The Risk of Benzene in Drinking Water, and How to Get Rid of It
Benzene was featured in the January 2015 Water Technology’s “Contaminant of the Month” feature.
Here are some highlights:
Benzene is a natural product in some foods, is a hydrocarbon manufactured from petroleum, and is the base product amid the family of BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene) hydrocarbons.
Health risks assessment:
As with most volatile solvents, benzene can cause drowsiness and headaches at high inhalation levels.
Benzene is a known human carcinogen — EPA Group A, based upon occupational epidemiology.
Leukemias are the principal cancer concern.
EPA’s lifetime risk calculation for inhalation is about one in 100,000 to one in one million for exposure at 1 µg/m3.
EPA’s calculated risk of one in one million for ingestion through drinking water is between 10 and 100 ppb.
The other BTEX hydrocarbons have much less chronic risk than benzene.
Benzene is not present in most groundwaters and is most of ten found when wells are contaminated with gasoline from hazardous waste sites or leaking underground storage tanks.
Treatment options: Activated carbon and aeration are effective for water treatment plants. For point-of-entry or point-of-use: Activated carbon is effective, but cartridges or carbon beds must be replaced before exhaustion. Although reverse osmosis membranes are not effective because benzene can dissolve and migrate through to the treated water, the carbon filters that go with reverse osmosis units make reverse osmosis a good option.
Regulation figures:
EPA’s MCLG (Maximum Contamintant Level Goal) — 0.
EPA’s MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level) — 5 ppb.
Florida and California MCL — 1 ppb.
World Health Organization MCL – 10 ppb.
You can find Water Technology’s Contaminant of the Month assessment of benzene here.
Scientists: Great Lakes Teeming With Tiny Plastic Fibers
Associated Press
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Scientists who have reported that the Great Lakes are awash in tiny bits of plastic are raising new alarms about a little-noticed form of the debris turning up in sampling nets: synthetic fibers from garments, cleaning cloths and other consumer products.
They are known as “microfibers” — exceedingly fine filaments made of petroleum-based materials such as polyester and nylon that are woven together into fabrics.
“When we launder our clothes, some of the little microfibers will break off and go down the drain to the wastewater treatment facility and end up in our bodies of water,” Sherri “Sam” Mason, a chemist with the State University of New York at Fredonia, said Friday.
The fibers are so minuscule that people typically don’t realize their favorite pullover fleece can shed thousands of them with every washing, as the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported in 2011.
Over the past couple of years, Mason and colleagues have documented the existence of microplastic litter — some too small to see with the naked eye — in the Great Lakes. Among the particles are abrasive beads used in personal care products such as facial and body washes and toothpastes. Other researchers have made similar finds in the oceans.
A number of companies are replacing microbeads with natural substances such as ground-up fruit pits. Illinois imposed a statewide ban on microbeads last year. Similar measures were proposed in California and New York.
But microfibers have gotten comparatively little attention. They’ve accounted for about 4 percent of the plastic litter that Mason and her students have collected from the Great Lakes. The group drags finely meshed netting along the lake surfaces, harvesting tens of thousands of particles per square mile, and study them with microscopes.
About three-quarters of the bits they’ve found are fragments of larger items such as bottles. Smaller portions consist of microbeads, Styrofoam and other materials.
But when Mason’s team and a group from the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant program took samples from southern Lake Michigan in 2013, about 12 percent of the debris consisted of microfibers. It’s unclear why the fibers were three times as prevalent in that area as elsewhere in the lakes, although currents and wave actions may be one explanation, said Laura Kammin, pollution prevention specialist with Sea Grant.
Ominously, the fibers seem to be getting stuck inside fish in ways that other microplastics aren’t. Microbeads and fragments that fish eat typically pass through their bodies and are excreted. But fibers are becoming enmeshed in gastrointestinal tracts of some fish Mason and her students have examined. They also found fibers inside a double-crested cormorant, a fish-eating bird.
“The longer the plastic remains inside an organism, the greater the likelihood that it will impact the organism in some way,” Mason said, noting that many plastics are made with toxic chemicals or absorb them from polluted water. She is preparing a paper on how microplastics are affecting Great Lakes food chains, including fish that people eat.
