Pink Ribbons and Disinformation

The Truth about Breast Cancer and Mammograpy

by Steven Ransom

Women who are concerned about breast cancer need facts, not myths, to make their own decisions.–Dr. Irwin D. Bross.

In both the US and the UK, October has also become known as BCAM – breast cancer awareness month – the month that sees thousands of women  sporting their pink ribbons, all proceeds supposedly going towards finding a cure. A report from the American College of Preventative Medicine estimates that 185,000 women a year in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer[1] and the latest Royal Marsden Hospital web-page on breast cancer reports that 28,000 women in the UK will have been diagnosed with this disease in 2002.

This article reveals the paucity of genuine information given to women on the subject of breast cancer and affords a revealing insight into the vested interests behind  the scenes of the breast cancer industry. And of course, following the Credence tradition, this article also delivers some very good news on the subject.

Interpreting those statistics

Whilst it may be correct that 185,000 women in the United State and 28,000 women per annum in the UK are diagnosed as having breast cancer, how many of those breast cancer diagnoses are actually correct? And more importantly, how dangerous are many breast cancers  anyway?  Before drawing too sharp a breath at this point, please consider the following statements. A recent report in the UK Sunday Times on breast cancer stated: “Whilst mammography detects some potentially deadly cancers, it also picks up many times more cancers that might never become symptomatic during the patients’ lifetime, or that could be treated just as easily if detection were left until the woman could feel the lump herself. Thus, for every woman saved by early diagnosis, many others receive painful and potentially dangerous treatments to destroy tumours that pose little or no threat – tumours that they might die with, not of.” [2]

And further, in a paper entitled ‘Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography; Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective and Practical Alternative’, these well-qualified authors state that the widespread and virtually unchallenged acceptance of screening has resulted in a dramatic increase in the diagnosis of ductal carcinoma-in-situ (DCIS), a pre-invasive cancer, with a current, estimated incidence of about 40,000 US citizens annually. However, say the authors, some 80 percent of all DCIS cancers never become invasive, even if left untreated.[3] Today, DCIS is generally treated by lumpectomy plus radiation or even mastectomy and chemotherapy. Were you given this information when you were treated for your DCIS?

Panic makes for easy victims

Irwin D Bross was formerly Director of Bio-Statistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo NY, (Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Hospital). He wrote his thesis on breast cancer after spending some time researching the nature and outcome of the disease and discovering that more than half of those diagnosed with breast cancer had benign lesions that were unable to spread. He states:

“What most women have is a tumour which, under a light microscope, looks like a cancer to a pathologist. Chances are, this tumour lacks the ability to metastasise – to spread throughout the body – which is the hallmark of a genuine cancer…

Our discovery was highly unpopular with the medical profession. Doctors could never afford to admit the scientific truth because the standard treatment in those days was radical mastectomy. Admitting the truth could lead to malpractice suits by women who had lost a breast because of an incorrect medical diagnosis. There is no reason for women to panic when they hear ‘cancer’. Panic makes them easy victims. Women who are concerned about breast cancer need facts, not myths, to make their own decisions.” [4]

The detection of a breast ‘abnormality’ will of course be of concern, whenever it is discovered. But awareness of qualified information as to why breast lumps aren’t necessarily dangerous, and do not automatically require immediate remedial action (despite the pressure placed upon women to do otherwise), will hopefully lessen the high level of alarm surrounding this issue. And then of course, there are the growing number of false-positive diagnoses.

False positive diagnoses: if more women knew!
A report on false-positive breast cancer diagnosis was printed in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Included was the following:

“If more women knew how common false-positive results are, there might be less stress and anxiety while waiting to undergo further diagnostic tests, which sometimes take many weeks. Most importantly, greater educational initiatives focusing on the role of diet and lifestyle in breast cancer prevention would empower women to protect themselves rather than relying solely on early detection of the disease.” [5]

Radiation risks

Moving on to the mammogram itself, at patient level, very little information is offered concerning the dangers associated with mammography. What about the radiation risks associated with this practice? This condensed report on mammography is brought to us by Dr Joseph Mercola:

“Screening mammography poses significant and cumulative risks of breast cancer for pre-menopausal women. The routine practice of taking four films of each breast annually results in approximately 1 rad (radiation absorbed dose) exposure, about 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray.

The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 rad exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent, with a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade’s screening. These risks are even greater for younger women subject to ‘baseline screening’.

Screening all pre-menopausal women would cost $2.5 billion annually, about 14% of estimated Medicare spending on prescription drugs.”

Dr Mercola states that monthly breast self-examination (BSE), following brief training, coupled with annual clinical breast examination (CBE) by a trained healthcare professional, is at least as effective as mammography in detecting early tumours, and also safe. Dr Mercola also calls for national networks of BSE and CBE clinics to be established, staffed by trained nurses, to replace screening mammography. Apart from their minimal costs, such clinics would also empower women and free them from increasing dependence on industrialised medicine and its complicit medical institutions.[6] It might also help to free women from the constant disinformation, posing as ‘breast cancer statistics’. Readers may be interested to know that a simple and safe program of breast self-examination is included in the appendices at the back of Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century.

Mammography is a fraud

Dr John McDougall has made a thorough review of pertinent literature on mammograms. He points out that the $5-13 billion per year generated by mammograms controls the information that women get. Fear and incomplete data are the tools commonly used to persuade women to get routine mammograms. Says Dr McDougall:

“I went into medicine with the idea that I was going to save all of these lives with all the tricks and tools that medical doctors learned. And what I found was that very few of my patients got well. I often did harm to them. This was quite disturbing to me as a young doctor. What was even more disturbing was to find out that this failure had been fairly well documented in the scientific literature – but it doesn’t fit anybody’s advertising campaign.

