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Mercury warning limited in S.C.
DHEC says 'blanket advisory' not needed
By SAMMY FRETWELL -
Unlike some states, South Carolina has no plan to issue statewide advisories against eating freshwater fish most likely to experience mercury pollution.
South Carolina already warns people against eating more than moderate amounts of certain fish in more than 60 lakes and rivers, such as the Congaree and Saluda. Tests have shown some fish in those waterways contain elevated amounts of mercury. The agency also urges pregnant women to limit fish consumption on waterways without advisories.
But the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control is reluctant to extend the advisories statewide without more data to verify a problem on many lakes and rivers, agency officials say.
It's now safe to eat "as much fish as you would like" from at least 34 waterways, including Lake Murray and the Catawba River, according to a DHEC fish advisory sheet.
"The science doesn't support a blanket advisory," agency spokesman Thom Berry said. "If we were to go out with a blanket advisory, knowing that there are some bodies of water where no advisory is necessary, we would be opening ourselves up to criticism."
Berry's comments are in response to recent questions by a retired fisheries biologist who said South Carolina should consider blanket warnings on big largemouth bass.
Bass are among the fish of most concern in fresh water because they are large predators. These fish generally build up larger amounts of mercury in their tissue than smaller fish that don't live as long.
Scientists have enough data to conclude that mercury is a problem in the biggest and oldest largemouth bass in most any waterway, retired Department of Natural Resources biologist Charlie Moore told The State newspaper last month.
Dozens of other states have some form of statewide advisories on various species, including North Carolina, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA does not list South Carolina as having statewide advisories.
Mercury is a threat to people who regularly eat fish tainted by the metal because it can cause brain damage and kidney system disorders. High levels in the bloodstreams of unborn babies and young children may harm developing nervous systems, making it harder for exposed children to learn.
A statewide mercury advisory for bass or other species would affect some of the most popular lakes in South Carolina - including Lake Murray and Lake Wateree near Columbia. Both are recreation and fishing hot spots, and Lake Murray has been the venue for major national bass tournaments.
DHEC says tests at Lake Murray don't show mercury levels are consistently high enough in bass to warrant health advisories. But agency records show mercury has tainted some of the biggest and oldest predator fish.
About 40 percent of the bass tested this decade at the lake showed elevated amounts of mercury, according to DHEC data analyzed by The State. The newspaper examined the state data in response to recently released federal data showing elevated mercury levels in largemouth bass at Lake Murray. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's report found elevated mercury levels in fish at 49 percent of the lakes tested, including those at Lake Murray in 2000.
DHEC's decision not to issue statewide mercury advisories on such fish as largemouth bass is a departure from what some states are doing. The EPA says 38 states have some form of statewide advisory on fish consumption, although federal officials acknowledge those vary in what they say. Most of the states that have statewide advisories listed in the EPA's 2008 fish advisory report are in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest.
In Washington state and North Carolina, officials say they have enough data to justify a statewide advisory on largemouth bass.
North Carolina tells people not to eat more than one meal per week of largemouth bass from any lake or river in the state. For children and pregnant women, the state says not to eat any largemouth bass, according to a fact sheet from the North Carolina Division of Public Health. The statewide mercury advisory has been in effect several years, a top official said.
"Rather than testing every lake, enough (tests) were positive that we felt an advisory was in order for the state," said Douglas Campbell, branch chief of North Carolina's occupational and environmental epidemiology division.
Washington officials were seeing elevated mercury levels in largemouth bass earlier this decade. After launching a special study to verify high mercury levels in 20 waterways, the state in 2003 issued a blanket advisory on bass for every river and lake.
"We had to look at resources," said Dave McBride, Washington's lead toxicologist for fish advisories. "How many more water bodies do you need to (test) to put out a statewide advisory."
DHEC issues mercury advisories when tests show the mercury levels in fish exceed the state standard over a three-year period. Elevated levels in a single year don't prompt advisories. Agency officials say it is important to verify a problem before issuing an advisory.
The agency, however, does give general advice to pregnant women and young children to limit consumption.
Such at-risk groups should not eat more than one meal a week of freshwater fish from any waterway that does not have an advisory, the agency says. The advice also tells pregnant women and children not to eat any swordfish, king mackerel, shark or tilefish from saltwater. These species typically contain high mercury levels.
