Whose Garbage Is This Anyway

by Thomas L. Friedman

HEBRON, West Bank — It was not your usual Holy Land tour, but surely one of the most revealing I’ve ever had. A team from Friends of the Earth Middle East took me around to see how waste, sewage and untreated water flow, or don’t, between Israel and the West Bank. I never realized how political garbage and dirty water could be, or how tracking it could reveal just why making peace here is so urgent.

For starters, who knew that when you flush the toilet in your hotel in the eastern half of Jerusalem the wastewater likely ends up in the Dead Sea — untreated? It flows from Jerusalem’s sewers into the Kidron Stream. If you can stand the stench, you can watch it all rush by about a mile east and downhill from Jerusalem. Germany offered to pay for a treatment plant, but for the past 20 years Israel and the Palestinian Authority have not been able to agree on how to split the treated water — which originates in both Jewish and Arab drains, so nothing has happened. As a result, Mother Nature alone does her best to filter it as it flows down to the Jordan Valley, where Jewish settlers use some of this poorly treated water to irrigate their date palms. The rest ends up in the Dead Sea. Good thing it’s already dead.

We’ve learned in the last few years that the colonial boundaries of the Middle East do not correspond to the ethnic, sectarian and tribal boundaries — and it is one reason that some Arab states are breaking up. But neither do the ecosystem boundaries correspond with any borders or walls. And the fact that Israelis and Palestinians have not been able to reach a power-sharing agreement that would enable them to treat the entire ecosystem here as a system is catching up with them.

When the region got hit in January 2013 with snow and rain from a freak and massive storm, the runoff was so powerful down the Alexander Stream, which flows from the Shomron Mountains near the West Bank town of Nablus into Israel, that it overflowed. So instead of going under the thick cement wall Israel has erected around the West Bank to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, the flood blew away a whole chunk of that wall. Mother Nature laughs at our “green lines.”

Now consider what is going on in the Hebron Industrial Zone, home to 13 tanning factories, including the Al-Walied for Leather and Tanning Company, where hides are hanging everywhere from the ceiling and a single worker is putting them through a machine that squeezes out the moisture from the softening process.

The problem, explained Malek Abu al-Failat, from the Bethlehem office of Friends of the Earth Middle East, which brings Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians together on one team, is that the tanneries use chromium 3 to soften the hides and then let the effluence flow into the drains and down the Hebron Stream. That effluence exceeds 5,000 milligrams of chromium 3 per liter. The global safety standard is 5 milligrams! When the chromium 3 hits the water and oxygen, it becomes chromium 6, a known carcinogen. So, in 1998, the U.S. Agency for International Development built a treatment plant here that effectively extracts all the chromium 3 and recycles it. But, in 2005, Israel identified the sulfuric acid used in the recycling as a dual-use chemical that Palestinians could employ to make a bomb and banned its use by tanners. So the chromium 6 is now back in the water, which flows from Hebron to Beersheba, one of Israel’s largest cities, and then on to Gaza and out to sea, into waters used by Israel’s desalination plants.

We visited the Al-Minya Sanitary Landfill that was built with grants from the World Bank, European Union and USAID so Palestinians could close down 19 unauthorized and unsanitary dump sites around Bethlehem and Hebron. It was supposed to open in September, but, as I saw, its 65 acres were still pristine because the Israeli military told the Palestinian Authority that if the site didn’t also accept garbage from the Gush Etzion Jewish settlements it could not open, said Failat. Palestinians say it’s unfair that they lose their land to settlements and then have to accept their garbage.

Meanwhile, Gaza, which has been woefully mismanaged by Hamas, is pumping all its drinking water from its coastal aquifer at triple its renewable rate of recharge. As a result, saltwater is seeping in. Last year, the U.N. said that by 2016 there will be no potable water left in Gaza’s main aquifer. Gaza has no big desalination plant and would not have the electricity to run it anyway. I don’t want to be here when 1.5 million Gazans really get thirsty.

Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians actually have all the resources needed to take care of everyone, but only if they collaborate, explained Gidon Bromberg, co-founder of Friends of the Earth Middle East. Israel, which is the world leader in desalination and wastewater recycling, could use its own cheap natural gas and solar power generated in Jordan — where there is lots of sunny desert —  “to provide desalinated and recycled water for itself, Gaza, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.”

