Unsafe drinking water, in the developing world, and in this world.

Louisville, KY shoe donation drive to provide safe, clean drinking water for developing countries - http://goo.gl/Uwe5



Pescadero, CA farm owner Marchi gets two more weeks to remove nitrates from farm laborers water supply; endless delays - http://goo.gl/gQOI

I often see news stories like the one in the first Tweet above – good people in America working hard through one means or another to help provide clean safe drinking water to some developing nation. And what a worthy goal that is – unsafe drinking water kills over 3.5 million people each year, almost half of which are children under 5 years old, and makes millions more sick. That’s a horrible, horrible tragedy, and it’s great that people here in this country spend their time, give their effort, and donate their money and materials to help try and save some of those lives and alleviate some of that pain and suffering. It makes you proud to be an American, and I salute those people.


The news story behind the second Tweet above makes me not so proud to be an American. Pescadero, CA is a small farm town about 20 miles west of the Silicon Valley, home to dot com and other computer industry multi-millionaires and billionaires. The laborers at this particular farm were supplied by the farm owner with drinking water containing 6 times the Maximum Contaminant Level of nitrate, enough to kill an infant. And this is not the only place this is happening; nitrates in particular, but other contaminants as well, are a serious and growing problem all over California and the country. When a relatively affluent, large metropolitan area is faced with these issues, the municipal water supply invests the money to treat the water and make it safe for the people living there to consume. But when these issues occur in rural areas, areas inhabited by the poor, by farm laborers and migrant workers, there is no money many times to provide treatment. And since these people have no political voice, since they are not only “The huddled masses”, but the hidden masses, many times no one comes to their aid. They are either forced to consume water with unsafe levels of contaminants or spend an inordinate amount of their income on bottled water. And this is not in some developing, third world country; it’s here, in our backyards, very likely just a few miles from where you now sit. This is an even worse tragedy, which in a country as great as ours, where most of us take a safe water supply for granted, there are those who may be ill and possibly die for lack of clean water.


I still think that good Americans taking the time to help those in developing countries is really great; they really are to be commended. But it would be nice to see a few more headlines extolling the virtues of those Americans who help people living right here in America who struggle with the same problems as those in the developing world.

Water System control: Public vs. Private

Rialto, CA to discuss outsourcing Water Department to American Water - http://goo.gl/OMhc

CDPH Questions Livingston's financial ability to provide safe water  - http://goo.gl/lCdP

Two of my recent Tweets are an excellent example of the issues facing water systems all over California and the entire country in regard to how those systems will continue to provide clean, safe drinking water to their customers in a world where providing that service gets ever costlier.

 

Rialto, CA, a Southern California city of 100,000 whose motto is “Bridge to Progress”, wants to outsource the operation of its drinking water, waste water, and recycled water systems to American Water (AWK), the largest investor owned water utility in the United States. Existing Rialto employees are concerned they will lose their jobs when the private operator takes control, and rate payers are worried that rates will increase – a lot. Both concerns are valid. Some, perhaps many, of those employees will indeed lose their jobs, no matter what anyone in the Rialto city government or American Water says. It’s just a fact, and everyone should acknowledge that. And rates will rise – how could they not? Rialto is selling off the operations because it’s costing them too much money and they can’t make ends meet. As elected officials, the City Council has a hard time raising rates to make ends meet, because it will mean the end to their political career. What better answer for them than to sell of the operations and let someone else be the bad guy for raising rates? And rates will need to be raised, not because American Water are greedy capitalists, but because water systems are expensive to operate, get more costly every day, and the money to run them has to come from the rate payers. It’s that simple. People have to get used to paying for water what its worth, something completely foreign to most Americans, who pay more for their entertainment in the form of a cable TV bill than they are willing to pay for life sustaining water. Go figure.