There’s also a chance that fibers are in drinking water piped from the lakes, she said. Scientists reported last fall that two dozen varieties of German beer contained microplastics.
Because microfibers are used so widely, there’s no obvious solution, Mason said. Persuading people to stop wearing synthetic clothes likely would be a tougher sell than the idea of switching facial scrubs.
But pollution prevention remains the best way to protect the lakes, Kammin said.
“It’s very hard to remove these microplastics once they’re out there,” she said.
Jellyfish in a group are called a smack. The ignorant, however, just call them a bunch of jellyfish.
Some things you may not know about one of earth’s most ancient creatures.
They have been around longer than the oldest of dinosaurs, approximately three times as long. They go back at least 500,000,000 years.
Although they are called fish, they actually aren’t. They are zooplankton.
They are heartless and brainless and made almost entirely (up to 98%) of water. When exposed to air, they can actually evaporate.
Some, but not all, have eyes. One variety has 24 eyes, in fact, and has a full 360-degree view of the world.
One species, Turritopsis nutricula, has the ability to renew its cells and is, therefore, theoretically immortal.
They conveniently eat and defecate through the same orifice which serves as both mouth and anus.
Jellyfish are aquarium favorites.
Just to be different, they have a unique group name. A group of fish is called a school, but multiple jellyfish are referred to as a bloom, a swarm, or a smack.
They are deadly and they don’t mind to sting. One species can kill a human in a matter of minutes with a single sting. And jellyfish stings are very painful.
They come in all sizes. They range in size from a few millimeters in diameter to 440 lbs. The longest jellyfish has tentacles that can extend 120 feet.
Some are edible. They are a popular delicacy in places like Japan and Korea, but haven’t caught on in most parts of the world. In Japan they make jellyfish candy.
Jellyfish have been used in space experiments because of their similarity to humans as regards adaptation to zero-gravity environments.
Jellyfish live in every ocean and can be found from the surface to the deep sea.
The Evolution of High Quality Drinking Water in the United States
Probably the most spectacular water event in 2014, a year of drought and controversy over fracking, was the chemical leaking into West Virginia’s Elk River of ten thousand gallons of 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM), a chemical used to clean coal.
This Charleston incident served as the starting point of an excellent article on “The Politics of Drinking Water” by Anya Groner. Groner’s article takes a look at the history of America’s drinking water laws and customs. We usually think of advances in drinking water purity to start with chlorination. We forget about steps like the evolutionary jump from shared public drinking cups to the “bubbler” and very successful strategies like moving the water uptake point away from the human pollution near the lakeshore to a point far out in the lake to prevent water-borne diseases.
Here are some excerpts from Anna Groner’s article:
Most Americans take cheap, safe drinking water for granted. Globally, one out of 10 people can’t access clean water. Some 1,400 children die each day from water-related diseases. Unless there’s a spill or equipment failure, these numbers exclude U.S. residents. Across the 50 states, 155,000 public water systems treat, filter, and deliver 100 gallons per person per day, all for the low cost of less than 1 cent per gallon.
1911 Drinking Fountain
Contaminant-free drinking water hasn’t always been part of the American experience. Until the early 1900s, shared public cups accompanied most drinking fountains. Cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, and food poisoning from coliform bacteria—all potentially fatal—spread from mouth to cup and back again. Diarrhea was rampant. Not until 1899, when Kohler Water Works invented the Bubbler, which pumped a continuous flow of water an inch into the air, did a spout replace the cup. To partake, drinkers stooped over the copper basin and slurped. What wasn’t sucked up dripped down the nozzle. Clean water mingled with saliva. Though an improvement over the public cup, bacteria still flourished.
Humans weren’t the only creatures to suffer waterborne illness. In the late 19th century, 100,000 horses populated New York City’s streets, producing 26,000 gallons of urine daily. Concerned with dehydration, early chapters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals advocated for the erection of “fountains for man and beast,” with large, street-side basins for horses, sidewalk basins for “the sons of men,” and low spouts for dogs. Glanders, an equine disease now eradicated in North America, proliferated. Lesions formed in the infected horses’ respiratory tracts, causing fevers; coughing; and, ultimately, septicemia (an inflammation of the blood). Within days of exposure, horses died. On occasion, the bacterium crossed species’ lines, taking the lives of cats, dogs, goats, and men.