Science says one thing and the public believes another because the public relations machine benefits the economics of the drug and medical industries. Mammography is a fraud. The 8th January 2000 issue of The Lancet carried an article stating that mammography is unjustifiable. Of the eight studies done, six of them showed that mammography doesn’t work, and yet the American public believes this is a time-honoured, definite way of saving their lives from breast cancer.” [7]

Cancer risks from breast compression

As early as 1928, physicians were warned to handle cancerous breasts with care, for fear of accidentally disseminating cells and spreading cancer.[8] Even so, mammography entails tight and often painful compression of the breast, particularly in pre-menopausal women. This may lead to a spread of malignant cells by rupturing small blood vessels in, or around small, as yet undetected breast cancers.[9] Mammograms do not prevent breast cancer. Dr Tim O’Shea warns that harmless breast cancers can be made active by the compressive force of routine mammography.[10]

Mammography offers no benefit above self-examination

Extensive studies of breast cancer histories show no increased survival rate from routine screening mammograms. After reviewing all available literature in the world on the subject, noted researchers Drs Wright and Mueller, of the University of British Columbia, recommended the withdrawal of public funding for mammography screening, because, “the benefit achieved is marginal and the harm caused is substantial.” [11]

The harm to which they are referring includes the constant worrying and emotional distress, as well as the tendency for unnecessary procedures and testing to be done based on results which can have a false-positive rate as high as 50%.[12]

A seven year study of 90,000 women by Professor Anthony Miller of Toronto University has shown that mammography had no impact on women aged between 40 – 49, and for women over 50, it has shown no benefit over and above what is detected by annual examinations by specialists and self-examination.[13]

In his book The Politics of Cancer, internationally recognised carcinogens expert, Dr Samuel Epstein, warns us:

“… the US National Cancer Institute is now agreed that large-scale mammography screening programs are likely to cause more cancers than could possibly be detected.” [14]

In Radiation and Human Health, Dr John Goffman writes:

“There will be more breast cancers induced by the procedure than there will be women saved from breast cancer death by early discovery of lesions.” [15]

But as Dr John McDougall has already stated, “… by the time a tumour is large enough to be detected by mammography, it has been there as long as 12 years! It is therefore ridiculous to advertise mammography as ‘early detection’.”

Mammography and vested interests

The American Cancer Society, the world’s most wealthy, non-profit institution (it has even made political contributions[16]), has close connections to the mammography industry. Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents. The ACS promotes the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker. The mammography industry also conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on advisory boards, and donates considerable funds.[17]

Pharmaceutical giant DuPont is a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program. ACS sponsors television shows and other media productions promoting mammography; produces advertising, promotional, and information literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organisations, and doctors; produces educational films, and, of course, lobbies Congress for legislation promoting availability of mammography services. In virtually all its important actions, the ACS has been, and remains strongly linked with the mammography industry, while ignoring or attacking the development of viable alternatives.[18]

ACS promotion continues to attract women of all ages into mammography centres, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. According to the report, a leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results “nearly 100 percent of the time.” An ACS communications director was questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey and admitted the following, in an article published by the Massachusetts Women’s Community journal Cancer:

“The ad isn’t based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point… Mammography today is a lucrative and highly competitive business.” [19]

Those ‘exciting’ breast cancer drugs!

The following BBC News item on breast cancer makes reference to the drug Tamoxifen:

Breast cancer deaths plummet: Early detection has saved lives. An unprecedented fall in the number of women dying from breast cancer has been hailed by scientists. A drug, Tamoxifen, developed in the UK, appears mainly responsible for almost a 30% drop in deaths in the UK over the last decade, reported the Lancet medical journal. It is the most sudden drop in mortality for a common cancer seen anywhere in the world. [20]

The above news item represents nothing more than the standard ‘advertorial’ we have come to expect from today’s toothless media. Everything of importance has been left out. Tamoxifen (other names include Nolvadex, Tamofen and Noltam) is an anti-estrogen drug manufactured by Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and is currently prescribed for between 2 and 5 years in duration, as a single daily dose of around 20 mg.

Tamoxifen – a human carcinogen

Nowhere is it mentioned in any of the Tamoxifen promos that the World Health Organisation formally designated Tamoxifen as a human carcinogen back in 1996, grouping this treatment with around 70 other chemicals — about one quarter of them pharmaceuticals.[21] Quite shockingly, in response to WHO’s announcement, the National Cancer Institute and Zeneca Pharmaceuticals lobbied California regulators to keep them from adding Tamoxifen to their list of carcinogens. As Duncan Roades, editor of Nexus Magazine stated:

“Here is open evidence of a government agency, chartered to find a cure for cancer, flagrantly colluding with a drug company to keep a known carcinogen on the market and keep the public from learning of its dangers.… This should have been a controversy of high order; instead it was barely reported in the press and few heard about it.” [22]

The long-term safety of Tamoxifen use in healthy women has never been established. In particular, Tamoxifen can cause uterine cancer. Cancers of the liver, ovaries and gastrointestinal tract have also been reported. A study at Johns Hopkins University by Yager and Shi found that Tamoxifen is a promoter of liver cancer. When WHO announced Tamoxifen as a known carcinogen in 1996, the NCI study on this drug was abruptly curtailed, but not before 33 women taking Tamoxifen at that time developed endometrial cancer.[23]

Readers are strongly advised to research the side-effects of all chemotherapy/hormonal drugs prescribed to them for their particular condition. Further important information on Tamoxifen and other breast cancer drugs is available from Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century.