Livingston, CA, is located in California’s great central valley half way between Stockton and Fresno with a population of 14,000. The city motto is “The Last Stop”, and I have no idea what that means. But they are approaching their last stop in their operations of their water and waste water systems; combined budgets for those services are $1.6 million in the red, or $114 per capita, and the total is growing by the day. The situation is growing serious enough that the California Department of Public Health is concerned that the city may not be able to operate their water systems, and that the citizens of Livingston are in jeopardy of losing their source of safe, clean water. And all because those same citizens don’t think it’s their responsibility to pay for the guarantee of safe water; that they should not have to pay for water based on how much water they actually use; and that they should pay only a fraction (less than half) of what it would actually take to keep the utilities solvent. And by refusing to pay, they immediately put themselves and their children at risk: one of Livingston’s wells, a well used as a source of supply, exceeds the secondary Maximum Contaminant Level for manganese, which has been identified in recent studies as a potential cause of reduced intelligence. Perhaps that explains things.

Both of these cities are facing issues of how to pay for rising costs of providing drinking water and waste water services to their citizens. Each is going through pain and suffering, in a very real sense, in dealing with those issues and we can only hope that those same citizens will see the importance of supporting the very services that keep them alive.

Coliform Bacteria - How to Define "Safe" Water

How to Define "Safe" Water? Southern California study highlights the limits of bacteria used as fecal indicators - http://goo.gl/C9LF

I recently made reference to this headline in a Twitter post, and how true it is. For both water in the environment and drinking water, the EPA relies on the occurrence of fecal indicators, which are usually bacteria that can be found in sewage. These are often referred to as Coliform bacteria, or total Coliform. The 14th Edition of Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater defines total Coliform as a group of bacteria which is aerobic and facultative anaerobic, gram-negative, nonspore-forming, rod shaped bacteria which ferment lactose with gas formation within 48 hours at 35°C. This definition may define a particular type of bacteria, many of which may be found in mammalian intestinal tracts, and particularly in human intestinal tracts, but there are, unfortunately for us, many bacteria that fit this definition that can also exist quite nicely in the “outside world”, so to speak. When these bacteria are found in a water sample, it is looked upon by most of the regulatory community as an indication of possible fecal contamination of that water. But in fact, that may be very far from what is actually happening. It may just be indicative of a case where that bacterium is naturally prominent in the local area.

For example, I have seen test results from groundwater wells that are total Coliform positive, indicating a potential for fecal contamination. When the bacteria causing this sample of water to be total Coliform positive is analyzed further to see exactly what species of bacteria are present, it turned out to be Enterobacter cloacae. This bacterium does indeed occur in the intestinal tract of humans and other mammals. It also occurs in the guts of insects; in the soil; in surface and ground waters; on plants; and even inside of various fruits. The point here is that many of these bacteria that are used as indicators of potential fecal contamination can live almost anywhere. They are the epitome of an opportunistic life form: they don’t need oxygen, but can live in its presence; they can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, pH’s, moisture conditions, etc.; and they can use many sources of energy as a food source. Because of their flexibility, they can live almost anywhere, not just the mammalian gut, so their use as an indicator of fecal contamination of water is questionable. A better method would be to use a more specific group, such as fecal Coliform bacteria, or even a single organism, such as Escherichia coli, also known as E. coli. And, in fact, the regulatory community, with the EPA in the lead, is beginning to come around to this way of thinking as exhibited in new and pending regulations. The recently enacted Groundwater Rule uses E. coli or other very specific fecal organisms as the indicator; and the EPA is proposing changes to the Total Coliform Rule that also reflect the reality of the ubiquitous nature of Coliforms in the environment. That, in my opinion, is a trend worth furthering.

This Is A Truly Awesome Video, And It's Why I Think The Water Industry Is So Important.


Solidarités International: Water talks from La Boite Concept on Vimeo.

Pharmaceuticals & Personal Care Products in Drinking Water: Part 2

Potential Effects

So what are the potential effects of these very low levels of EDC’s and PPCP’s? The effects can be of two sorts: environmental and human health.

Environmental

Environmental issues can arise when the compounds interact with organisms in the environment, especially aquatic organisms. These aquatic critters are particularly susceptible to problems because not only do they drink the water, they are submersed in it. They are in intimate contact with the water, and whatever is in it, 24/7, so any adverse effects from chemicals in the water can be amplified. Studies abound regarding fish and amphibians changing sex, or showing androgynous characteristics due to exposure to EDC’s in wastewater effluent. There are also many indications of effects on invertebrate aquatic species as well. These issues in and of themselves seem sufficient to require monitoring and treatment to remove these compounds from wastewater effluent, thus protecting these susceptible organisms from being exposed. But treatment can be problematic and should be approached with caution. More on that later.


