WHAT OUR WATER QUALITY MIGHT
MEAN TO YOU (& YOUR HEALTH)
March, 2009
The following paper was written as a contribution to a Great Lakes HEAL-sponsored health forum scheduled for March 19, 2009 in Marquette. In my experience, because of Lake Superior’s vastness, depth and cold temperature, many people assume its quality.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss which water qualities are tested, illustrate several health affecting qualities which are not tested, and suggest ways that an individual can protect themselves and promote a safer, natural environment.
If you have any questions about this paper, please contact us at GLHEAL.waterquality@gmail.com.
Dr. Katy Nelson
Board Certified, Naturopathic Medicine
2007 CITY OF MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN WATER QUALITY REPORT
www.mqtcty.org/city_website/water/THML/2007
Data:
1.24 ppm (4.0 max load) Flouride
14.00 ppb (100 max load) Trihalomethanes (resulting from chlorine)
8.00 ppb (60 max load) Haloaceticacids (HAA5s) (from chlorine)
Water hardness is reported at 45 ppm with a pH of 8, meaning that it is “naturally corrosive” (and could leach lead, for example) so they add a buffering agent to raise the pH to 8.4.
When testing a variety of homes, the limit of 15 ppb was exceeded in one sample at 18 ppb home, but the 90th percentile level was 5 ppb.
They also reported on levels of copper, fluoride, nitrates and nitrites that all were within acceptable limits. Nitrates and nitrites are significant because they feed bacteria, produce compounds associated with gastric cancer and birth defects, and effect available oxygen levels in the blood.
Adding fluoride to water is controversial, and many are concerned about the impact fluoridated water can have on health. Some communities have taken fluoride out of their water supply.
www.fluoridealert.org/hp-epa.htm
WHAT’S MISSING FROM THE REPORT
Mercury and uranium levels.
Significance: According to the state level water quality assessment, mercury is “the most pervasive toxic substance found in Michigan” — and according to a study from Michigan Tech*, “elevated uranium occurrences are distributed throughout the Jacobsville sandstone aquifers stretching across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. . . Approximately 25% of 300 well water samples tested for isotopic uranium have concentrations above the MCL.” (maximum contaminant level, set in 12/2003 by the EPA at 30 ppb for uranium). Mercury is neurotoxic and uranium is carcinogenic. Doesn’t it make sense to test these, especially since we live in a mining region?
* “Elevated Uranium in Aquifers of the Jacobsville Sandstone” by H. Sherman, Michigan Tech University, Dept. of Geol. & Mining Eng. & Sc., Houghton, MI 49931 United States.
www.michiganinbrief.org/edition07/Chapter5/WaterQuality.htm
“In general, the water quality in lakes and streams in the northern 2/3 of the state is high, with the few exceptions being in and around urbanized areas or adjacent to old mining or industrial sites.” Mercury increases in concentration as it moves through the food chain. We all know that Lake Superior fish are being monitored and have been for years. We know that mercury is present in our internal environments, as well, being controversially used as a vaccine preservative and still widely used in dentistry.
MORE ON MINING AND WATER CONTAMINATION WITH URANIUM
State of Michigan Environment 2001 – (1999) The First Biennial Report “Most [polluted groundwater] problems relate to seepage into groundwater systems from old landfills, manufacturing spills, waste-disposal practices, mining operations, bulk chemical storage and underground gas and oil storage. . . Despite the positive effect of new requirements [the state is left with] hundreds if not thousands” [of sites of water no longer suitable for drinking.]
Uranium mining and milling have been associated with increased risk of fertility problems and reproductive cancers, with lung cancer when uranium decays to radon and with bone cancer when it decays to radium.
LUNG CANCER INCIDENCE IN THE UP, AN AREA OF METALLIC MINING AND URANIUM
www.mqthealth.org/PDFStore/CancerBurdeninMichigan-June08-AllSections.pdf
The incidence of cancer localized to the lung (not metastasized) between 2002-2004, as compared with 1992-1994, showed an increase in Keewanaw, Houghton, Alger and Menominee counties. It remained high in Baraga County, was unchanged in Marquette County and decreased in Iron and Dickenson Counties.