‘Male-oriented’ Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the US (and the pink ribbon campaigns here in the UK) is designed to raise public awareness of breast cancer. BCAM is held in October and is sponsored primarily by Zeneca (the makers of Tamoxifen and a former subsidiary of Industry giant ICI), along with the American Academy of Family Physicians and Cancer Care Inc. In the US, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is now governed by a board consisting of 17 organisations, including the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute. Behind the scenes and Breast Cancer Awareness Month is nothing more than a business jamboree, with a little bit of sincerity thrown in on the side.

Male and money-oriented

The following extract is taken from the British Medical Journal ‘Selling Sickness’ debate:

“In some countries, women are invited for mammography in a letter in which the date and time of the appointment have already been fixed. This puts pressure on these women, who must actively decline the invitation if they don’t want to be screened. Sometimes, women are asked to give reasons for not attending appointments, as if it were a civic duty. In leaflets, women get simple messages – that cancer detected early can be cured, and early cancers can often be treated with breast-conserving surgery.

The data tell another story: no reliable evidence shows that breast screening saves lives; breast screening leads to more surgery, including more mastectomies; and estimates show that more than a tenth of healthy women who attend a breast screening program experience considerable psychological distress for many months.” [24]

An unnecessary climate of fear

In an article focusing on predictive (genetic) testing for breast cancer, a Dr Miryam Wahrman notes that: “… women must grapple with whether to undergo major surgery, or to watch and wait.” [25] This is diabolical position. The authority figure in the breast cancer equation – the oncologist – has now been given permission to pronounce a psychological, pharmaceutical and surgical curse upon healthy and unsuspecting patients. “You might get it. Who knows?”  That so unsound a knowledge-base is gaining such stature in society today is nothing short of criminal. Women are being treated as mere guinea pigs, being herded from pillar to post and trustingly receiving diagnoses and treatments that are causing serious psychological and physical harm, and tragically, more often than not, leading to the death of the ‘patient’.

In surveying the conventional breast cancer scene, in fact, in surveying the conventional cancer scene in general, one can only conclude that ‘death by doctoring’ is alive and well in the 21st century. No apologies are offered for the grim picture that has emerged in this article with regard to conventional breast cancer treatment and ‘care’. On the brink of the American Civil War, it was Patrick Henry who poignantly stated:

“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of the siren till she transforms us into beasts. For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and provide for it.”

Empowering women

Were there only one side to this cancer story, then it would be a depressing read indeed. In Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century, there are numerous testimonies as to the positive effects of treating cancer without the use of conventional drugs.

Hazel had been given a virtual death sentence by her cancer doctor, telling her that although there was an 86% recovery from her type of breast cancer, she was unfortunately in the smaller category. As previously noted, Hazel’s chemotherapy was only making her feel terrible, and she decided that if she was going to die, then she would do so without further conventional treatment. Hazel began a regime of intravenously administered Vitamin C and supplements including Vitamin B17 and paid great attention to her diet.

She soon began to feel a great deal better. She regained her weight and her hair and her appetite. About nine months following the diagnosis, she was troubled with lower back pain and visited her doctor. He suggested a further scan based on Hazel’s lower back pain, which the doctor believed was possibly the result of her cancer having spread to the base of her spine.  Hazel said there was no way she was going for more chemotherapy or scans which she believes in themselves can trigger carcinogenic activity.

Instead, Hazel supplemented her Vitamin C regime with a course of Vitamin B17 kernels, as well as maintaining a sensible diet and staying away from her conventional cancer physician. The blood count taken by her GP before Christmas read as normal. She feels very healthy and feels passionately that people need to know that there are alternative cancer treatments available and speaks to groups on this subject.

There is some very good news indeed on cancer. And fortunately, it doesn’t depend on the mighty orthodoxy to deliver it! With regard to breast cancer in general, for those women facing this disease or who are worried about the prospect, the following advice is offered by natural health advocate Dr Joseph Mercola:

“Breast Cancer Awareness Month is indeed a powerful time to educate, awaken and empower women to the real causes, preventative measures and truly effective cures for breast cancer. But, let’s not be duped or compromised in the process.” [26]

References

[1]’Screening for Cancer’ at www.acpm.org/breast.htm

[2] ‘Mammography – a woman’s breast friend?’ Sunday Times Magazine, 7thJuly 2002

[3] Baum, M, ‘Epidemiology versus scare-mongering: The case for humane interpretation of statistics and breast cancer’, Breast J. 6(5): 331­-334, 2000

[4] Boss, Irwin D, ‘Breast cancer: the one scientific fact you need to know’ at

http://home.mira.net/~antiviv/issue149.htm#HOW%20TO%20STOP%20WORRYING

[5] CF Christiansen, L Wang, MB Barton et al, ‘Predicting the cumulative risk of false-positive mammograms’, Journal of The National Cancer Institute, 92:1657-66, 2000

[6] ‘More on the Dangers of Mammography’, 23rd February 2002: at www.mercola.com/2002/feb/23/mammography.htm

[7] An Interview with Dr John McDougall at www.shareguide.com/McDougall.html

[8] Quigley, D T, ‘Some neglected points in the pathology of breast cancer, and treatment of breast cancer’, Radiology, May 1928

[9] Watmough, D J, ‘X-ray mammography and breast compression’, The Lancet 340: 122, 1992

[10] O’Shea, Tim, To the Cancer Patient at www.thedoctorwithin.com

[11] The Lancet, 1st July 1995

[12] New York Times, 14th December 1997; also O’Shea, Tim, op. cit.