Human Health

Human’s encounter these compounds through the water we drink. Drinking the recommended volume of 2 liters per day, the average persons exposure to these compounds is extremely slight, given that they are present at such very low concentrations (remember, parts per trillion). Although it may seem a little troubling to be drinking something that has elements of someone’s shampoo in it, is it really something that can adversely affect our health? Should we spend the millions of dollars it would cost to remove these compounds? And remember, no big anonymous corporation somewhere can be made to pay for all of this; the problem is a result of the actions of each and every one of us, and we all will pay for any “solution” in our water rates. The answer to these questions is a resounding, “No one knows!”. There is very little, if any, toxicological data regarding consuming any of these compounds, so no one knows what the effects might be, or even if there are any. When it comes to pharmaceuticals, there are large quantities of data on what happens to people when they consume them at vastly higher concentrations for short periods of time, but not on what happens when they are consumed in very low concentrations for long periods of time. And what are the consequences of consuming a mixture of these compounds? Are there synergistic effects, where a mixture can be more potent than the individual compounds separately? Sort of a “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” scenario? Again, unfortunately, no one knows; even less, if any, data exists on this subject. So should we treat the water we drink for these compounds or not? There’s no easy answer, but maybe looking at what happens when we treat the water will help.

Treatment

 The treatment techniques for dealing with EDC’s and PPCP’s in wastewater and drinking water are pretty much the same. They consist or reverse osmosis to remove them, or oxidation to break them apart. Oxidation can consist of the traditional technique of adding chlorine, or what’s known as advanced oxidation.

Reverse osmosis consists of using pressure to force the water through a membrane. In theory, the water passes thru and everything else remains behind and is filtered out. But in practice, only some or most of the impurities are filtered out; others pass through the membrane and remain in the water, so it’s only a partial solution at best. In addition, the impurities that are filtered out are still there in a very concentrated form that has to be disposed of by dumping it in the ocean or injecting it into a deep well. Since the EDC’s and PPCP’s still get dumped back into the environment, maybe this is really no solution at all.

Oxidation by chlorination is a common practice well established in the industry and used for many years both to treat for certain impurities and to disinfect the water. However, when it comes to EDC’s and PPCP’s, it does only a very limited job, leaving many of these compounds intact.


Advanced oxidation involves adding ozone or peroxide to the water, then subjecting it to high intensity UV light. This two step process is very effective at breaking chemicals of almost any sort into smaller pieces. But the key thing to remember is that it does not make them disappear; it does not reduce them all the way to their atomic constituents; it simply breaks large molecules into smaller ones. The resulting smaller pieces are still present in the wastewater effluent or drinking water that has been treated. What are those smaller pieces? Are they harmful, either to people or organisms in the environment? Are they more or less of a problem than the chemical compounds we started with? Once again, we have to say we just don’t know, because we don’t even know what smaller molecules we are producing in most cases, much less anything about how they react with humans or the environment.

One chemical that has been studied a bit is carbamazepine, and how it breaks down when subjected to advanced oxidation. The researchers had the following observation in regard to this process:

“The three (breakdown) products were determined to be 1-(2-benzaldehyde)-4-hydro-(1H,3H)-quinazoline-2-one (BQM), 1-(2-benzaldehyde)-(1H,3H)-quinazoline-2,4-dione (BQD), and 1-(2-benzoic acid)-(1H,3H)-quinazoline-2,4-dione (BaQD)…Currently, there are no data available on the biological effects of the formed oxidation products.” Ozonation of Carbamazepine in Drinking Water: Identification and Kinetic Study of Major Oxidation Products Derek C. McDowell,, Marc M. Huber,, Manfred Wagner,, Urs von Gunten, and, Thomas A. Ternes, Environmental Science & Technology 2005 39 (20), 8014-8022