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By Justine van der LeunResearch has linked purple grape juice to heart health, lower cholesterol, and breast cancer prevention. But can the sweet purple liquid bolster memory, too? A study out of the University of Cincinnati suggests that it can. Robert Krikorian, M.D. of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine was exploring pre-dementia conditions when he set up the grape juice study. Grapes, and especially their skins, contain antioxidant-rich, anti-inflammatory polyphenol compounds, which are thought to help slow or prevent degenerative diseases. Working with this knowledge, Dr. Krikorian theorized that grape juice may help slow the progression of memory loss due to Alzheimer’s or age-related dementia. Dr. Krikorian oversaw a trial in which 12 adults between the ages of 75 and 85 with early memory loss drank 100 percent concord grape juice every day for 12 weeks. A placebo group drank a beverage that looked and tasted like grape juice. The participants had similar levels of education and they began with nearly identical levels of memory loss. At the end of the research period, those who drank the real grape juice showed improved verbal and spatial memory function, as well as a heightened ability to learn and recall lists. "We know that grape juice gets into the brain," Krikorian told the university health news. "Inflammation's a very important factor in neural degeneration, particularly Alzheimer's disease." Lifestyle modification, as opposed to medical intervention, is becoming an increasingly well-populated field of study. Many doctors and scientists are shifting their research focus away from invasive procedures and pharmaceutical salves to a more holistic, preventative approach to illness. Recently, coffee has been found to cut the risk of prostate cancer. Yellow and green vegetables have been shown to help keep eyesight in good shape; pomegranate juice is believed to keep blood platelets from clumping together and thereby prevent blood clots; mushrooms, soy milk and dark chocolate are thought to aid in satiety and therefore weight loss. Many of these foods are referred to as functional foods, due to their health benefits -- and grapes are among them. While Dr. Krikorian's study was small, he hopes to find a bigger sample soon. A 2006 Vanderbilt University paper suggests that he's be onto something: A study of nearly 2,000 people found that those who drank three servings of fruit or vegetable juice a week were 76 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's than those who drank one serving a week.
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Study finds school drinking water tainted
Inquiry finds that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states
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The Associated Press
Israel Aguila gets a drink from a water dispenser at Lovell High School after playing basketball in Cutler, Calif. School administrators in the farm worker town of Cutler cannot fix chronic water problems at Lovell High School because funding is frozen. Signs posted above the kitchen sink warn students not to drink from the tap.
CUTLER, Calif. - Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.
An Associated Press investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states - in small towns and inner cities alike.
But the problem has gone larg unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied.
"It's an outrage," said Marc Edwards, an engineer at Virginia Tech who has been honored for his work on water quality. "If a landlord doesn't tell a tenant about lead paint in an apartment, he can go to jail. But we have no system to make people follow the rules to keep school children safe?"
The contamination is most apparent at schools with wells, which represent 8 to 11 percent of the nation's schools. Roughly one of every five schools with its own water supply violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the past decade, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency analyzed by the AP.
In California's farm belt, wells at some schools are so tainted with pesticides that students have taken to stuffing their backpacks with bottled water for fear of getting sick from the drinking fountain.
Experts and children's advocates complain that responsibility for drinking water is spread among too many local, state and federal agencies, and that risks are going unreported. Finding a solution, they say, would require a costly new national strategy for monitoring water in schools.
Schools with unsafe water represent only a small percentage of the nation's 132,500 schools. And the EPA says the number of violations spiked over the last decade largely because the government has gradually adopted stricter standards for contaminants such as arsenic and some disinfectants.
Many of the same toxins could also be found in water at homes, offices and businesses. But the contaminants are especially dangerous to children, who drink more water per pound than adults and are more vulnerable to the effects of many hazardous substances.
"There's a different risk for kids," said Cynthia Dougherty, head of the EPA's Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water.
Still, the EPA does not have the authority to require testing for all schools and can only provide guidance on environmental practices.
In recent years, students at a Minnesota elementary school fell ill after drinking tainted water. A young girl in Seattle got sick, too.
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The AP analyzed a database showing federal drinking water violations from 1998 to 2008 in schools with their own water supplies. The findings:
- Water in about 100 school districts and 2,250 schools breached federal safety
- Those schools and districts racked up more than 5,550 separate violations. In 2008, the EPA recorded 577 violations, up from 59 in 1998 - an increase that officials attribute mainly to tougher rules.
- California, which has the most schools of any state, also recorded the most violations with 612, followed by Ohio (451), Maine (417), Connecticut (318) and Indiana (289).
- Nearly half the violators in California were repeat offenders. One elementary school in Tulare County, in the farm country of the Central Valley, broke safe-water laws 20 times.
- The most frequently cited contaminant was coliform bacteria, followed by lead and copper, arsenic and nitrates.
