Safe Drinking Water Act Should Encourage Further Research

No politics on drinking water - safety first

ARCC urges that scientific knowledge should serve as the basis for safe drinking water regulations. EPA has promulgated new rules that ultimately may force water suppliers to reduce the use of chlorine - and reduce the safety of public water systems. Recently, ARCC urged Congress to assure that EPA would consider risks, costs and benefits of all new regulations in the Safe Drinking Water Act. Otherwise, we may pay a lot more for riskier drinking water. The American Medical Association (AMA) also urged Congress to mandate more research by EPA.

Chlorination of public drinking water is one of the great health successes of the century. Since 1908, chlorination has eradicated cholera, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis A from our public drinking water. According to the AMA, chlorination has played a central role in increasing Americans’ average life expectancy by over 50 percent - from 45 years in the early 1900s to 76 today, and in decreasing infant mortality from 100 per 1000 in the early 1900s to 8.2 per 1000 in 1992.

Meanwhile, waterborne diseases kill nine million people every year in countries unable to treat drinking water with chlorine. Countless millions more are sickened. In areas ravaged by war or natural disaster, chlorine for drinking water purification is a first need.

Despite its indisputable benefit, a few groups want chlorination reduced or even stopped. Why? Because chlorination can produce minute traces of disinfection by-products (DBPs). Some contend that these trace DBPs in water pose a minute hypothetical risk of cancer - though there is no scientific proof. In fact, the World Health Organization rejected the contention that chlorinated drinking water causes cancer in 1992.

On the other hand, it is well understood that reducing chlorination will increase the likelihood of transmission of diseases through public water systems. An article by Michael Fumento in May’s Reason magazine quotes Douglas Kinard of the South Carolina Department of Public Health: "Reducing chlorine levels in public water systems poses an immediate and significant threat to public health."

Unless Congress directs EPA to do more research before it makes policy, EPA will cause water utilities to spend tens of billions of dollars to comply with its controversial new regulations. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost per hypothetical cancer case avoided (possibly 1 in 1 million) under new EPA rules would range from $840,000 to $19 billion, despite its finding that "the degree to which that (DBP) role would reduce the risk of cancer is extremely uncertain."

Alternative disinfection processes, including ozone and ultraviolet light, also produce DBPs - whose risks are as yet unknown. Even with costly alternatives, chlorine must still be added to drinking water - because alternatives work only at the point of contact and cannot protect water after it leaves the disinfection facility. Water travels through miles of pipe to reach our homes, and only chlorine protects all the way to the faucet.