Everyone would win, which is why Bromberg suggests that Secretary of State John Kerry take Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on an eco-tour to see “the seeping time bomb that’s ticking underneath both of them.” It, too, will explode if they don’t forge a deal that enables them to live apart, but in a framework that also enables them to work together to protect the water, soil and air that they will always have in common and can only be preserved by acting in common.

Source: New York Times.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Texans Answer Call to Save Water, Only to Face Higher Rates

By Neena Satija

Gazette’s Introductory Note:  This piece underlines one of the ironies of conservation: as consumption goes down, cost per unit goes up.  Water utilities are faced with the unpleasant task of asking their customers to use less of their cash product. It’s like asking a service station to conserve energy by selling less gasoline. This is one of the strongest arguments for publicly owned water supplies.  It is for the common good to conserve water, and the public as a whole can absorb the cost.  It is unreasonable to expect a for-profit owner of a privatized water utility to voluntarily give up its profits to conserve water.–Hardly Waite. 

The drought-stricken city of Wichita Falls could soon give its residents more bad news.

Even though the 100,000 residents of this northwest Texas city have substantially cut their water use, their dry lawns may no longer continue to save them money on their water bills. Instead, they will be asked to pay more; the city lost $4.5 million in water sales last year because of the conservation efforts.

“It’s tough to tell the consumer that ‘Yeah, well, you guys did a great job out there conserving water, but lo and behold, we got hurt financially, so we’ve got to raise your rates,’ ” the assistant city manager, Jim Dockery, said.

Wichita Falls, whose total rainfall over the last three years was 33 inches below normal, is not alone in its water conservation conundrum. Several Texas cities have collectively lost tens of millions of dollars by restricting outdoor water use, which has been a main source of revenue. At the same time, most of their expenses, like paying off debt and infrastructure maintenance, have increased, forcing utilities to raise rates for everyone, regardless of their water use.

The losses have prompted credit ratings agencies to look closer at the finances of public utilities in Texas. One agency, Fitch, downgraded some of Fort Worth’s water and sewer debt last year, and last week the firm downgraded the debt of the city’s wholesale water supplier. Fort Worth lost $11 million last year because of water conservation.

“This business is extremely weather-dependent,” said Mary Gugliuzza, the Fort Worth water utility’s spokeswoman. Rainy summers can also hurt a city’s bottom line because residents do not need to water their lawns as much.

Fort Worth’s goal, like that of many other cities in Texas, is to change its rate structure to avoid such ups and downs. Today, about 17 percent of the utility’s revenue comes from fixed monthly charges that all water customers pay regardless of how much they use; by 2018, Ms. Gugliuzza said, 25 percent of its revenue will come from such charges. Mr. Dockery said Wichita Falls is considering a similar transition.

Still, the changes will be hard to swallow politically. Consumers have underpaid for water for decades, said Sharlene Leurig, a program director at Ceres, a nonprofit sustainability advocacy group with which many Texas cities have consulted on water rate structures.

“People truly don’t understand that the cost of having reliable water is not the cost of the water itself,” Ms. Leurig said. “It’s the cost of all the infrastructure you have to put in place to provide that water reliably and safely.”

Wichita Falls is spending about a million dollars on a pipeline that will deliver treated wastewater to a large manufacturing company, and the city will lose an additional $100,000 a year by selling the reused water at a discount.

“We’re paying to save water, is what we’re doing,” Mr. Dockery said. He added that the city has had to defer important maintenance projects because of the lost revenue.

Cities across Texas hope that utility revenues will bounce back once the rain returns. But even if the drought lifts, officials know that water users’ habits have changed. They will never be the water-guzzlers they might have once been.

While that is good news for conservationists, the phenomenon that credit ratings agencies call a “drought shadow” will result in higher costs for all users, even the most water-conscious.

Source:  Texas Tribune (New York Times).

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

How RO Tanks Work

This page features cutaways of three reverse osmosis tanks.  The first is an actual tank that was cut apart after it failed.  In the first tank, water goes in and out through the valve on top.  Air is added through the valve on the right side near the bottom.  The butyl diaphragm is pushed toward the top by air pressure when no water is in the tank but as the tank fills it compresses the air and the diaphram sags toward the bottom of the tank. When there is a demand for water, the compressed air pushes the diaphragm upward and forces the water out through the valve.

The three tanks pictured work identically although the one in middle of the page is mounted on its side.