[13] ‘Ideas’, CBC, 1st February 1996

[14] Epstein, Samuel S, The Politics of Cancer, Doubleday, 1979

[15] Epstein, Samuel S, Bertell, Rosalie & Barbara Seaman, ‘Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography; Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective and Practical Alternative’ at www.iicph.org/docs/dangers_of_mammography.htm   See also ‘Health Concerns Related to Radiation Exposure of the Female Nuclear Medicine Patient’ at http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1997/Suppl-6/stabin.html

[16] www.preventcancer.com

[17] Epstein, Samuel S, Bertell, Rosalie & Barbara Seaman, op. cit.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] BBC News, ‘Breast Cancer Deaths Plummet’ at  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_753000/753821.stm

[21] US Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service
National Toxicology Program at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/toc9.html

[22] Sellman, Sherrill, ‘Tamoxifen – A Major Medical Mistake?’ at

www.moonlighthealth.com/library2.asp?A=45

[23] Rona, Zoltan P, ‘The Trouble With Tamoxifen’, Health Link:

www.selene.com/healthlink/tamoxifen.html

[24] Moynihan, Ray, Heath, Iona & David Henry, ‘Selling Sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease-mongering’, British Medical Journal Online, BMJ, 13th April  2002

[25] Wahrman, Miryam Z,’The Breast Cancer Genes’ at

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/breast_cancer.html

[26] Mercola, Joseph, ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ at  http://www.mercola.com/2000/oct/29/breast_cancer_awareness.htm

Thanks for the memory

Experiments have backed what was once a scientific ‘heresy’, says Lionel Milgrom

Lionel Milgrom
Guardian

Thursday March 15, 2001

About homeopathy, Professor Madeleine Ennis of Queen’s University Belfast is, like most scientists, deeply sceptical. That a medicinal compound diluted out of existence should still exert a therapeutic effect is an affront to conventional biochemistry and pharmacology, based as they are on direct and palpable molecular events. The same goes for a possible explanation of how homoeopathy works: that water somehow retains a “memory” of things once dissolved in it.

This last notion, famously promoted by French biologist Dr Jacques Benveniste, cost him his laboratories, his funding, and ultimately his international scientific credibility. However, it did not deter Professor Ennis who, being a scientist, was not afraid to try to prove Benveniste wrong. So, more than a decade after Benveniste’s excommunication from the scientific mainstream, she jumped at the chance to join a large pan-European research team, hoping finally to lay the Benveniste “heresy” to rest. But she was in for a shock: for the team’s latest results controversially now suggest that Benveniste might have been right all along.

Back in 1985, Benveniste began experimenting with human white blood cells involved in allergic reactions, called basophils. These possess tiny granules containing substances such as histamine, partly responsible for the allergic response. The granules can be stained with a special dye, but they can be decolourised (degranulated) by a substance called anti-immunoglobulin E or aIgE. That much is standard science. What Benveniste claimed so controversially was that he continued to observe basophil degranulation even when the aIgE had been diluted out of existence, but only as long as each dilution step, as with the preparation of homoeopathic remedies, was accompanied by strong agitation.

After many experiments, in 1988 Benveniste managed to get an account of his work published in Nature, speculating that the water used in the experiments must have retained a “memory” of the original dissolved aIgE. Homoeopaths rejoiced, convinced that here at last was the hard evidence they needed to make homoeopathy scientifically respectable. Celebration was short-lived. Spearheaded by a Nature team that famously included a magician (who could find no fault with Benveniste’s methods – only his results), Benveniste was pilloried by the scientific establishment.

A British attempt (by scientists at London’s University College, published in Nature in 1993) to reproduce Benveniste’s findings failed. Benveniste has been striving ever since to get other independent laboratories to repeat his work, claiming that negative findings like those of the British team were the result of misunderstandings of his experimental protocols. Enter Professor Ennis and the pan-European research effort.

A consortium of four independent research laboratories in France, Italy, Belgium, and Holland, led by Professor M Roberfroid at Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, used a refinement of Benveniste’s original experiment that examined another aspect of basophil activation. The team knew that activation of basophil degranulation by aIgE leads to powerful mediators being released, including large amounts of histamine, which sets up a negative feedback cycle that curbs its own release. So the experiment the pan-European team planned involved comparing inhibition of basophil aIgE-induced degranulation with “ghost” dilutions of histamine against control solutions of pure water.

In order to make sure no bias was introduced into the experiment by the scientists from the four laboratories involved, they were all “blinded” to the contents of their test solutions. In other words, they did not know whether the solutions they were adding to the basophil-aIgE reaction contained ghost amounts of histamine or just pure water. But that’s not all. The ghost histamine solutions and the controls were prepared in three different laboratories that had nothing further to do with the trial.

The whole experiment was coordinated by an independent researcher who coded all the solutions and collated the data, but was not involved in any of the testing or analysis of the data from the experiment. Not much room, therefore, for fraud or wishful thinking. So the results when they came were a complete surprise.

Three of the four labs involved in the trial reported a statistically significant inhibition of the basophil degranulation reaction by the ghost histamine solutions compared with the controls. The fourth lab gave a result that was almost significant, so the total result over all four labs was positive for the ghost histamine solutions.

