Feature

It’s Something in the Water

According to UNICEF, more than a billion people use unsafe drinking water sources. Millions of people, usually women or girls, must walk miles each day for water.^[1] And the UN Development Programme reports that nearly two million children die each year because of a growing water and sanitation crisis.^[2]

At the same time, many of us take water for granted and use it copiously, even carelessly. The average Canadian uses more than 30 times as much water as an average rural villager in Kenya.^[3] But clean, safe water is an important, often controversial issue everywhere. And our actions and water-use decisions have planet-wide consequences.

How safe is the tap water in the United States? There are more than 170,000 public water systems in the U.S.^[4] More than 90 percent meet or exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards; all must monitor and comply with EPA standards for nearly 90 contaminants, including lead, mercury, arsenic, and bacteria such as E. coli.^[5]

Water utilities must send their customers an annual water quality report, also known as a consumer confidence report, which is frequently posted online by the supplier. These reports list contaminants found in tap water and how they compare to the EPA’s standards. The report should also state the exact source of the water.^[6]

Clearly, not all tap water is the same. In 2003, the NATURAL Resources Defense Council (NRDC) issued a report reviewing tap water quality in 19 U.S. cities. For water quality in 2001, only Chicago rated excellent, five cities rated good, eight rated fair, and five rated poor (Albuquerque, Boston, Fresno, Phoenix, and San Francisco).^[7] A 2005 study by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, testing data from 42 states, found 141 contaminants for which there are no enforceable safety limits.^[8]

So, many people have turned to bottled water, believing it to be a healthier, safer alternative. Sales have tripled in the last decade, even though bottled water can cost hundreds or thousands of times as much as tap water.^[9] The phenomenal growth of the bottled water industry has been abetted by clever ads and branding, with labels depicting pristine lakes and gleaming glaciers. It’s rather like the TV ads for luxury cars, which show them racing along splendid country roads, rather than stuck in the standstill democracy of city traffic. All too frequently, bottled water is little more than tap water, sometimes filtered, sometimes not. The NRDC reports that from 25 percent to 40 percent of bottled water is tap water. While some bottled water is of very high quality, some brands have higher levels of bacteria, arsenic, and other contaminants than tap water.

Of course, the bottled water industry argues that its water is completely safe and regulated. “At least in the United States, bottled water is regulated as a packaged food product by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” said Stephen Kay of the International Bottled Water Association. “It meets specific standards of quality and safety from the source all the way through to the finished product.” ^[10]

But while the EPA requires that no confirmed E. coli or fecal coliform contamination be allowed in tap water, the FDA merely sets a minimum level for E. coli and fecal coliform in bottled water. The FDA doesn’t require bottled water to be tested as frequently as tap water must be, and the EPA only requires testing of bottled water that is packaged and sold within the same state (less than 70 percent of the total). Only one out of five states regulates bottled water.^[11]

If this seems confusing, with NRDC reports finding fault with some tap water and some bottled water, consider the organization’s bottom line: “In the short term, if you are an adult with no special health conditions, and you are not pregnant, then you can drink most cities’ tap water without having to worry.” ^[12]

Of concern to many is not what’s left in water, but what is added to it—frequently fluoride and chlorine (the EPA has set limits for both in its regulations). The legitimacy of questioning of the safety of fluoridation has come a long way from when it was mocked in Dr. Strangelove, with General Jack D. Ripper asking, “Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?”

Fluoridation of tap water in many public utilities began in the early 1940s in order to reduce tooth decay, and the Centers for Disease Control says that it has reduced tooth decay in the communities where it is used by 15 percent to 40 percent. The nonprofit Fluoride Action Network, however, argues that not only can fluoride cause tooth discoloration in children but can eventuate in hyperactivity, premature puberty, IQ deficits, and bone cancer.^[13]

Chlorine is added by many water utilities to kill bacteria, which can cause dysentery and cholera. But when combined with organic materials, such as fallen leaves, it can form toxins called trihalomethanes (THMs). THMs, consumed in large quantities over a long period of time, have been linked bladder cancer, heart disease, and other maladies. Approximately 80 percent of Americans drink chlorinated water.^[14] Both fluoride and chlorine can be removed by home filters.

Ecological concerns

While bottled water may not necessarily be better for you, it is certainly harmful for the environment. As for how long it will take plastic water bottles to biodegrade, estimates range from hundreds to thousands of years. And consider these statistics:

• Each day in the U.S., more than 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away.^[15]
• The plastic bottles are primarily made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is produced from fossil fuels. In 2006, production of those bottles for U.S. consumption used more than 17 million barrels of oil. (And that doesn’t include transportation, from as far away as Fiji.) ^[16]
• While PET can be recycled, in 2004 the national recycling rate for plastic bottles was merely 17 percent. The rest ended up in landfills, incinerators, or in rivers or oceans. ^[17]
• In 2006, the manufacture of plastic water bottles produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. ^[18]

The irony is that as we drink more and more bottled water, it’s contributing to global warming, and we’ll need to drink even more to stay cool.

A decade ago, Capt. Charles Moore, sailing in a catamaran from Hawai’i to Los Angeles, passed through the 1,000-mile North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a high-pressure system usually avoided by boats because of the lack of wind and fish.