Plastic in Our Body Wash, Our Toothpaste?

by Nancy Gross

When 19-year old Aerospace Engineering student Boyan Slat gave a TEDex talk about the ocean cleanup array he has designed, he referenced “The Stone Age, The Bronze Age,” and then referred to our time as “The Plastic Age,” saying, “Every year we produce about 300 million tons of plastic.” The more I take notice, the more I see the truth of this. We are in The Plastic Age. Take a look around and keep looking. Plastic is everywhere, and even where it isn’t center stage, it often forms the cartilage of the products we rely on.

If you aren’t familiar with the trash gyres in the ocean, please look them up online. Having just traveled for business and spent time in several airports, a convention center, and a hotel, I was that much more aware of the number of plastic one-time use containers that make cleanup oh so easy, except for the cleanup of the larger biosphere, since these items are not going to biodegrade for countless generations, if at all. During his TEDex talk, Slat shows the audience images of the insides of the bellies of dead Albatrosses that have been feeding on plastic bottle caps and other plastic debris. The color red says “food” to the sea bird even if it is far from being food. Plastics are in the oceans, are in all the pathways of urban runoff, and are likely affecting processes in our bodies.

Ocean Trash

A surprising and nearly invisible utilization of plastic that is of particular concern in terms of water treatment just came to my attention. It was introduced about a decade ago, and began showing up in the news as a pollutant about a year ago: tiny plastic microbeads are employed for exfoliation or to provide a “feel good factor” in many top brands’ personal care products, from body washes to toothpastes. The beads are often as small as salt particles and are not accidentally entering our waterways; rather they are designed to go down the drain. They are being found in the wastewater going out into the ocean. They have been found in large quantity in The Great Lakes, something that prompted a coalition of mayors to ask EPA to study the potential harm to humans and the ecosystem. They absorb chemicals, are ingested by fish and other organisms, and must then inevitably end up in food we eat.

On January 25, Los Angeles Times reported on the microbeads in the L.A. River, where the discharge from the Donald C. Tillman Reclamation Plant flows. A spokesman from the L.A. Department of Public Works says the plant is able to filter out all microbeads down to the size of 10 microns, or 0.01 millimeters. Markus Eriksen, a scientist with the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to researching plastics in the world’s waterways, said he doesn’t yet know the origin of the beads, but he did say they are larger than 0.01 millimeters. “Using a net only 2 feet wide for 10 minutes in a stream a few hundred feet across, I caught dozens of bits of plastic,” he said. “So, it’s easy to extrapolate that millions of plastic particles flow through this channel every day.”

According to Plastic Free Seas, these are some of the brands on the market that have products containing plastic microbeads:

Nivea (Beiersdorf)

Neutrogena (Johnson & Johnson)

Olay (Proctor & Gamble)

Biore (Kao)

Kiehl’s (L’Oreal)

Lancome (L’Oreal)

L’Oreal

Shiseido

Clinique

Boots

Estee Lauder

Superdrug

Garnier (L’Oreal)

Gatsby (Mandom Corp)

The Body Shop (L’Oreal)

Darlie (Toothpaste)

Unilever

These are excerpts from a statement by Unilever to its stakeholders.

“Small pieces of plastic material (typically under 5 mm in size) identified in the marine environment are often referred to as micro-plastics. They originate from a variety of different sources including the breakdown of larger plastic materials in the water, the shedding of synthetic fibres from textiles during domestic clothes washing, and from the use of small plastic beads, for their abrasive or other properties, in a range of consumer and industrial products.

Unilever currently uses small plastic scrub beads in a limited number of dedicated personal care products, such as exfoliating face and body washes. The plastic scrub beads are used as an ingredient because of their ability to gently remove dead skin cells from the surface of the skin. Many consumers enjoy the clean feeling that using products with the beads provides.

The amount of plastic in the marine environment thought to originate from the use of plastic scrub beads in personal care products is considered to be limited compared to other sources. However, a number of stakeholders have expressed concerns about the growing presence and potential impact of micro-plastics in the marine environment and are looking at ways in which the amount of micro-plastics can be reduced, including from the use of plastic scrub beads in personal care products.

Our position: Unilever has decided to phase out plastic scrub beads from personal care products. This is because we believe we can provide consumers with products that deliver a similar exfoliating performance without the need to use plastics. We expect to complete this phase out globally by 2015 and are currently exploring which suitable alternatives can best match the sensory experience that the plastic scrub beads provide.”

For more information visit the 5 Gyres Institute’s website.

Visit Plastic Free Seas’ article on microbeads.

Source:  Water Efficiency.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Manganese in Winnipeg’s Water Not Considered Harmful

 A Report by the Winnipeg Free Press 

Although it looks bad, Winnipeg’s manganese-tainted water is considered safe.