Still, Professor Ennis was not satisfied. “In this particular trial, we stained the basophils with a dye and then hand-counted those left coloured after the histamine- inhibition reaction. You could argue that human error might enter at this stage.” So she used a previously developed counting protocol that could be entirely automated. This involved tagging activated basophils with a monoclonal antibody that could be observed via fluorescence and measured by machine.

The result, shortly to be published in Inflammation Research, was the same: histamine solutions, both at pharmacological concentrations and diluted out of existence, lead to statistically significant inhibition of basophile activation by aIgE, confirming previous work in this area.

“Despite my reservations against the science of homoeopathy,” says Ennis, “the results compel me to suspend my disbelief and to start searching for a rational explanation for our findings.” She is at pains to point out that the pan-European team have not reproduced Benveniste’s findings nor attempted to do so.

Jacques Benveniste is unimpressed. “They’ve arrived at precisely where we started 12 years ago!” he says. Benveniste believes he already knows what constitutes the water-memory effect and claims to be able to record and transmit the “signals” of biochemical substances around the world via the internet. These, he claims, cause changes in biological tissues as if the substance was actually present.

The consequences for science if Benveniste and Ennis are right could be earth shattering, requiring a complete re-evaluation of how we understand the workings of chemistry, biochemistry, and pharmacology.

One thing however seems certain. Either Benveniste will now be brought in from the cold, or Professor Ennis and the rest of the scientists involved in the pan-European experiment could be joining him there.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

Consulting Firm Ranks the Nations of the World According to “Water Security”

by Hardly Waite

A British consulting firm called Maplecroft issued a “risk assessment” in the summer of 2010 which attempted to rank the nations of the world according to the security of their water supplies.

A “water security risk index” of 165 nations found African and Asian nations had the most vulnerable supplies, judged by factors including access to drinking water, per capita demand and dependence on rivers that first flow through other nations.

Somalia, where just 30 percent of the population has clean drinking water, topped the list, and then came Mauritania, Sudan, Niger, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkmenistan and Syria.

Iceland, Norway, and New Zealand, in that order, were ranked as having the most secure water supplies.

Climate change is expected to provoke conflict for water supplies as water becomes more scarce.

Shifts in monsoon rains and melting of glaciers, for instance, could disrupt supplies with the potential to cause cross-border conflicts. Construction of hydropower dams or more irrigation, for instance, can disrupt supplies down river.

The study said irrigation accounted for 70 percent of freshwater consumption across the globe. Industry uses another 22 percent.

While “water stress” is especially a problem for poorer nations, nations like Australia, the United States, and some European countries are also at risk.

Bulgaria ranked 47 on the list, Belgium 50, Spain 68, Australia 95 and the United States 104.

More Information.

Erin Brockovich Speaks Out on Global Water Shortage

Erin Brockovich is featured in “Last Call at the Oasis,”a new documentary sounding the alarm about an impending global water shortage.

According to Erin there are 30,000 superfund sites that still haven’t been cleaned up. “The EPA is, I don’t know, poorly run, mismanaged, broke, doesn’t do their job, is an agency that in my opinion and many instances has failed us.”

In case you wonder what kind of water Erin drinks, she has a reverse osmosis unit in her home.

Erin Brockovich as you probably remember her.

Read the LA Times Story.

“Most of the time no one is watching most of the water for most of the contaminants.”

by Hardly Waite

Published originally in the  Pure Water Occasional for December, 2010

In late 2010 an environmental group revealed that deadly hexavalent chromium is present in the water of many US cities. Americans were shocked.

Actually, what’s new with the hexavalent chromium issue isn’t that Chromium-6 has suddenly been spilled into US water supplies. What’s new is that someone told us about it.

Chromium-6 is only one of countless chemical contaminants that find their way into water but don’t get much public attention. In the 1980s I read a perceptive article on the subject that said, “Most of the time no one is watching most of the water for most of the contaminants.” In 2010 there’s a lot more to watch for, since new chemicals are being created almost faster than we can give them names, yet we continue not watching.

News about water quality comes and goes in the public mind. Ralph Nader made shocking revelations about water quality in the 1980s, but people soon forgot. The public has a short attention span.

Chromium-6 didn’t just appear suddenly in the water supplies of 31 of the 35 cities examined. It has been there a long time. The news is that someone went to the trouble to look for it and report it. Actually, it had been looked at earlier by government agencies, but they were happy to keep its presence to themselves as long as no one brought the subject up. This isn’t an uncommon event. Just this month the FDA revealed (after much prodding) that US agribusiness now drugs farm animals with 29 million pounds of antibiotics per year. Most people are aware that factory farm animals are being dosed with antibiotics and that consequently antibiotics are becoming ineffective, but the 29 million pound number is somewhat sobering. (A “shitload,” Grist calls it.) Does anyone doubt that a few tons of these drugs make their way into water supplies?

Chromium is present in water as trivalent and hexavalent chromium. The problem is that trivalent chromium is not only harmless but is an essential human nutrient. Hexavalent chromium is a potent poison. The state of California, which is usually about 20 years ahead of the rest of the country in environmental regulation, is proposing a maximum allowable of 0.06 parts per billion hexavalent chromium. The EPA is currently monitoring total chromium with a maximum allowable of 100 parts per billion.

