Clean Water In the News

By Chris Birk, Staff Writer

The questions, the uncertainty and the distrust of a daily essential.

Harold Bower wonders if his two children, now in their early 20s, grew up drinking tainted water. His is one of more than 50 private wells near the Ivy Industrial Park to exhibit unsafe levels of tricholoroethylene since the state confirmed off-site contamination in mid-August.

Bower, who lives on Dennis Road in Scott Township, said he has already missed a month of work because of the stress.
He worries - for himself and his children - that health risks surrounding contamination may far surpass stress and anxiety.

"We have no idea," he said. "God knows what's going to happen here. There are other people in this township that are involved and upset about what's going on."

Residents, many with a laundry list of questions, will have their first chance Monday night to interact face-to-face with state and federal health experts. The state environmental department will hold a public meeting from 5 to 8 p.m. at Lakeland High School to address the scope of contamination.

Bower's concern is justified. Tricholoroethylene, much like mercury, has become a universal contaminant.

Some advocacy groups believe new, tougher TCE standards should already be in place, especially in light of scientific studies that show environmental and health officials may have long underestimated its power.

"TCE has a really horrible track record because of the public health threat that it poses," said David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, an environmental advocacy group in Philadelphia. "It's a big problem, not just in Pennsylvania, but nationwide. It's not something new."

Staple of industry
About 60 percent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's high-priority hazardous waste sites all have a common thread: trichloroethylene. Once used by physicians as an anaesthetic, the ubiquitous industrial solvent is still found in dozens of household items, from paint removers and typewriter correction fluid to adhesives and rug-cleaning fluids.

It is a staple of industry - especially automotive and metals - as a degreaser and solvent for waxes, rubber and dyeing. Anywhere from one-tenth to one-third of the nation's drinking water sources have some TCE contamination, according to federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The EPA four years ago issued a preliminary report declaring TCE is five to 65 times more toxic than originally thought, poses a higher risk for susceptible populations and is "highly likely" to cause cancer. The agency's Science Advisory Board endorsed the draft, which called for tighter TCE standards, but new regulations have yet to emerge.

Chemical industry groups and others - including the U.S. Department of Defense - have questioned the science behind the report, calling lower standards too harsh. The EPA ultimately sent its assessment to the National Academy of Science in 2003 for further review, a process expected to take years.

"Under pressure from the administration, the defense and energy departments ... EPA basically did not continue with the process they were doing to promulgate a more stringent standard," said Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif. "It'll be stuck there for the next three or four years at least."

The EPA created its drinking water standard for TCE in 1989. A part per billion is roughly equivalent to a drop of water in an Olympic-sized pool.

The agency dug through more than a decade of data and health studies in crafting recommendations in its 2001 assessment. Many of the report's findings indicated serious health implications for adults and children exposed to TCE.

They include:

Children may be at a higher risk to develop brain and endocrine problems and cancer.

A 10-minute shower in TCE-contaminated water could result in inhalation exposure comparable to that from drinking TCE-contaminated tap water.

TCE can accumulate in fat and other tissues, representing an internal source of exposure that can later release TCE again into the circulation.

Long-term inhalation exposure at an average concentration of 44,000 parts per billion has been associated with early nervous system problems.

Exposure to other chemicals and certain diseases, such as diabetes, can increase the toxicity of TCE.

But people will have individual reactions to TCE exposure depending upon their immune systems and genetic makeup. As the liver and kidneys metabolize TCE, the breakdown can actually create other harmful chemicals, said Daphne Moffett, Ph.D., an ATSDR environmental health scientist.

The breakdown of tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, can also produce TCE. Another compound tainting wells near the Ivy Industrial Park, PCE is believed to be cancer causing.

Animal studies using large amounts of PCE show it can cause liver and kidney damage and liver and kidney cancers, but its relevance to people is unclear.

Other studies suggest TCE's impact is becoming clearer.

Troubling track record
The Toxic Substances agency cites a handful of studies involving children - especially newborns - in its own toxicological profile of TCE.

Oral clefts and central nervous system, neural tube and cardiac defects were all found in association with TCE levels greater than 10 parts per billion in a survey of 80,938 births and 594 fetal deaths in an area of New Jersey. The average exposure was 55 parts per billion, but uncertainty about the duration of exposure persists.

Similar studies in Massachusetts and Arizona also associate childhood leukemia, respiratory, eye and ear defects and low birth weights with TCE exposure.

In the Arizona study, where exposure ranged from 6 ppb to 239 ppb, the rate of congenital heart defects among children whose mothers lived in areas receiving TCE-contaminated water was about 2.5 times higher than those whose mothers weren't exposed. The length of exposure was at least one month before and during the first trimester.

Still, there isn't a chart or formula where people can plug in their exposure and determine what, if any, health affects they carry, Moffett said.

"It'd be great if we had that, I know that's what people want," said Moffett, adding that determining the duration of exposure to TCE is often problematic. "We can say we have seen these types of health effects from mothers who have been drinking this type of water while they were pregnant. But to be able to tell a mom whether or not they're going to see that, that's a different issue."

The health assessment also concludes TCE is "highly likely to produce cancer in humans," including cancer of the kidney, liver, lymphatic system, prostate and cervix.

"We won't know for a long time for sure how toxic it is," said Siegel. "So why take a chance?"

The EPA draft presented a lower, federal cleanup standard for safe levels of TCE in air. A drinking water standard below 5 parts per billion could also emerge. But other federal agencies and chemical industry groups have found fault with the draft report.

The environmental agency didn't equally balance results and studies that showed minimal or no health risks, said Steve Risotto, executive director of the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, a group that represents the manufacturers of TCE and other industrial solvents.

"The Science Advisory Board was not as critical as we thought they have should been," said Risotto. "Many original authors said, 'We don't agree with the direction EPA has taken.'"

The Pentagon has also dismissed the findings. The Defense Department already estimates a $5 billion price tag to clean up its more than 1,400 TCE-contaminated sites.

Tightening TCE standards would cost the Air Force alone an additional $1.25 billion, according to an April 2003 study.
Final thresholds for the compound aren't expected until 2008 at the earliest, according to the Center for Public Environmental Oversight.

"The laundry list of health threats that accompany the use of TCE have been well known for a long time," said Masur. "Now for those companies to say that they don't want to pay for the cleanup, or to strong arm regulators into turning a blind eye to the science that shows a public health effect - that's a really big problem for the public."