Despite health hazards, drinking fountains became a fashionable social project. Prominent citizens appealed to city governments to build fountains “for the convenience of street passengers,” and the growing temperance movement boosted the cause. In 1859, a doctor named A. K. Gardner warned the Common Council of New York City that, “Men, and women, too… resort to drinking saloons and bar-rooms where they must ‘take a little something’ for the sake of a glass of water.” A New York Times editorial from the same year argued, “intemperance should be arrested… by putting fresh, good water freely within the reach of the wayfarer.” Water and sewerage boards, church temperance clubs, men’s associations, and tree planting societies took up the cause by writing letters, holding meetings, and raising money.
The ensuing fountains ranged from purely functional to “handsome bronze and marble affair[s]” designed more to flaunt wealth and memorialize family names than to quench public thirst. Rich patrons bequeathed fountains in their wills, and young people collected change to support upkeep. Newspapers supported this fetishization, printing the locales of new fountains alongside lists of prestigious attendees at inaugural festivities.
In 1892, when the Chicago World’s Fair coincided with a devastating typhoid outbreak, clean water became a matter of national safety. In the two years prior, Chicago suffered more typhoid-related deaths than any other city in the world. To protect the fair’s 27 million guests from infection, engineers designed plumbing that extended four miles into Lake Michigan where they hoped the water was contagion-free. Additional supplies were piped in from Waukesha, Wisconsin, and sold for a penny per glass. The innovations worked. When the fair opened to the public in 1893, infection rates dropped and the outbreak receded.
By 1900, germ theory—the belief that microscopic pathogens travel through air and water—took hold. New sanitation methods promised to eliminate these invisible threats. Redesigned Bubblers included arc projection, separating clean water from run-off, and the first disinfectant, a continuous dilute solution of chloride of lime, was added to the Boonton Reservoir in 1908, providing sterile, disease-free water to Jersey City. Nationwide, municipal treatment centers followed suit. Though gastroenteritis and norovirus infections occasionally broke out, germ-free water became the norm.
As tap water became safer, drinking fountains provided a staging ground for white Americans to act out fears of racial contamination. The rhetoric of sanitation—maintaining purity against an insidious threat—was used to justify Jim Crow laws. From 1876-1965, alongside hospitals, trains, lunch counters, voting booths, and highway passing lanes, drinking fountains became sites of Black exclusion. “White Only,” “Colored Only,” or simply “Colored” signs directed traffic. A 1963 pro-segregation speech titled “The Message from Mississippi” argued that separate fountains protected white citizens from “exposure” to bad morals, poor education, and improper hygiene: “There are many Negroes, of course, who have reached plateaus of citizenship. They are personally clean, have high morals and are educated. However, they are still in the minority.” In 1964, the Civil Rights Act mandated “equal enjoyment … of public accommodation,” ending segregated fountains and setting precedent for the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which legislated spout height and knee clearance to enable wheelchair access.
Although public water fountains have become more inclusive, they’ve also grown less desirable. Bottled water, the fastest-growing drink product in the U.S., is now the preferred way to hydrate. The anthropologist Martha Kaplan suggests that this “bottlemania” reflects post-9/11 skepticism of federally-protected water supplies. Participants in her study of American water consumption cited unclean pipes, pollution, unsavory smells, bad tastes, and fluoridation as reasons for preferring the corporate-produced, single-serve water bottle. In the Great Recession, Kaplan notes, “Bottled water [was] the only luxury people [could] still afford.”
Besides portability, bottled water offers few advantages over the fountain. Many popular brands—including Aquafina and Dasani—simply fill bottles with tap water. The difference in taste, when there is a difference, is most often caused by the disinfection process. Public treatment plants use chlorine while bottled water companies tend to adopt more costly methods: ultra violet light or ozonation. Not only is single-serve bottled water more expensive than gasoline—averaging $7.50 a gallon—the petroleum used to create the plastic of the bottle and the carbon released during its shipment incur environmental costs. Student organizations such as “Tap That” at Vassar College and “Take Back The Tap” at the University of Nevada attempt to reduce plastic bottle consumption. So far, over ninety colleges have restricted bottled water sales. Last March, San Francisco became the first city to create policy on the topic by banning distribution of single-serve, single-use bottled water on public properties.