Here is the EPA’s statement on chromium, which was issued after it received criticism for dragging its feet on the regulation of chromium-6:

“EPA absolutely has a drinking water standard for total chromium, which includes chromium-6 (also known as Hexavalent Chromium), and we require water systems to test for it. This standard is based on the best available science and is enforceable by law. Ensuring safe drinking water for all Americans is a top priority for EPA. The agency regularly re-evaluates drinking water standards and, based on new science on chromium-6, had already begun a rigorous and comprehensive review of its health effects. In September, we released a draft of that scientific review for public comment. When this human health assessment is finalized in 2011, EPA will carefully review the conclusions and consider all relevant information, including the Environmental Working Group’s study, to determine if a new standard needs to be set.

Background:

Currently, the total chromium standard is 0.1 mg/L (100 parts per billion). Our latest data shows no U.S. utilities are in violation of the standard.”

Now, to give an idea of how close to agreement are the two expert views—the California standard vs. the EPA standard—notice first that the EPA is measuring “total chromium” and California is measuring only chromium-6. Note, too, in case you haven’t, that the allowable numbers are not even in the same galaxy.

To sort all this out, image that, since we know that our potato chip intake should probably be limited, you consult a nutritional expert to find out how many bags of potato chips you can safely eat each month. His answer is one. You then consult a second expert whose answer is that you can safely eat a combined total of 1667 bags of potato chips and apples. The experts then take a survey of Americans’ eating habits. Expert #1 finds that 31 in 35 are violating the one bag per month standard for potato chip consumption, but expert #2 concludes that all is well because “no Americans are violating the combined potato chip and apple standard” by eating 1667 per month. By standard 2 you can safely eat 55 bags of potato chips (and no apples) per day.

That’s no more absurd than the advice we’re getting from the combined wisdom of California regulators and the EPA. The numbers are radically different and they’re counting different things.

The official allowable for chromium-6 will, after months or years of negotiation, eventually be set most likely somewhere between the extremes of 0.06 ppb and 100 ppb. The number will not be arrived at scientifically but will result from a political negotiation that considers the interests of manufacturers and sellers of products that use chromium, city water departments, environmental advocacy groups, wastewater processors, and a host of politicians who represent the interests of a host of lobbyists who are being paid by everyone from mining companies to state governments.
Each of these non-expert entities will employ its own set of experts who will rely mainly on the mysterious “science” of animal studies to prove its point. Animal studies, a science of roughly the same exactitude as having soothsayers examine the intestines of sacrificed goats, will conveniently prove what each of the interested parties wants proved. The final magic number, the amount of chromium-6 we can safely be exposed to, will depend mainly on the number of Republicans vs. Democrats on the committee.

Sprite Shower Filters. You’ll sing better.

Probable carcinogen hexavalent chromium found in drinking water of 31 U.S. cities

By  Lyndsey Layton

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 19, 2010

The study, which will be released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, is the first nationwide analysis of hexavalent chromium in drinking water to be made public.

It comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to set a limit for hexavalent chromium in tap water. The agency is reviewing the chemical after the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, deemed it a “probable carcinogen” in 2008.

The federal government restricts the amount of “total chromium” in drinking water and requires water utilities to test for it, but that includes both trivalent chromium, a mineral that humans need to metabolize glucose, and hexavalent chromium, the metal that has caused cancer in laboratory animals.

Last year, California took the first step in limiting the amount of hexavalent chromium in drinking water by proposing a “public health goal” for safe levels of 0.06 parts per billion. If California does set a limit, it would be the first in the nation.

Hexavalent chromium was a commonly used industrial chemical until the early 1990s. It is still used in some industries, such as in chrome plating and the manufacturing of plastics and dyes. The chemical can also leach into groundwater from natural ores.

The new study found hexavalent chromium in the tap water of 31 out of 35 cities sampled. Of those, 25 had levels that exceeded the goal proposed in California.

The highest levels were found in Norman, Okla., where the water contained more than 200 times the California goal. Locally, Bethesda and Washington each had levels of 0.19 parts per billion, more than three times the California goal.

The cities were selected to be a mix of big and smaller communities and included places where local water companies had already detected high levels of “total chromium.”

“This chemical has been so widely used by so many industries across the U.S. that this doesn’t surprise me,” said Erin Brockovich, whose fight on behalf of the residents of Hinkley, Calif., against Pacific Gas & Electric became the subject of a 2000 film. In that case, PG&E was accused of leaking hexavalent chromium into the town’s groundwater for more than 30 years. The company paid $333 million in damages to more than 600 townspeople and pledged to clean up the contamination.

“Our municipal water supplies are in danger all over the U.S.,” Brockovich said. “This is a chemical that should be regulated.”

Max Costa, who chairs the department of environmental medicine at New York University’s School of Medicine and is an expert in hexavalent chromium, called the new findings “disturbing.”

“At this point, we should strive to not have any hexavalent chromium in drinking water” or at least limit the amounts to the level proposed by California, Costa wrote in an e-mail.

Hexavalent chromium has long been known to cause lung cancer when inhaled, but scientists only recently found evidence that it causes cancer in laboratory animals when ingested. It has been linked in animals to liver and kidney damage as well as leukemia, stomach cancer and other cancers.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry, says the California goal is unrealistic because some water supplies have naturally occurring hexavalent chromium that is higher than .06 parts per billion.

In a written statement, the group’s senior director, Ann Mason, said that “even the most sophisticated analytical methods used by EPA are not able to detect the extremely low levels that California wants to establish.”