So, the major issues can be broken down into two questions. First, should we treat for EDC’s and PPCP’s in wastewater to protect the environment? The effects of these compounds on the environment are known and demonstrated, so maybe we should. The risk does remain that we could be creating a bigger problem because we don’t know the effects of the new, smaller molecules we are creating in the treatment process. So in addition to treatment, we should implement extensive environmental monitoring. Second, should we treat for these compounds as a part of the drinking water treatment process? There are no known toxicological effects of these compounds on humans, and we have virtually no information on what the breakdown products from treatment even are, much less their toxicity, so maybe we shouldn’t treat drinking water this way. Of course, if we treat wastewater effluent and discharge the breakdown products into the environment, they will eventually find their way into our drinking water (remember the whole water cycle thing), but they could be attenuated by natural processes in the environment before becoming drinking water. That’s something else to carefully monitor.



There are definitely no easy answers to this complex issue. The worst thing that we could possibly do is rush toward regulations and treatment regimens that we have no idea are required, could possibly cause more harm than good, and would substantially increase everyone’s water bills. If you would like more information on this subject, a good place to start is the EPA website at http://www.epa.gov/ppcp/

Pharmaceuticals & Personal Care Products in Drinking Water:
Part 1

Intro

Pharmaceuticals, personal care products, endocrine disruptors, emerging contaminants – all of these terms have been in the news frequently in relation to drinking water, getting tossed around like a soccer ball at the World Cup. But what are they, what do they mean to the average person, and should anyone be overly concerned about them? Let’s take a look at the issue and see.

The Jargon

Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (EDC’s) – These compounds are anything that can interfere with the endocrine, or hormonal systems, of living creatures. Primarily, we are talking about vertebrates, especially people. Compounds in this class include things that we have known about for a long time, like nitrate or atrazine; or chemicals that have been more recently discovered in drinking water sources, such as estradiol or bisphenol A.

Pharmaceuticals & Personal Care Products (PPCP’s) – These obviously include pharmaceutical compounds, like carbamazepine (to control seizures) and fluoxetine, also known as Prozac, which is very commonly found in many water sources; I guess we really are a Prozac Nation (Elizabeth Wurtzel, Riverhead Trade, 1994). Personal Care Products include the literally thousands of compounds found in the products we all use every day, like tooth paste, deodorant, shampoo, and shave cream; and include chemicals that are fragrances, surfactants, disinfectants, coloring agents, preservatives, etc.

Compounds of Emerging Concern (CEC’s) – These are any of a host of chemical compounds not currently regulated, for which little if any toxicological data exists, but which cause concern because of their presence in drinking water sources and in drinking water itself.

If this isn’t confusing enough, many EDC’s and PPCP’s are CEC’s, but not all; PPCP’s can be EDC’s, and vice versa, but not necessarily; and not all CEC’s are PPCP’s or EDC’s. It’s an alphabet soup of acronyms referring to literally thousands of compounds that cause confusion among water professionals and the public alike.

Where are they and how do they get there?

All of these compounds can be found to one degree or another almost everywhere you look:

• Found in Surface Waters
• Lakes, streams, ponds
• Urban and rural areas
• Found in Groundwaters
• Wells
• Found in Finished Water
• Drinking water plant effluent
• Drinking water in the distribution system
• Found in effluent from wastewater treatment plants
• Water discharged to the environment
• Water for reuse and recycle projects

These compounds get into the environment from a whole host of sources. The pharmaceuticals taken by people are partially excreted in their urine, which passes through wastewater treatment plants unaffected and wind up in the environment. Hospitals dispose of tons of pharmaceuticals annually, either by dumping them in the sewers or land filling them, where they may potentially leach into the environment. Personal care products are used by all of us every day in fairly large quantities, all of which end up going down the drain, into the waste stream, and out into the environment. These compounds also come from manufacturing facilities, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO’s), and agricultural and urban runoff. "The Environmental Life Cycle of Pharmaceuticals ," a diagram by C.G. Daughton of the EPA’s National Exposure and Research Lab in Las Vegas, does a great job of showing the complexities of this issue.