Bottled water backlash has renewed enthusiasm for old-fashioned drinking fountains. Since 2013, the EPA has partnered with mayors to “reinvigorat[e] our nation’s supply” of these “iconic symbols of public health and welfare in our communities.” Companies have taken note. Both Elkay EZ and Halsey Taylor sell affordable retrofits: no-touch, sensor-activated spigots that turn neglected fountains into “HydroBoost” stations where passersby can top off reusable bottles. While consumers pause for their refill, electronic counters track how many plastic bottles they’ve diverted from landfills. Watching the display uptick feels good, akin to the sensation produced by a Facebook like or a favorited tweet.
Unlike oil, water is a renewable resource, replenished by rain and snowmelt. Even so, environmentalists warn that we’re tapping out our supply. Agriculture, industry, and household use deplete ecosystems faster than they can replenish. Many of the world’s biggest rivers—including the Indus, the Ganges, and the Colorado—often dry to sand before reaching the ocean. The Baltic Sea, central Lake Erie, the lower Mississippi River, and portions of the Gulf of Mexico are so polluted by fertilizers and sewage that they’ve become oxygen-deprived and are unable to support life.
As we near peak water, hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick warns that skirmishes over resources will intensify. “Water can be—and often is—a source of cooperation rather than conflict,” Gleick notes, “but conflicts over water are real.” Already Gleick’s organization, the Pacific Institute, has created a 5000-year timeline of water-related conflict. Highlights include Assyrians poisoning enemy wells with rye ergot in the 6th century B.C., the World War II targeting and destruction of Soviet hydroelectric dams, the U.S. bombing of North Vietnamese irrigation canals in the 1960s, and riots in Cape Town, South Africa in 2012 sparked by insufficient water supplies. By 2025, scientists predict that one in five humans will live in regions suffering from water scarcity, areas with insufficient resources to meet water usage demands.
You can read Anya Groner’s full article in The Atlantic.
Water was declared the ‘least on-track target’ by the United Nations even as companies and international organisations are paying more attention to water issues and investing in it.
The United Nations recognised water recycling as key to future water and energy needs. Organic matter extracted from treated wastewater offers potential for producing cleaner energy resources while providing additional supply of water to the growing global demand for this precious resource.
Water is the source of life, as the saying goes, but despite its importance, it remains the “least on-track target” of the millennium development goals (MDGs), according to a new report published by the United Nations in November.
As many as 1.8 billion people still use a source of drinking water that is contaminated and 1 billion defecate in the open, nine in 10 of whom live in rural areas. The UN water global analysis and assessment of sanitation and drinking water report attributes this to a lack of investment in water, hygiene and sanitation as well as government failure.
Companies and international organisations, however, are paying more attention to water issues as they realise how it forms a key aspect of their supply chains. In Asia, for example, investment in technologies such as water recycling, water treatment and desalination are on the rise.
Here’s our pick of the top five water stories for the year:
1. Human impact on a warming ocean
The year saw many climate science studies pointing to a warming ocean and the impact of acidification on marine resources and the marine economy, which many communities rely on for food and livelihood. Human activities also contributed significantly to the ocean’s degradation, with plastic trash being a key problem. A December study reported that 269,000 tonnes of litter have been dumped in the ocean.
On World Water Day in March, the United Nations published a report that highlighted the critical importance of water in energy production and urged governments and corporations to examine energy production in view of the industry’s water demand, which comprise 15 per cent globally. One of the key findings is that producing energy from fossil fuels puts a significant stress to freshwater availability.
Hydropower, long considered as a renewable source, also has a dark side and can pose threats to water security. Scientists released a new studywhich showed that the building of dams, mainly for hydropower projects, has been growing worldwide and will have a damaging effect on the world’s rivers.
The year saw various local communities and environmental groups in many parts of China, India, and the Southeast Asian countries in the Mekong delta such as Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, oppose these projects for being unsustainable and a threat to food security.
3. The economic value of protecting water
The Water Footprint Network said in a report in August that global efforts to protect water resources need to be stepped up and urged consumers to start calculating how much water a pair of jeans or a bite to a burger would cost the water sector. By being mindful of their water footprint, consumers can help to advocate the need for transparency in the global supply chain, the non-profit noted. Separately, in June, a new study by United States researchers found that water impact is highly overlooked in palm oil production.
