Water Quality is becoming our responsibility.

 

A new report documents what environmental advocates say has been happening for decades: The federal government fails to protect Americans from potentially cancer-causing chemicals. And they have little hope that will change anytime soon.
BY  | SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
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1,4-dioxane is an unregulated industrial solvent often found in shampoos, bubble bath, cosmetic products -- and tap water. Across the U.S., 7 million people in 27 states are drinking water with elevated levels of the chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a "likely carcinogen," according to a report published last week by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG).
Despite decades-long concerns about the chemical’s connection to cancer, liver and kidney damage, the EPA does not regulate 1,4-dioxane levels in drinking water. That leaves millions of people exposed, with no knowledge of the elevated cancer risk they could be creating for themselves.
  According to the EWG, that's not the worst of it.

 

  About 150 other unregulated chemicals are also found in trace amounts of the nation's drinking water. The nonprofit research organization contends that the EPA’s drinking water regulations are outdated.
  “The EPA has not added a new chemical [to regulate] in 20 years, even as our environment and use of chemicals has changed dramatically,” says Nneka Leiba, director of healthy living science at EWG. “Around the country, almost all utilities are providing legal water. But they’re not providing completely safe and healthy water.”
  According to the EPA, humans are at increased cancer risk from levels of 1,4-dioxane exceeding .35 parts per billion (ppb) in daily drinking water over the course of a lifetime. That's about one drop of 1,4-dioxane in three Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to the report, and the maximum amount of the chemical that should be allowed in drinking water, according to EWG.
  Some consumers are getting about 17 times that amount of the chemical in their tap water. 
  “It’s striking how widespread this contamination is, and in how many different areas. It’s coming from groundwater and surface water,” says Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at EWG and an author of the report.
  Most of the population consuming the chemical lives in three states: California, with 2.5 million people exposed, North Carolina (1.2 million) and New York (700,000). Many of the highest concentrations of 1,4-dioxane can be found in low-income and minority neighborhoods. All five of the highest-level contamination areas in California, for example, are Latino neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

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