Outbreaks of brown water in Winnipeg households are expected to decline over the next two years as city hall launches an aggressive plan to control the problem.

City officials identified the cause of the discoloured water as the presence of manganese in the city’s water supply.

The solution is to aggressively “clean” the city’s reservoirs and water mains to reduce the amount of manganese.

“We’ve identified an issue and a path to the solution,” Coun. Justin Swandel, chairman of the city’s public works committee, said during a Friday news conference.

Members of council were briefed during a special seminar on the findings of a consultant’s report and the steps the civic administration is taking. News media were briefed afterwards.

Diane Sacher, director of water and waste, said discoloured-water incidents have occurred in the city for several years but only became problematic when the city’s new water-treatment plant became operational in 2009.

Sacher said a material — ferric chloride — added to the water supply at the treatment plant as a coagulant, binds small solids such as algae together in larger clumps, making them easier to remove.

However, the ferric chloride was also releasing manganese, a natural substance found in water and many liquids, such as apple juice and tea.

The treatment plant filters out ferric chloride but not manganese.

The manganese attached itself to the lining of the water lines and was released with a sudden change in direction — water-main breaks or repairs, and resulted in clumps of discoloured water of varying sizes travelling through the water system.

Sacher said the city is switching to an alternative ferric chloride with a lower concentration of manganese, speeding up its annual cleanup of the reservoir and enhancing the water-line cleanup from a six-year to a two-year cycle.

Reservoir cleaning is underway now and water-main cleaning will begin in May.

“While we expect it will take approximately two years to implement all the recommendations in the report, our customers should see a gradual reduction in discoloured water as each recommendation is implemented,” Sacher said.

Sacher said discoloured water is a common occurrence at all water utilities across North America, but the number of incidents in Winnipeg began increasing in 2010 and reached seemingly epidemic levels in the summer of 2013.

There were more than 1,600 incidents in August. The city’s goal is to reduce the outbreaks of discoloured water to traditional levels of fewer than 100 incidents per month.

Sacher said the city will hire an independent consultant, at a cost of $500,000, to verify the findings and monitor the city’s cleanup efforts.

Other costs included an additional $250,000 annually for the operational changes and a one-time capital construction cost of $580,000 for a testing facility at the treatment plant, which will be used to find alternatives to ferric chloride as a coagulant.

One of the issues that perplexed many homeowners last summer was the presence of brown water at one home but not the neighbour’s.

Sacher said the consultant explained that phenomenon occurs as a result of an affected household using a large amount of water while the other household did not, which resulted in large amounts of manganese entering a home’s water line and not their neighbours.

“The manganese is causing a coating on the wall of water mains,” Sacher said. “That is disrupted when the flow velocity increases or the direction changes.

“This goes as a slug through the main. If you have your dishwasher going, a shower running, you would be bringing it in, whereas your neighbour, if he wasn’t using water at the time, wouldn’t necessarily bring it in to his system.”

While manganese levels are high, Mayor Sam Katz said health officials assured him they do not pose a health hazard.

“Our water is safe. Period,” Katz said.

Sacher said manganese is found in many liquids, adding levels in tea and apple juice are much higher than those found in samples taken across the city.

Coun. Jeff Browaty (North Kildonan) said the outbreaks of brown water will not immediately stop, adding he expects the problem to be under control as the city reduces the amount of manganese in its water supply.

“People’s expectations have to be reasonable,” Browaty said. “We’ll still see unacceptable levels of brown water this summer, but we’re on the right path and we should get levels that we are used to within a couple of years.”

A consultant was first hired by the city in 2010 when reports of brown water escalated that summer. Samples found high levels of iron, which prompted the consultant to recommend a treatment solution that did result in fewer incidents in 2011.

But the numbers jumped again in the summer of 2012, which prompted the city to hire another consultant who later discovered the high levels of manganese, which were not present in the water supply in 2010.

Sacher defended the work of the first consultant, adding the findings and solutions were backed by research.

Coun. Dan Vandal, who persuaded council in the fall to accept claims for laundry damaged by discoloured water, said this latest report is the best information the city has to deal with the problem.

Time will tell if this is the best advice, Vandal (St. Boniface) said.

“The evidence will be less discoloured water in city taps… which I expect by next summer.”

Source:  Winnipeg Free Press.

A Nation Chewing Itself to Death

 By Cam McGrath

The Yemeni capital of Sanaa is reputed to be over 2,500 years old, making it one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. But it is living on borrowed time.