The AP analysis has "clearly identified the tip of an iceberg," said Gina Solomon, a San Francisco physician who serves on an EPA drinking water advisory board. "This tells me there is a widespread problem that needs to be fixed because there are ongoing water quality problems in small and large utilities, as well."
Schools with wells are required to test their water and report any problems to the state, which is supposed to send all violations to the federal government.
But EPA officials acknowledge the agency's database of violations is plagued with errors and omissions. And the agency does not specifically monitor incoming state data on school water quality.
As Supplies Dry Up, Growers Pass on Farming and Sell Water
Associate Press/ San Francisco Chronicle, Garance Burke
(1-23) 13:38 PST Fresno, Calif. (AP) -- In a state where water has become an increasingly scarce commodity, a growing number of farmers are betting they can make more money selling their water supplies to thirsty cities and farms to the south than by growing crops.
The shortages this season — among the most intense of the last decade — are already shooting water prices skyward in many areas, and Los Angeles-area cities are begging for water and coaxing farmers to let their fields go to dust.
"It just makes dollars and sense right now," said Bruce Rolen, a third-generation farmer in Northern California's lush Sacramento Valley. "There's more economic advantage to fallowing than raising a crop."
Instead of sowing seeds in April, Rolen plans to leave his rice stubble for the birds and sell his irrigation water on the open market, where it could fetch up to three times the normal price.
"It's been a good decade since there's been this much interest in buying and selling water on the open market," said Jack King, national public affairs manager for the California Farm Bureau Federation. "We're prepared to see significant fallowing in several key parts of the state."
Water from Northern California rivers irrigates most of the country's winter vegetables and keeps faucets flowing in the Los Angeles area. But it must be shipped south through a complex network of pumps, pipes and aqueducts, and that system recently developed a kink when a federal judge ordered new restrictions on pumping to save a threatened fish.
As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California legislators argue about how to solve the state's water crisis, the bottleneck has sent the demand for water soaring in cities and farming districts far to the south.
Residents of Long Beach can't run fountains, and it's now illegal for restaurants to serve customers a glass of water unless they ask for it.
Near Bakersfield, the shortages are expected to force some almond and pistachio growers to triage which of their nut trees should survive.
And cities across California are drawing down underground stashes meant to carry them through dry years just to avoid any new purchases.
The high premium for water has been especially painful for those served by Los Angeles' massive Metropolitan Water District, whose other main source of water, the Colorado River, is in its eighth year of drought. The agency recently proposed a rate hike for next year of 10 to 20 percent on the water it sells to cities.
Prices have jumped from the $50 per acre-foot typical in wet years to as much as $200 per acre-foot, a unit that measures the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land one foot deep, said Dean Reynolds, a scientist who oversees water transfers for the Department of Water Resources.
"We're moderately nervous," general manager Jeff Kightlinger said. "We haven't prepared ourselves should we run into really severe droughts, so we're trying to formulate that now."
Officials in the Southern California suburb of Maywood are protesting the price hikes, which they say will force them to put off fixing corroded pipes that leach manganese into the water supply. "You go to any water tap in Maywood and you open it up and it looks like iced tea," Mayor Felipe Aguirre said.
That kind of desperation is pushing up demand for water from farmers further north, especially in the green rice fields north of Sacramento and along the San Joaquin Valley's western edge. Well-supplied water agencies like Rolen's Glenn Colusa Irrigation District are looking to sell, trade or exchange their water in time for the spring planting season.
Some environmental groups say that isn't a viable long-term solution.
The problem should be fixed by retooling a decades-old formula that gives farmers a break on their contracted water, even in times of scarcity, they say.
"Essentially these farmers are getting water for a subsidized price and selling it to taxpayers at an elevated rate," said Renee Sharp, senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, an Oakland-based nonprofit that tracks farm subsidies. "On the other hand, the more often water agencies are scrambling to buy water, the more they get interested in some creative solutions, like conservation."
So far, conservation efforts and a set of storms earlier this month have helped replenish dwindling reservoirs and stave off a need for rationing. But even Rolen, who expects to harvest a bumper crop next year after idling 100 acres of his rice fields, says selling water is only a temporary fix to the problem.
"The state is growing almost exponentially and we have never totally satisfied agricultural water needs in the San Joaquin Valley and the southern part of the state," he said. "I hate to say it, but the supplies that we have now are just tapped out on a good year."
Showerheads spew bacteria
Filed under: Health
 In a story ripe for fright matching Alfred Hitchcock's famous shower scene, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have discovered that taking a shower can deliver a face full of potentially dangerous bacteria.