"The Environmental Life Cycle of Pharmaceuticals ," by C.G. Daughton [illustration published in: Daughton, C.G. "Pharmaceuticals as Environmental Pollutants: the Ramifications for Human Exposure," In:

International Encyclopedia of Public Health, Kris Heggenhougen and Stella Quah (Eds.), Vol. 5, San Diego: Academic Press; 2008, pp. 66-102]

The pathways for other PPCP’s and EDC’s into the environment are no less complex. Having said all that, the large majority of these compounds are found at extremely low levels. Analytical results in the range of nanograms per litre (ng/L), or parts per trillion (ppt), are common. To give that some perspective, here’s some comparisons of what a part per trillion means:

• One inch in 1.6 million miles
• One second in 32,000 years
• One cent in $10 billion
• One square foot of the state of Indiana
• One drop in 20 Olympic swimming pools

As you can see, a part per trillion isn’t much, but is it significant? We’ll talk about that in the next post.

The Water Cycle

Early in every child’s education, they begin to be taught about the water cycle; the endless and life giving recycling of our water through our ecosystem. In its simplest form, the water cycle consists of a simple loop, with water evaporating into the air, where it forms clouds that rain water back on the Earth, like this illustration from Northern Michigan University Department of Education for use with fourth grade students:

http://ellerbruch.nmu.edu/classes/cs255w03/cs255students/teabbott/p10/watercycle.html

And it is taught worldwide, as exemplified by this illustration from the Royal Water Processing Unit, located on the West Coast of Andhra Pradesh in India, which has been serving the local community with premium quality ground water since 2002:

http://royalwater.org/watercycle.aspx

As our understanding progresses, we may start to see the water cycle as a bit more complex, like this one from the United States Geologic Survey (USGS):

But in our modern, complex, industrialized world, the water cycle actually looks a great deal more like this:

http://www.recycledwater.com.au/index.php?id=49

The water cycle is as much composed of wastewater treatment plants and agriculture and industry as it is about evaporation and rivers and rain. Unfortunately, we don’t tend to look at it that way, especially those of us in the water industry. We tend to be concerned with only our little part of the cycle, whether it’s the production of drinking water, or the treatment of wastewater, or storm water management. But in order for us to be good stewards of those individual parts of the water cycle, we each need to start being more involved in the entire process.

Compartmentalizing the segments of the water cycle has led to a disconnect with how the entire process works, and the impacts that each of the segments has on the others. Pharmaceuticals excreted or rinsed down the drain pass through wastewater treatment plants and have effects on the environment and show up in drinking water many miles away. Surface water treatment plants drawing water from a major river may dump waste products from the treatment process back into that same river, effecting the environment and other drinking water treatment plants downstream. Storm water may wash oil from streets or pesticides from agricultural operations into rivers and streams, effecting the environment as well as drinking water from treatment plants that draw from those surface waters. Each and every process that uses water affects every other user of water. In other words, it affects each and every one of us.

This is not only an important concept for each and every person to come to terms with, but it is especially important for those of us in industries that are directly involved with water in one form or another. Too often, the many different industries and services directly involved in dealing with water have worn blinders, concentrating only on their particular part and not concerning themselves with how it affects the other parts. But this has to change; all members of the water community must begin to work cooperatively to ensure that our water resources remain clean and healthy for the environment and for ourselves. The emphasis there has to be on the word cooperatively. Storm water management, wastewater treatment, and drinking water treatment need to be seen as a whole, and projects developed that address all of these concerns simultaneously. More wastewater treatment effluent needs to be reused and recycled, whether to recharge groundwater aquifers, in use as irrigation water, for environmental purposes, or for direct potable reuse. Storm water should be treated to remove trash and contaminants and then used to recharge groundwater or for environmental purposes. Drinking water must be conserved through projects such as using grey water for home irrigation, retrofitting with more efficient appliances, re-thinking our concept of a nicely landscaped yard, or taking shorter showers. And regulations need to be developed that disburse responsibilities associated with meeting those regulations equally among all parties involved.

This process has actually begun in water related industries already, and it’s critical to the environment and to the sustainability of our water supplies that it continues, but it has a long way to go. Let’s all hope that it goes quickly and smoothly.