Economists warn that if poverty trends continue, by 2030 more than half of the Sanaa’s projected four million inhabitants will be unable to afford their basic food needs. But before that happens, the city will run out of water.

“Sanaa is using water much faster than nature can replace it,” says Noori Gamal, a hydrologist at the Ministry of Water and Environment. “The water table is dropping by up to six metres a year. By 2025, Sanaa could be the first capital in the world to run out of water.”

Yemen is an arid country, and Sanaa receives only 20 cm of precipitation per year. But climate is not the reason for the rapid depletion of groundwater stocks. The culprit is entirely man-made.

An obsession with qat, a mild narcotic plant whose bitter-tasting leaves release a stimulant when chewed, is ravaging Yemen’s fragile economy and sucking up precious water.

Thirty years ago, chewing qat leaves was an occasional pastime. Now it is an integral part of daily life in this poor Arab nation of 26 million, where 72 percent of men and a third of all women are reported to be habitual users. By one estimate, 20 million dollars is spent each day on qat, and 80 million work hours lost to its consumption.

Yemen’s preoccupation with the leafy stimulant qat is having dire consequences on water supplies.

“In Yemen, the day revolves around qat,” says Ali Ayoub, a leather merchant who chews qat for about four hours a day, or longer if there is a wedding or holiday celebration. “By 2 pm, you won’t find anyone at work. Everyone leaves early to buy qat.”

Like many poor Yemenis, Ayoub spends more money on the narcotic leaves than food for his malnourished family. He says qat stimulates the mind and offers an escape from the hardships of Yemeni existence: grinding poverty, high unemployment, and ongoing political strife.

“People say qat is the root of Yemen’s problems, but it is really just a symptom,” he says.

As the practice of qat chewing has grown, farmers drawn by the higher profits of the plant’s cultivation have abandoned traditional food and export crops. In 1997, some 80,000 hectares were planted with qat. By 2012, the number reached 250,000 hectares, according to official figures, and is growing at a rate of 10 percent per year.

The cultivation of qat has displaced staple crops like wheat and maize, which has sent local food prices soaring. The increase of food prices has had a deep impact on many households, especially among the poor, who account for 40 percent of the population.

“Until the 1980s, over 90 percent of produce was grown locally, but now because of qat Yemen must import 90 percent of its food needs,” Gamal tells IPS.

He estimates that qat fields consume about 50 percent more water per hectare than the cereal fields they have displaced. Farmers typically irrigate qat trees with water pumped from underground aquifers filled over thousands of years by the occasional rainfall that seeps through the soil and rock.

Government sources estimate that qat fields sucked up over a billion cubic metres of the country’s scarce water last year, accounting for about a third of all groundwater consumption.

Yemen already has one of the lowest annual per capita water shares in the world, estimated at 125 cubic metres, compared to the world average of 7,500 cubic metres. The annual water share is projected to drop to 55 cubic metres per capita by 2030 unless drastic measures are taken.

A population with an annual water share of less than 1,000 cubic metres per capita faces water scarcity, while humans need 100 cubic metres per year to survive.

As Yemen’s qat consumption has increased, health officials have noticed an alarming rise in related health issues. A study by Aden University found more than 100 types of pesticides used in qat cultivation, many known to transfer to babies through their mother’s milk.

According to Yemen’s health ministry, carcinogenic pesticides used by farmers to increase qat production are responsible for about 70 percent of new cancer cases in the country. Mouth and throat cancer are widespread in Yemen, far exceeding world averages.

Nasser Al-Shamaa of Eradah Foundation for a Qat-Free Nation, an NGO working to stamp out qat use in Yemen, compares qat chewing to cigarette smoking. He says as long as the practice remains socially accepted, it will be extremely difficult for eradication initiatives to make headway.

The efforts are further slowed by government officials with vested interests in the production and distribution of qat, who collect money through taxes and kickbacks.

“It will take time to change perceptions about qat,” says Al-Shama. “But we don’t have time, it is destroying our future.”

Source: Inter Press Service.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Resource Guide to Whole House Water Filters that Remove Chloramines

There are many  styles of filters that remove chloramines from city water.  Any carbon filter will reduce chloramines, but a specialty carbon called “catalytic carbon” does the job much faster and more completely than conventional filter carbon. “Centaur” is the brand name of the first and most respected catalytic carbon, but there are other brands that do an excellent job.