Researchers analyzed roughly 50 showerheads from nine cities in seven states that included New York City, Chicago and Denver. The result? Thirty percent of the devices harbored significant levels of Mycobacterium avium, a bacteria linked to pulmonary disease that most often infects people with compromised immune systems but which can occasionally infect healthy people, said Professor Norman Pace, who lead the study.
Bacteria levels more than 100 time municipal water
While it's not surprising to find bacteria in municipal waters, researchers found that some bacteria were clumped together in slimy "biofilms" that clung to the inside of showerheads at more than 100 times the "background" levels of municipal water. "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy," Pace said.
During the early stages of the study, researchers tested showerheads from smaller towns and cities, many of which were using well water rather than municipal water. "We were starting to conclude that pathogen levels we detected in the showerheads were pretty boring," said Boulder researcher Leah Feazel, first author on the study. "Once we started analyzing the big metropolitan data, it suddenly became a huge story to us."
Researchers sampled showerheads in homes, apartment buildings and public places in New York, Illinois, Colorado, Tennessee and North Dakota.
Bleach not effective to clean showerheads
While chlorine bleach is almost universally thought of as a one-stop shop for killing harmful bacteria, using it to clean showerheads in the study had almost the opposite effect. In Denver, one showerhead was cleaned with a bleach solution in an attempt to eradicate it. Tests on the showerhead several months later showed the bleach treatment ironically caused a three-fold increase indicating a general resistance of this type of bacteria to chlorine.
So is it dangerous to take showers? "Probably not, if your immune system is not compromised in some way," said Pace. "But it's like anything else -- there is a risk associated with it."
Are You Drinking Contaminated Tap Water?
By JUSTINE VAN DER LEUN
Posted: 2009-09-18 15:51:54
Like many of you, we've been reading the New York Times "Toxic Waters" series with a mix of horror and confusion. AOL Health decided to take a closer look at their coverage of tap water, which exposed half a million violations of water pollution laws by manufacturers and other workplaces over the last five years, including dumping toxins thought to cause cancer. Most distressingly, state governments and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declined to prosecute the majority of offenders that flout the Clean Water Act, which regulates the integrity of the nation's bodies of water. With 40 percent of U.S. community water systems in violation of the Safe Water Drinking Act, which sets drinking-water quality standards and is directly linked to the Clean Water Act, 23 million people received low-quality drinking water. We wondered: Could we become part of the estimated 19.5 million Americans that fall ill each year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses? To better understand the report, and the future of American water overall, we spoke to James Workman, author of the book "Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought" and co-founder of SmartMarkets, a private venture that secures a tradable human right to water.
AOL Health: In light of the New York Times's findings, should we be scared?
James Workman: A lot of it depends on where we live. If you're living on a Midwestern farm and drinking well water, yes, you should be scared. If you're living 50 miles downstream from a coal mine, yes. In other [urban and suburban] areas, like San Francisco where I live, we don't have the same threats. Still, when the Clean Water Act was passed [in 1972], you had sludge and rivers of fire, so you could see the aesthetic and environmental impact. Today, violations are more subtle. We have invisible, tasteless, odorless threats coming not just from big bad industry but from our lawns and worksheds and medicine cabinets.
AOL Health: The report discussed industrial threats, but you're bringing up dangers we create in our daily lives.
Workman: Yes. We tend to say the water polluters are out there: That huge power plant, that factory, the hospital dumping medical waste. It's true, and significant. But we also have to look closer to home. We fertilize our lawns and say, "Good, no snails." But that fertilizer soaks into the street, under our house, into the water system. We are used to abundance and excess, so we think that if a little bit of fertilizer and water are good, then a lot is even better, and we end up harming ourselves and our neighbors and wasting water. Also, the average American is taking more pharmaceuticals, which go through our bodies and are re-circulated through the sewage system into our water.
AOL Health: What are the symptoms and possible illnesses associated with contaminated water?
Workman: It's hard to say. A lot of the risks may not show up for years. Our bodies are incredibly resilient, so you can take in water with mercury or chlorine and you won't notice. But over time, not only does one thing build up, it usually combines in your body with something else. If you or a family member feels persistently sick over time, and you and your doctor can't attribute the problem to any existing factor and new exposure, you should ask your area to test your local water quality, and to post and publicize its findings on a Web site for all. This is something your utility should do free of charge, whether it is public or private. It's part of the responsibility that comes with being a monopoly. [Editor's Note: A good place to start? The EPA's Web site provides directions for finding out more information about your drinking water and the New York Times allows you to find water polluters near you.]
AOL Health: What can we do right now to make our water at home safer?