This data reflects not necessarily a measure of increased incidence but increased early diagnosis. Nevertheless, can there be an increase in early stage lung cancer without an increase in lung cancer incidence? Nationwide, Michigan’s rates of five common cancers is about the same as the national average, according to statistics at the Center for Disease Control.
Do we not pride ourselves in the U.P. on our environmental quality of life? If it’s truly higher than the national average, why is our health on a par with the national average?
Is the incidence of lung cancer in the U.P. associated with aspects of our mining heritage?
Michigan’s Western U.P. has a health advisory about uranium and fluoride:
http://www.westernuphealth.org/env_health/water_supply_uranium.html
WHAT ELSE IS MISSING FROM THE WATER QUALITY REPORT
Report of contaminants and “endocrine disruptors” from antibiotics, birth control hormones, anti-depressants, veterinary drugs, other medications, and personal body care products.
Significance: Human and environmental health effects, including drug resistance and ‘slow poisoning’, neurological problems especially in children and increased incidence of some cancers due to water contamination issues may be being overlooked.
http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/OFR-02-94/#site
A 1999, the US Geological Survey looked for 95 organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs) in 139 streams. Maps and mapping data locating and reporting on the 139 test sites shows three sites were in Michigan, near Traverse City, two sites were in Minnesota, associated with the Mississippi River, and seven sites were in Wisconsin, in the Fond du Lac region.
The Survey used five methods to specifically look for 95 compounds from antibiotics, prescription and non-prescription drugs and steroid hormones.
They reported that 82 out of the 95 compounds were detected, and that 80% (approximately 111 total, or two and a half of the Michigan sites, one and a half of the Minnesota sites, and five and half of the Wisconsin sites) were polluted with at least one of these compounds. Numerically, 75% of the sites had more than one OWC (75%>1 OWCs); more than half had more than five OWCs (54%>5); more than one third had more than ten OWCs (34%>10); and a statistically significant number had 25% of the 82 compounds found (13%>20 OWCs).
Critics of the data cite sample contamination from sample source to lab. This does not negate the larger conversation about what our pharmaceutical based life is doing to us and Nature.
LOCAL ACTION
In 2007, the EPA funded and the Cedar Tree Institute of Marquette, Michigan conducted a regional collection of unused or outdated pharmaceuticals and personal care body products “because trace amounts . . .from those substances are turning up in America’s drinking water.”
A woman from Ironwood is quoted as saying “we’ve become more aware that it’s not the right thing to do to flush pharmaceuticals down the toilet.”
A woman from Trout Creek said, “so many of our environmental problems come from the side effects of our advanced society — and every prescription has side effects. . .the earth and water is [sic] allergic to many powerful prescriptions and chemicals.”
HUMAN FILTRATION
A Department of Environmental Quality Pharmaceutical Disposal Guide is available at this site. (Click on “Drugging Our Waters”)
“Antibiotics and other medications in a septic system can destroy beneficial bacteria necessary for the system to operate.”
The statement begs the question “What about YOUR BODY’S beneficial bacteria and the healthy operation of your intestinal tract?”
Furthermore, “wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove or process many compounds found in medications that end up being discharged into our surface and ground water.”
Again, this begs questions like, if these drugs are passing through your body and causing damage AFTERWARDS, what are they doing to you before they’ve been metabolized by your liver?
www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov A list of controlled Rx
www.michigan.gov/deqreswastecontacts A Michigan map of recycling, composting and household hazardous waste contacts
www.epa.gov/ppcp EPA’s information about pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP)
CONTAMINATION FROM PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS
When physical change is slow and subtle, we hardly connect the dots. We look in the mirror and see “aging” and call it “normal.” Aging is normal, for sure, but where are the “new diseases” that we’re diagnosing coming from if we haven’t been creating them all along.
www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/ppcps.cfm
“Abnormal behavior can masquerade as a seemingly normal deviation within a natural statistical variation. Change can occur so slowly that it appears to result from natural events, with no reason to presume artificial causation. It is difficult to connect the issues of cause and ultimate effect, in part because of the ambiguous and subjective nature of subtle effects, but especially when these effects are confounded by aggregations of numerous, unrelated interactions.”