Filter carbon can be arranged in two forms.  Granular carbon has the consistency of coffee grounds and is most commonly used in tank-style filters.  Carbon blocks are made of powdered carbon that is compressed into a solid board-like substance. Blocks are used in the form of compact, replaceable cartridges, which are changed periodically the same way that you change the filter in your furnace or air conditioner.   Both styles have their advantages.  Carbon blocks are more efficient per size, but they also restrict water flow much more.

The most critical design feature in a chloramine filter is “residence time.”  This refers to the amount of time that the water actually contacts the carbon.  It takes longer to remove chloramine than to remove chlorine, so the water needs more time in contact with the carbon.  Contact time depends on the size of the bed or the filter cartridge and the rate of flow.  Obviously, a large home with several residents will use more water than a small home with two inhabitants.  The larger home will need a larger chloramine filter.

Because of the way catalytic carbon works, if the filter is adequately sized it will not only do a better job, but the filter medium–the granular carbon or the carbon block– will also last much longer.  Here’s a chart that will help in sizing.  It is used by water treatment professionals to make an educated guess on filter and softener sizing.

This chart is intended as a suggestion only. The nature of the building and the individuals who live there must be taken into consideration. It is intended for use in sizing for standard residential dwellings. Mansion dwellers must look elsewhere for advice.  Please note that these sizing rules are frequently violated and so far no one has been arrested.

Within the two basic carbon styles, granular and carbon block, many design variations are possible.  To illustrate, here are some page links to products on the Pure Water Products website.

The “Chloramine Catcher” is a series of top quality backwashing filters in residential sizes.  The “gallon per minute” ratings are the most conservative–based on the Centaur manufacturer’s recommendations for dialysis use–so they are frequently violated for residential use.

The Fleck 5600 Backwashing Filter Series contains a more economical backwashing filter with a less expensive control system than the 2510 control used in with the Chloramine Catcher. It comes in one size only –10″ X 54″–which is suitable for homes with two or three people and a couple of bathrooms.  Note that it comes in a “green” low water use unit as well as the standard.  See products BW003 and BW571.

In/Out Upflow filters are tank style filters similar to backwashing filters but there are differences.  In/out filters don’t backwash so they don’t need electricity or a drain connection.  The service flow pattern is down to up rather than the up to down flow of the backwashing filter. Since they have no way of cleaning themselves of sediment that gets into the tank, they must be protected by a sediment filter, and it’s a good idea to install a sediment filter after the upflow filter to assure that no carbon particles leave the filter and get into service lines.

All of the tank style filters above eventually need carbon replacement.  There is no fixed rule on this, but a reasonable replacement expectation would the three to four years.

Cartridge Style Filters work great for chloramine reduction, especially when equipped with a cartridge that’s specially formulated for chloramine removal.  These filters are limited to about 4 gallons per minute service flow, but can be easily installed in multiples, in parallel, to accommodate higher service flow needs.  These filters are more economical to purchase initially, but the ongoing expense of cartridge replacement is greater.  Follow these links  for information about multi-filter installations and  the most popular chloramine-specific cartridge.

FAQ

Here are answers to a couple of questions that always come up in chloramine discussions.

Catalytic carbon removes chlorine and other chemicals the same as regular carbon.  You don’t need an additional filter for chlorine.

The chloramine reduction process is a catalytic operation that breaks the bond between chlorine and ammonia and converts the chlorine to harmless chloride.  What happens to the ammonia is a much more complicated issue; the removal of ammonia traces can be accomplished separately with a water softener, but special conditions apply.  By definition,  chloramine removal means getting rid of chloramine and does not take by products like ammonia into consideration.

Chloramine has been in use in the US since the 1920s and many US water supplies have had it for decades.  It was not invented by the Devil or by liberal Democrats to bring you to grief.  There are many sound reasons why for some cities it is a better disinfectant than chlorine. However,  for those who have allergic reactions to it, it can be a real menace.  It is also a big problem for aquarium owners.  Removing chloramine is more a challenge than removing chlorine, but it can be done and life will definitely go on.

Removing chloramine from drinking water is much easier than removing it from all the water entering the home.  The best plan is a filtering device with lots of carbon–the more the better.  Chloramine specific cartridges are available in drinking water sizes, though standard carbon is usually very effective when it gets the water at drinking water speed of a half gallon a minute or so. Most reverse osmosis units remove chloramine easily.

Chloramine Plus Carbon Block Filter.  High quality carbon block filters are very effective at removing chloramines.