The group supports a “uniform, national standard for hexavalent chromium in drinking water, based on sound science,” Mason wrote. “Research is underway to provide EPA with critical data that will allow for a more informed risk assessment of hexavalent chromium. This data will be complete by mid-2011. Given the potential impact on drinking water supplies, EPA should incorporate this data in its assessment.”

Brendan Gilfillan, an EPA spokesman, said that the agency was aware of the new study by the Environmental Working Group and that the findings will be considered as the agency reviews total chromium in drinking water, work that is expected to be completed next year.

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said that water utilities across the country are resistant to the regulation.

“It’s not their fault. They didn’t cause the contamination. But if a limit is set, it’s going to be extraordinarily expensive for them to clean this up,” Cook said. “The problem in all of this is that we lose sight of the water drinkers, of the people at the end of the tap. There is tremendous push-back from polluters and from water utilities. The real focus has to be on public health.”

Fair Use

Lead in Drinking Water

Reprinted from the Pure Water Occasional’s November 2010 Issue.

Lead rarely occurs naturally in water. It gets there from mining operations or industrial processes, but most often it gets into drinking water through plumbing fixtures. Low pH can be a factor, because as the pH of water goes down, its ability to leach metals from pipes and fixtures goes up.

The risk of lead poisoning is highest in children and pregnant women. Children absorb 30-75 percent of the lead they ingest; while adults absorb only about 11 percent. Effects of lead poisoning include brain, kidney and red blood cell deterioration, coma and convulsions, and high blood pressure. Lead-damaged children experience slowed physical growth, hearing problems, and reduced intelligence.

Lead is powerful stuff. While most water contaminants are measured in parts per million, the EPA’s maximum contaminant figure for lead is only 15 parts per billion.

The best water treatment for lead is prevention in the form of replacing pipes with very old solder joints (the Safe Drinking Water Act imposed limits on lead in solder in 1986) and fixtures that can leach lead. Raising the pH of acidic water and amendments in total alkalinity levels can dramatically lower lead content as well. Phosphate-based corrosion inhibitors are also effective.

Actual lead removal is done fairly easily in drinking water with any good reverse osmosis unit. There are also cartridge filters with lead-removal properties built into them. KDF, special ion exchange resins, and activated alumina cartridges can all be used to reduce lead in drinking water.

For whole house lead treatment, a standard water softener can be an effective lead remover, but reduced flow rates must be observed. There are also carbon block cartridge style filters, but these restrict service flow considerably.

For more information about lead removal, see the Occasional’s Water Treatment Issues page on lead.

Is Your Faucet Making You Sick?

By Doug Linney

By now we’ve all heard the dangers of lead — at any level. The American Heart Association, the Centers for Disease Control, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the World Health Organization, and every other health-based organization that has reviewed the available studies have concluded that there is no safe level of lead in the human body. Human lead exposure has been associated with reduced cognitive function, aggressive behavior, increased criminal activity, digestive ailments, nervous system disorders, cardiovascular impairment, and bone marrow damage, just to name a few. Recent medical research has demonstrated that many of these ailments are caused by low levels of lead exposures — levels that were previously believed to be safe. Lead in our bloodstream robs us of our future, as it is particularly toxic to our children’s health. Furthermore, unlike other toxins that our bodies can remove, lead accumulates over time and can have adverse impacts throughout adulthood and can even shorten our lives.

But, after years of government programs to reduce lead exposure, maybe you feel safe, right? The gas you put in your car no longer contains lead. You were careful to repaint your house with lead free paints, and you avoid buying those brightly-painted imported toys that seem to be recalled with alarming frequency. And of course, last year when you remodeled your kitchen you installed a brand new faucet with packaging claiming to be “lead free” to replace that old leaky one. Surely that new faucet doesn’t contain lead.

However, the EPA still estimates that as much as “20 percent of human exposure to lead may come from lead in drinking water. How can that be? How can we still be accumulating substantial quantities of lead in our bloodstream from our drinking water?”

Federal Law Is not Entirely Protective

Under current federal law, the faucet that is labeled “lead free” can contain as much as four percent lead. In addition, federal law allows some small lead concentrations to leach out of your faucet and into the water you and your family drink. The typical household faucet manufactured over the last fifteen years can contain a quarter pound of lead! Older faucets manufactured before 1996 can contain double that amount. We know that a faucet containing so much lead is likely to leach lead into the drinking water used in our homes.

The existing laws rely on a standard that assumes a “small” amount of lead leaching from our faucets is safe. Since there are many ways that we can still be exposed to lead, we should be eliminating lead exposure wherever we can. Getting lead out of faucets is something we know can be done, and we cannot delay.

Dangerous Levels of Lead in Our Plumbing

Household plumbing continues to be an alarming source of lead exposure. EPA has a warning for consumers on its web page that brass faucets are the single greatest contributing source of lead in consumers’ drinking water. The EPA estimates that up to 20 percent of human lead exposure is the result of lead in our plumbing, including faucets. Public health departments in nearly every state across the nation and as well as the EPA all provide warnings on their web sites about the dangers from the lead that lurks in your plumbing.

They advise against using hot water directly from the tap for human consumption. This is because hot water causes more lead to leach out of plumbing. They also advise that you run the cold water tap for several minutes before drinking water from it. This is to help clear the water that has been collecting lead while it sits in the pipes.

No such warnings can be posted at the millions of drinking fountains located in schools across the country, where rampant violations of state and federal lead standards have been documented. In 1998 the California Department of Health Services estimated that 18 percent of California’s public elementary schools had lead levels in drinking water that exceeded the federal action level. Comprehensive sampling by the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2008 found that 30 percent of their schools were dispensing water with unsafe levels of lead. Widespread lead contamination has also been found in water from school drinking fountains in Seattle, Baltimore, Roanoke, and Ontario, California.