“As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic,” he wrote later. “It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere.” At the time, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer estimated that what he called the “eastern garbage patch” was the size of Texas. ^[19]

In 1975, Moore said the floating island of plastic debris had grown to 10 million square miles. But that was only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Plastics and the tiny pellets, called nurdles -- the raw materials of plastic manufacturing -- act as sponges for toxic chemicals such as DDT and PCBs, concentrating the toxins by up to 1 million times their presence in seawater. Moore saw them in the bodies of jellyfish and salps -- semi-transparent marine animals eaten, in turn, by fish.

Small creatures like lugworms, barnacles, and sand fleas will eat plastic particles; sometimes they pass through safely, while sometimes they block their excretory systems, killing them.^[20] And the plastic and nurdles are not confined the gyre, of course -- they’re scattered throughout the world’s watery realm.

Water Gap

The use of bottled water has a socioeconomic and political dimension as well as an environmental one. A cartoon in a recent issue of The New Yorker put the issue into perspective: Two firefighters stand outside a burning building. One jerks his thumb toward the fire and says, “These are luxury apartments, so use the good water.”

There is a water gap. If people feel that they can avoid the contaminants that they’re concerned about in public water systems by drinking bottled water, there is less incentive to improve those systems. Much of the public water infrastructure in the U.S. is old and in need of repair; parts of the New York City public water system, for example, date back 150 years. ^[21]And families who cannot afford bottled water have to rely on public water systems.

Also, there is sometimes a cruel disparity in the sourcing of bottled water. A million bottles of water are produced every day in Fiji, where half the human population lacks access to safe potable water.^[22]

The political tide may be turning. The Switzerland-based World Wildlife Fund International has begun a campaign to improve public tap water’s safety and quality. “Bottled water isn’t a long-term sustainable solution to securing access to healthy water,” said Richard Holland of WWFI. “Clean water is a basic right. Protecting our rivers, streams, and wetlands will help ensure that tap water remains a service which delivers good quality drinking water for everyone at a fair price.” ^[23]

Over the summer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order calling for city government to phase out using city money to buy bottled water for its employees.

The city has been spending nearly half-a-million dollars a year on bottled water. “All of this waste and pollution is generated by a product that by objective standards is often inferior to the quality of San Francisco’s pristine tap water," Newsom wrote in the executive order. ^[24]

At a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors a few days later, on June 25, mayors overwhelmingly passed a resolution highlighting the importance of municipal water and calling for further study of the impact of bottled water on city waste.

What, you may wonder, can a single individual do?

Research your local public utility’s water quality. If it is unsatisfactory, use water filters. They are available for containers or faucets. A good resource for deciding on the kind of filter you need is the Web site of NSF International, The Public Health and Safety Company, a nonprofit organization that works in standards development, product certification, education, and risk-management for public health and safety (http://www.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU). Buy a reusable neoprene container (the kind traditionally used by hikers and campers, but now commonly seen at gyms), instead of grabbing a water bottle at the local convenience store.

Faucet filters, which usually use reverse osmosis (a permeable membrane filters out contaminants), are more expensive than common container filters, which use charcoal. For community activism on this point, one solution was proposed by Robert D. Morris, author of the book The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster and the Water We Drink, in a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times: Require public utilities to provide faucet filters to their customers. Less than one percent of the water treated by public utilities is used for drinking, and as Morris writes, “our drinking water should have a different status than the water used to flush toilets.” The money saved from treating all water could be used to provide faucet filters and to update the water supply infrastructure. ^[25]

If ever there were an issue that could be summed up by the phrase, “Think locally, act globally,” it’s water. Everyone has an opportunity, and a responsibility, to do his or her part.

Water and Animal Agribusiness

A small number of animal rights activists have been arguing for years that animal agribusiness was having a profoundly deleterious effect on the environment. Friends of Animals offered a plenary presentation addressing this subject at the 2004 Summerfest, hosted by the North American Vegetarian Society. At that time, we were a voice crying in -- and for -- the wilderness.

In 2006, Lee Hall’s book Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror underscored the severity of the climate problem, and its strong tie to animal agribusiness.

Meanwhile, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in a release titled “Livestock production an effective use of water in developing countries,” stated: “In Africa we could double water productivity of livestock with little difficulty -- maybe increase it four times” describing a study which, ILRI scientist Don Peden claimed, “indicates that livestock production has high potential for effective, productive and profitable use of water in agriculture.”

Then came the landmark report “Livestock’s Long Shadow.”  Released in November 2006 by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, it includes over 400 pages of details of the impact of animal agribusiness on environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and water shortages.

According to the report, animal agribusiness is probably the world’s largest source of water pollution, and is the cause for the “dead zones” in the waters -- such as the huge area devoid of life in the Gulf of Mexico. Not only is the industry sucking aquifers dry, but it is a major source of contamination through animal waste, antibiotics and hormones, and pesticides.

Clearly, global animal agribusiness is as environmentally unsustainable as it is inhumane. We’re working to get the word out, community by community, about its impact.

Footnotes