Workman: In immediate terms, there are ways to test your water. You can reduce your run-off, landscaping your property so that water doesn't just rush over into your neighbor's yard. You can use only what you need. You can put filters on your taps and showerheads. Make sure you have a filter that can combat bacterial issues and heavy metals. Boiling water is very useful. It's not necessarily a matter that we should be paranoid about, but it's worth taking a step to put in a filter.
AOL Health: So does this bring us back to the old tap water vs. bottled water debate?
Workman: I don't think tap water is bad and bottled water is good. Bottled water is often tap water put through another filter and not held to the same quality regulations as public utility water is.
AOL: Should people move if their water is contaminated?
Workman: That's for them to decide, weighing the risks, costs and benefits of doing so. Would I? Yes. Would the threat of even a fraction of people departing for a cleaner environment lead the local government to take action? You bet.
AOL Health: What can we do on a larger scale?
Workman: In practical terms, I run counter to the conclusion in the Times article, which says the best solution is that voters should watch Congress, Congress should watch the EPA, the EPA should watch states and states should watch for pollutants. I would argue that we need to create systems and incentives on a local level. In other words, we should own, not rent our water.
AOL Health: I can see how people care more for something they own, rather than rent. But how can you "own" water?
Workman: There are two ways to own water: physically and virtually. In the physical sense, as in the developing world, people store and carry water they have bought or captured. That approach doesn't make much sense, though, for a country of 300 million urban Americans. So the second way, virtual ownership, means that we are credited a certain amount, just like a bank or debit card performs. This amount of water that we own (say, 100 gallons per meter) appears in our municipal water statements as a daily credit, for us to "spend" (by flushing toilets or watering the lawn) or "save" (by reducing and reusing and recycling in the home or office). By owning virtual water, we all have an equal incentive to conserve; we accumulate water credits that now have real economic value. The more of our owned water that we save, the more credit we earn to sell, donate or trade. We now get it for free, or pay so little, that we're not concerned with it. We allow others to manage it and look after it. Then you get a state or federal monopoly that controls every facet of your water and unless you want to uproot, you are beholden to a water supplier.
AOL Health: Why are violations of the clean water act allowed to persist, without prosecution?
Workman: If you were the state-appointed water quality regulator who found that the state's three largest water polluters (say coal mining, pig factory farming and a chemical plant) also happened to be the three largest campaign contributors to your boss, would you risk your job when no one you personally know is affected?
AOL Health: Is there any sign that the status quo will change, given the health implications?
Workman: I'm skeptical. Articles like this do an excellent job of raising a wave of awareness, but the regulatory system is too blunt and buffered and insulated to be very responsive in most cases. And the victims are typically poor and removed to the margins of power, and thus too easily ignored and forgotten or moved down the chain of priorities. Every reader feels sympathy; but unless a majority of us is adversely affected, or the families of politicians get sick from bad water, change is an uphill struggle.
AOL Health: If the current Clean Water Act were enforced would it go far enough, or do we need further protection?
Workman: My sense is that in the right hands the Clean Water Act works well as a broad sword, and acts as a great, if clumsy, shield, but the water quality battle is now more nuanced and diffuse than it was in 1972. Lawn runoff, storm drains and flushed toilets add up to a real problem. Given that we have 300 million individual sources of potential pollution -- that is, all of us play some role in water quality -- I would argue that what is needed is, rather, more transparency to empower people, incentives for individual action, and more local "ownership" of water so that people and communities are rewarded for protecting rivers and providing better quality water.
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Cleaning Supplies Can Contaminate Classroom Air
EWG’s findings come at a time when childhood asthma and many childhood cancers are on the rise.
Ordinary school cleaning supplies can expose children to multiple chemicals linked to asthma, cancer, and other documented health problems and to hundreds of other air contaminants that have never been tested for safety, a study by the Environmental Working Group shows. Laboratory tests done for EWG found that a typical assortment of cleaning products released 457 distinct chemicals into the air.
Lax labeling requirements mean that schools often don't know what they're purchasing. Many would be alarmed to learn that when used as directed, Comet Disinfectant Powder Cleanser, a product commonly used in both schools and private homes, released more than100 air contaminants, including chloroform, benzene, and formaldehyde.
In response to these concerns, many schools have turned to safer cleaning supplies that have been independently certified to meet protective health and safety standards. Eight states have passed legislation requiring or encouraging use of these green cleaning products in schools. Many other forward-thinking school districts have adopted green cleaning policies, replacing toxic products with safer, effective alternatives with no increase in costs.
Check out our report on health risks tied to school cleaning supplies, and learn about safer cleaning at school and at home.
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