Abundant research has demonstrated time and time again that lead is particularly lethal to children. Yet, more than a decade after the problem with lead in school plumbing was widely recognized, little progress has been made to fix it, in large part because new plumbing components still contain lead!

Waking Up to the Dangers of Lead?

In September 2008 the EPA lowered the lead standard for air emissions based on their recognition of new medical studies demonstrating the dangers of exposure to lead at levels previously thought to be safe. These new medical studies make it clear that any exposure to lead, whether through air or water, is dangerous and demonstrate how important it is for our children’s future health that we get the lead entirely out of our drinking water systems.

In 2006 California started a revolution to finally make our faucets safe by adopting a law that essentially eliminates lead from drinking water plumbing. Vermont and Maryland have already followed California’s lead by passing similar laws. U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo has now introduced H.R. 5289 to get the lead out of all drinking water faucets and plumbing sold in the United States. Of course, the battle isn’t won. The plumbing industry continues to resist, seeking amendments that would allow industry to bypass federal governmental regulation and continue manufacturing and selling unsafe faucets.

Doug Linney is President of East Bay Municipal Utility District.

Fair Use

A Simmering Water War

by Jim Hightower

Here in my home state of Texas, we’re suffering from withdrawal pains.

This is not caused by our addiction to alcohol or drugs – but to plain water. And to make our pain worse, it’s not the people of Texas who are hooked on a destructive water habit – it’s the boneheaded executives and greedheaded investors in coal-fired and nuclear-powered plants that generate electricity.

And don’t laugh at Texas, for the same corporate addiction might be draining the fresh water supplies where you live. Question: which uses more water – your washing machine chugging out one load of laundry, or the power plant that provides the few kilowatts of electricity to heat the water for that one load? No contest. The power plant uses as much as 10 times more water to make the electricity than you use to fill your machine.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Solar and wind alternatives use almost no water to produce electricity – an advantage that today’s “clean-coal” hucksters and nuclear speculators don’t want you or your congress critters to realize. Indeed, their lobbyists are pushing hard at both national and state levels to get regulatory breaks and taxpayer subsidies to let these voracious giants keep mainlining our nation’s water.

Private interests now want to build four new, water-sucking power plants in our state – even though Texas already produces far more electricity than it needs. Where would they get the billions of gallons of water they’d use each year? From the Colorado River, draining it and the region’s Highland Lakes of the essential and scarce H2O that supplies millions of people in the Austin area and downstream.

Wherever you live, it’s time for a citizen’s intervention to break this costly habit. For information and action tips, contact Public Citizen Texas at www.texasvox.org.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

Air and Carbon

by Gene Franks

This article appeared originally in the Pure Water Occasional for October, 2010.

A little understood fact about granular carbon—any carbon used in filters, as a matter of fact—is that it contains a lot of air. What appears to be a pile of dry granules is actually the hiding place for countless tiny pockets of air. According to an article in Water Quality Products Magazine: “In a typical bed of dry activated carbon, the carbon skeleton only occupies 20 percent of the bed. The remainder is air.”

About half the trapped air is in the voids between the granules of the carbon. The other half is in the pores of the granules. Carbon granules are shot full of acres of many tiny crevices. These nooks and crannies are the very thing that gives carbon so much surface area and makes it such an effective adsorbent. A carbon particle only around 0.1 mm wide has a surface area of several square metres. In more dramatic terms, an EPA document states that GAC has an adsorption surface area from around 73 to 112 acres per pound!

Owners of even small carbon filters know that when water encounters carbon for the first time a lot of hissing and spluttering occurs. This is the sound of trapped air that is escaping from within the carbon.

Enlargement of granular carbon shows countless pores that adsorb contaminants. The surface area of the pores is exceptional. A single pound of activated carbon has more surface area in its pores than 100 football fields. When the carbon is new, these pores are filled with air that must eventually work its way out.

In larger carbon beds used in tank-style filters it is often advantageous to allow a long soak—from overnight to several days, depending on the bed size and water temperature. This is because large air pockets can make the filter perform poorly. The filter, in fact, will not perform normally until all the air is gone. In some very large systems technicians resort to introducing heated water to speed the process up. This isn’t recommended for homeowners.In small filters, trapped air is often just an an aesthetic inconvenience, but it can sometimes cause “vapor locks” in undersink filters and reverse osmosis units. This condition can be relieved by simply opening a filter canister to allow the trapped air to escape. In RO units, most prefilter air escapes through the drain line of the membrane housing (that’s the hissing you hear when you start a new or a newly-serviced unit), and most postfilter air is expelled through the faucet. Rinsing the unit well usually gets rid of excess air quickly.

A vigorous backwash of up to 30 or 40 minutes can serve three purposes in new backwashing filters: it rids the carbon of fines (carbon dust), it resettles the bed so that smaller granules work their way to the top, and it clears out air pockets.

The best policy for starting non-backwashing In/Out-type filters is probably a very long soak before the unit goes into service. It could take up to 48 hours to get all the air out at ambient temperature, but the longer soak you can give the carbon before putting the filter in service the less air you’ll get into your home’s water pipes. Always open a downstream faucet to allow air to escape.

FYI: in industrial applications, air-release time can be cut to 3 to 4 hours by using 212 degree F. water. At 1800 degrees, air expulsion is instantaneous.