out to be the first hurdle. Apparently there are none in D.C., so I ventured to the Maryland Department of Environment's website for a list of certified labs. Different labs are certified to test for different contaminants, so I called the first one on the list that is certified to test for lead. It is a Baltimore County lab and they only do work for the county, not private citizens. So I checked the next lab on the list. A helpful man named Matt told me that for my purposes (i.e. I'm not trying to get an "official" test for compliance) that I can collect the samples myself using empty half liter to one liter spring water bottles. The first collection (called the "first draw") should be taken after the water has sat in the pipes for 8-16 hours: in other words, first thing in the morning. The second draw should be taken after the water has run for more than a minute. Then I can either mail it to them (after filling out the online "chain of custody record") or check to see if they're going to be downtown and they'll come pick it up. One week and $25 later, I should have my results.

I then asked Matt what he thought about testing for VOCs. It's much more complicated (they have to send me special bottles) and much more expensive ($140). More importantly, since I am on city water, he suggested I first check the annual water quality report that my utility is required by the Safe Drinking Water Act to publish to see if VOCs have been a problem. He suspected that they haven't been (because I'm on city water). For those who have their own wells, or who live close to agricultural areas, they might be a bigger concern. I checked EPA's SDWIS database of all the drinking water violations for my utility. Over the years, they had some, but no VOCs jumped out at me. So I decided not to test for them, but if I don't have a lead problem, I'll probably still go with the filter that does filter for VOCs.

I plan to take the samples tomorrow morning and will report back in about a week how things turn out.