At the same time, Asian investments in watersheds, the most natural basin and source of freshwater, is on the rise.Latest data from Forest Trends revealed that China led the region in terms of the number of investments in watershed protection. A study by the World Agroforestry Centre also highlighted the potential of agroforestry in saving watersheds from degradation.
4. Water recyling makes a big splash
The United Nations has identified the recycling of wastewater to be significant way to raise the sustainability of water for all. Some companies have already shown that water recycling could fill the gap in the increasing demand for water. For example, coal mining firm Anglo American in South Africa reported that through new water technologies, mine waste can be transformed to tap water and provide supply for about 80,000 consumers.
Singapore, recognised worldwide for its investment and success in water recycling, announced in September it will build its fifth water treatment plantfor reclaimed water. Scientists from the country’s Nanyang Technological University also announced a breakthrough in water filtration membrane that is cost-effective and more highly efficient than existing filtration systems.
Elsewhere in Asia, corporates such as multinational firm L’oreal is investing on water sustainability initiatives in its manufacturing plants in Asia, the latest of which is a new custom-built wastewater treatment plant in Indonesia that lowers the firm’s operational carbon, water and waste footprints.
5. The blue economy
In Asia, Indonesia has participated in various global forum this year to promote the adoption of a blue economy, which it refers to asthe sustainable development of marine resources.
In the United Kingdom, the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay offers an example of how to tap the marine economy by building a sustainable community that relies on tidal power for low carbon electricity, food security from aquaculture, and eco-tourism for their livelihood.
Common diabetes medication among drugs found in Lake Michigan
by John Fauber
There is more than one way to measure prescription drug use in modern society.
The most direct method is just to count up prescriptions filled by America’s pharmacies. That would show, for instance, that more than 180 million prescriptions for diabetes drugs were dispensed in 2013.
Or you could test the treated water coming out of sewage facilities such as the South Shore plant in Oak Creek.
That approach reveals that in the Lake Michigan waters outside the plant, the diabetes drug metformin was the most common personal care product found by researchers with the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
More importantly, according to their latest research, the levels of metformin were so high that the drug could be disrupting the endocrine systems of fish.
Metformin is a first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes and is the most commonly prescribed medicine for the condition. In 2013, about 70 million prescriptions were dispensed, according to IMS Health, a drug market research firm.
It is so ubiquitous it can easily be found in water samples taken two miles off the shore of Lake Michigan.
“I was kind of a surprise,” said Rebecca Klaper, a professor of freshwater science at UWM. “It was not even on our radar screen. I said, ‘What is this drug?’ ”
The drugs get into the sewage and eventually the lake because they are not broken down completely after they are consumed and then excreted.
The metformin concentrations are low, compared with the amount taken by people.
For instance, coming right out of the treatment plant the levels are about 40 parts per billion. About two miles away, they drop to 120 parts per trillion.
Other commonly found substances include caffeine, sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic, and triclosan, an antibacterial and antifungal found in soap and other consumer products.
Klaper co-authored a 2013 science journal paper on the finding as well as another one this year.
The more recent research suggests that metformin in lake water is not just a curious artifact of everyday life.
The study looked at the effect of metformin on fathead minnows in the lab that were exposed to the drug at levels found in the lake for four weeks.
It found gene expression suggesting disruption of the endocrine system of male fish, but not females. In essence, the males were producing biochemicals that are associated with female minnows. The biochemicals are precursors to the production of eggs.
Klaper said that because the minnows are a stand-in for other fish, the changes also could be affecting other species such as perch, walleye and northern pike.
The UWM research confirms what others have found regarding prescription drugs showing up in America’s lakes, rivers and streams, said Melissa Lenczewski, an associate professor of geology and environmental geosciences at Northern Illinois University.
For years, it was assumed that the volume of water in the Great Lakes was so enormous that any drugs that got through treatment facilities would be diluted to the point that they would not pose a problem, said Lenczewski, who was not a part of the UWM study.
That theory itself now is being diluted.
Even more concerning are the much higher levels of antibiotics that are being put into rivers and streams near pig farms where the drugs are used to produce larger animals, she said.
In addition, strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria also have been found in water near those farms, she said.
“It is very alarming how much we are putting drugs out there in the environment,” she said.