Many personal care products have an amazing list of petroleum derived or other synthetic chemicals — all those words on the labels that wouldn’t have been on a label in your grandmother’s time.
PROSTATE AND BREAST CANCER INCIDENCE IN MARQUETTE COUNTY
www.mqthealth.org/PDFStore/CancerBurdeninMichigan-June08-AllSections.pdf
Prostate Cancer: Compared with percentages of cancer localized to the prostate (unmetastasized) from 1992-1994, percentages from 2002-2004 were higher in Iron, Marquette, Dickenson, Alger and Menominee Counties. They were unchanged in Baraga County and reduced in Keewanaw and Houghton Counties.
Breast Cancer: Compared with percentages of cancer localized to the breast from 1992-1994, percentages from 2002-2004 were higher in Iron and Dickenson Counties. They were unchanged in Keewanaw, Marquette and Menominee Counties, and reduced in Houghton, Baraga and Alger Counties.
Again, this data was collected to track earlier detection statistics for purposes that may have been related to promoting purchase/sales of detection devices. The data does not necessarily measure increased incidence but increased early diagnosis. Nevertheless, can there be increases in early stage prostate and breast cancer without an increase in prostate and breast cancer incidence in the region?
OUR CONCERN AND THE POSSIBLE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS DATA TO YOU, YOUR LOVED ONES AND YOUR HEALTH
While the water quality data being reported to us is significant, is it sufficient? Does it adequately reflect the chemical reality of our modern pharmaceutically infiltrated lifestyle?
You can smell the chlorine when you turn on the tap, but what of the “invisible” drugs that are in your drinking, cooking and bathing water from the men, women and children in our community on hormone and hormone disruption therapies, steroids, antibiotics and anti-depressants?
Does the water quality data being reported to us reflect our local mining history, or the local historical industrial land uses and underground storage?
If we don’t know what effect previous mining and industrial land use has had upon our water quality, how can we reasonably make decisions about future mining or industrial usage?
WHAT YOU CAN DO
The many possibilities include and are not limited to:
• Politically: Ask questions of your City or Township Council about improving your quality of life with water quality data consistent with the realities of our 21st Century lifestyles.
• Medically: Make a personal commitment to increase your quality of life which may include a decrease in reliance on pharmaceuticals. Many safe and appropriate options exist in our community.
• Healthily: Educate yourself about and get tested for heavy metals, liver status, hormone status and pursue lifestyle changes that are protective and preventive. Contact us for local options.
• Environmentally: Make a personal commitment to increase your quality of life which may include a decrease or elimination of use of body care products made with chemicals whose names you can’t pronounce and whose purpose is unknown or questionable. If you use synthetic fertilizers or week killers, consider the many alternatives that both work well/better and are safer for you and the water; work together with your neighbors, especially if you all depend on wells.
• Economically: Increase your quality of life by investing in a home water filtration device. While it may not reduce your water bill, it may save many more times its cost in health and wellness through the years. Many approaches for water filtration exist, some better than others. Test your water first to understand what you want to filter.
Commercial testing labs, by state in Connecticut’s “out-of-state” list:
www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/environmental_health/environmental_laboratories/pdf/Out_State.pdf
Look for “Radiochemicals” if you want to test for uranium in water.
State of Michigan Water Testing information:
www.michigan.gov/deq/0,1607,7-135-3307_4131_4155—,00.html
• “Spiritually“: Read The Hidden Messages in Water, by Dr. Masaru Emoto, who writes about water’s memory and reflective qualities.
• Personally: Educate and empower yourself. Water is the key to life, the key to your life. The higher its quality, the better for you and all.