Mexico City Bets on Tap Water Law to Change Habit

Safety board: PPH, MCHM should not be in drinking water at any level

  By Pamela Pritt

Editor’s Note: Why should we not be surprised that the chemicals spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River are unknown to those who are supposed to be looking after public water supplies? They are merely two among the thousands of chemicals in use that we allow to be used untested and  virtually unknown to “the experts.” — Hardly Waite.

CHARLESTON — Crude MCHM and its companion chemical PPH should not be in drinking water at any level, the chair of the Chemical Safety Board said Friday morning.

Dr. Rafael Moure-Eraso said those chemicals are created to be reactive with other chemicals and have the potential to affect human beings.

“We should be worried about it,” Moure-Eraso said.

The company that manufactures the chemicals — Eastman Chemicals produced the MCHM, Dow made the PPH — is responsible for testing the chemicals and providing answers about chemical safety guidelines, Moure-Eraso said. The company has “provided very little information,” he continued, but has conducted two or three small toxicological studies. Those studies are not “adequate to determine chronic effects over a long period of time,” the director said.

The CSB’s lead investigator, Johnnie Banks, said the manufacturer has repeatedly reported no data available on MCHM’s and PPH’s toxicology.

“This came as a surprise to us, that the chemicals have no information,” Banks said. Although he said he’d seen chemical spills before, this event is “striking because it affected such a large number of people.”

A cocktail of Crude MCHM and PPH, both chemical compounds used in the coal cleaning process, leaked from the bottom of a pre-World War II era tank on the banks of the Elk River on Jan. 9. The chemicals leached through the soil, into a containment tank and then into the river a little more than half-a-mile above the sole water intake for 300,000 state residents.

The leak, detected because area residents smelled a “licorice-like” odor, caused a “do not use” order for tap water and a state of emergency for a nine-county region. The tanks belonged to Freedom Industries.

Eastman’s Safety Data Sheet for Crude MCHM warns that the chemical is harmful if swallowed, and describes first aid measures for eye and skin contact that include flushing with “plenty of water,” and then seeking medical attention. Measures for ingestion it says are “not relevant, due to the form of the product.”

As for accidental release measures, the SDS says “avoid release to the environment,” and says that spills should be absorbed with vermiculite or other inert material, then placed in a chemical waste container. “Prevent runoff from entering drains, sewers, or streams. Dike for later disposal,” the SDS says.

The SDS says MCHM’s chemical stability is not fully evaluated, but strong oxidizing agents are “incompatible materials.”

Moure-Eraso said the CSB is still in the preliminary stages of its investigation, and will examine a number of issues including: siting of chemical facilities in proximity to water sources; integrity of storage tanks, among them anti-leak designs and leak sensors; and the regulatory framework of the Kanawha Valley and the state.

The director said his agency’s report will include “lessons learned from this tragic accident to help prevent a similar event from occurring again.”

Banks said the entire investigation will take up to a year, causing Sen. Majority Leader John Unger D-Berkeley some angst about a Senate bill aiming to regulate above ground storage tanks. Unger said the leak at Freedom Industries is an “urgent” matter, but wants to have CSB recommendations included in the bill if possible.

“There’s a sense of urgency in our mission, as well,” Banks said. The lead investigator said urgent recommendations could be developed.

Moure-Eraso said the CSB investigated the Bayer CropScience pesticide manufacturing explosion in 2008. The report, released two years ago, made recommendations about developing a chemical release prevention program, which Moure-Eraso said “would have prevented the accident we’re dealing with today.”

Source:  Charleston Herald-Register.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

What should we do about the trace chemicals found in drinking water?

by Mark Brush

 Editor’s Note:  This Michigan Public Radio report is also available in a radio version.  

Before I talk about the small bits of chemicals often found in drinking water, I want to direct some attention to the national water contamination story going on now because I think it reveals something.

The water is bad in West Virginia

The nation has its eyes on a nine-county area in West Virginia that’s under a state of emergency. A coal-processing chemical leaked into a river and poisoned the drinking water there. Cleanup is ongoing. As they attempt to flush the chemical out of their drinking water systems, officials are trying to determine what level of the chemical is safe.

Ken Ward Jr. of the West Virgina Gazette reports that local and federal officials are saying that “1 part per million” of  crude 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (the coal processing chemical) is safe for people to drink.

But Ward is having a tough time finding out what they based that number on:

When asked for more information about where the number came from, Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Karen Bowling pointed to the “material safety data sheet,” or MSDS, from Eastman, the maker of the chemical that leaked.

