What to do if your drinking water contains arsenic
LAPEER, Mich. — Renee Thompson couldn’t figure out why she was so sick all the time.
She suffered from chest pains, nausea and headaches. She’d be so tired she could barely walk. When she stayed home, she’d just get sicker.
Thompson went to 13 doctors near her home in Ortonville, Michigan, before one finally decided to test her urine for arsenic. Her levels were in what was considered the normal range, but Dr. Edward Adler told her that many of her symptoms matched the profile of somebody poisoned by the toxin.
“I called my husband that day and said, ‘Please bring home water, because we can’t drink the water in the house anymore until we know this for sure,’ ” Thompson recalls. “We then checked the water in the house, and we found that we had high levels of arsenic in our well water.”
Related: How politics derailed EPA science on arsenic, endangering public health
Soon, Thompson was feeling much better. This was nearly 20 years ago. Today, she and her two daughters say their health has improved dramatically since they switched to filtered water.
But millions of other Americans have no idea that they are regularly consuming arsenic.
Arsenic is an element found in the Earth’s crust, and it finds its way into food, water, soil and air. In 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considered tightening the drinking water standard for arsenic — then at 50 parts per billion — to as low as 3 ppb.
Related: Arsenic levels in groundwater across the U.S.
Because of fears about the cost, the agency ultimately set the standard at 10 ppb, though it said there was essentially no safe level of the toxin.
Some scientists believe there are harmful effects from arsenic below the drinking water standard. These include bladder, lung, liver and skin cancer, heart disease, strokes and diabetes. Recent studies have suggested that arsenic may cause IQ deficits in children and may be harmful to fetal development.
The easiest way to curb your exposure to arsenic is by paying attention to your drinking water. Federal law requires water companies to disclose the amount of arsenic in tap water annually. Often, you can go to the water company’s website to find that information. Or, you could request the annual report over the phone.
If you drink water from a private well, it’s unlikely that you’ve ever had it tested for arsenic. More than 40 million Americans drink from such wells; of those, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that as many as 3 million consume water that wouldn’t meet the EPA standard.
Related: Even low doses of arsenic trigger cancer in mice, study finds
Arsenic is especially common throughout the western United States. Some states have hot spots, such as Michigan’s “thumb” region, northwest of Detroit, where Thompson lives. Maine has some as well. Andy Smith, a toxicologist with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that about 80,000 people in the state drink water from private wells and another 9,000 drink public water that exceeds 5 ppb of arsenic. In isolated cases, wells in the state have had readings far above the EPA standard.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Environment. Click here to read more stories in this topic.
Related stories
Herbicide ban on hold in Sri Lanka, as source of deadly kidney disease remains elusive
EPA adds safeguards to spotlight conflicts on scientific panels
Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