Bowling, though, downplayed the fact that there is precious little toxicological data and few – if any –public and peer-reviewed studies of what the chemical would do to humans if ingested.

There it is. The research on how these chemicals affect our health can be pretty thin.

Trace amounts of chemicals in drinking water

Around much of the nation, the fact that chemicals get into our drinking water has been known for some time. We’re talking tiny amounts. Scientists use terms like “parts per billion” or “nanograms.”

The kinds of chemicals found depends on what gets into the water.

Larry Sanford is the assistant manager of the Ann Arbor Water Treatment plant. On a recent tour of the plant, he read from a list of chemicals researchers found going into the drinking water supply. These were trace amounts of chemicals found after the treatment process.

“Ibuprofen… Carbamazepine – I’ve never said that word before. Seventeen b estradiol … 17 a ethinyl estradiol, and estrone, and estriol, and cholesterol, and coprostanol.”

Baylor University researchers tested the drinking water in Grand Rapids, Monroe, and Ann Arbor back in 2005.

The researchers were looking for trace amounts of pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in the water. Our bodies don’t take up all of the medicine in birth control pills, or antidepressants, or even coffee.

You go to the bathroom, and the extra stuff gets flushed down the drain. Small amounts end up in the drinking water.

The water samples in Ann Arbor showed that 19 different types of drugs were going into the treatment plant. And the treatment process took out eight of them.

Sanford called that “serendipity.”

“None of these plants were built with the intention of removing any of this stuff,” said Sanford. “You just get the removal based on what’s there already. Now when you decide what it is you want to remove, then you’ll have to build a treatment facility that will take that out. It may take other things out at the same time, it may not.”

So what should we do with this information?

That’s what researchers are trying to figure out right now. What’s worth worrying about, and what’s not?

The U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA recently tested water samples from drinking water plants around the country.

They found more than a third of these plants had trace amounts of 18 unregulated contaminants. In addition to leftover drugs, they found traces of many industrial chemicals, and traces of pesticides too.

Linda Birnbaum is the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She’s one of the nation’s leading experts on how exposure to these contaminants might affect our health.

I had her look at the list of chemicals found in drinking water. She told me that several of the chemicals found were of some concern, such as the perfluorinated compounds and some of the pesticides.

But she said, “Again the levels are very low.”

So should we not be concerned at all?

“Well, the answer is we’re beginning to find out that continuous low level exposure, may in fact be problematic,” said Birnbaum.

She says studies are beginning to show that continuous low-level exposure to some chemicals might harm the endocrine system.  The endocrine system regulates how your body grows and how you behave.

That’s why researchers are focusing on how this stuff impacts pregnant mothers, developing babies, and kids.

More science needed

The EPA is still gathering more information. They’ve called for more testing at water treatment plants, and they have a list of chemicals they’re watching for. Federal regulators call these “emerging contaminants.”

The Ann Arbor Water Treatment Plant just started a year-long monitoring program.

The treatment plant’s Larry Sanford says we might find that these things really don’t have a big impact on us, but they might have an effect on other things.

“The things that live in the water are much smaller, and there may be an impact on them,” said Sanford. “And it may be something that would be worth doing something about.”

Researchers are looking at what these low-level contaminants are doing to fish.

We’ll take a look at that in our next report.

What you can do

Michigan Radio’s Rebecca Williams gathered much of the tape for this story, and in doing so she spoke with Professor Nancy Love of the University of Michigan. Love teaches in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and focuses her work on how environmental biotechnology and engineered water quality treatment systems can clean up these trace chemicals.

The two discussed reverse osmosis treatment systems, and Love agreed that such a system does a good job of removing many contaminants. She said it’s often difficult to know what might be in bottled water, but if the label says “treated by reverse osmosis,” it’s a sign that the water has been treated well.

There’s not much we can do about the drugs we excrete (drugmakers could work to make sure we use more of the available medicine, rather than excrete it), but if we have left over medicine in the house, we should NOT flush it down the toilet.

Here’s what the FDA recommends.

If you have susceptible people living in your house (kids, or people struggling with substance abuse), you might want to go through the process of disposing the drugs in the trash, rather than storing them in your home while you wait to take them to a drug take-back program.

Source: Michigan Radio.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

The lesson to be taken from this is that “final barrier” treatment in the home is very important.  A good carbon filtration system for the whole home and, especially, a reverse osmosis drinking water system offer the best protection against extraneous chemicals.–Editor.