Water is wet, chemicals cause cancer
The Environmental Working Group revealed in September 2016 that nearly 90 percent of Long Island’s drinking water contained measurable amounts of chromium-6, a carcinogen from industrial waste.
“It is inexcusable that the government has done so little to protect us from this chemical that has been shown to cause cancer at even insanely low levels.” Said environmental activist Erin Brockovich in a past statement about her public efforts to bring attention to chromium-6.
In the same year, swaths of anxiety-inducing articles popped up about the dangers of chromium-6, alleging its risk to cause stomach cancer, to its skin-burning qualities.
A CNN piece explains, “Exposure to very low levels at crucial periods during the development of a fetus, infant or child could cause ‘much more serious problems’ than it does for an adult drinking a larger dose,”
They cited studies that stated two-thirds of all Americans’ tap water was contaminated.
One thing remained consistent throughout each article. The EPA would deflect commenting, only saying that they would release a study in 2017 for public comment.
In 2019, little has changed. The media buzz has dwindled and what remains is a page on the official EPA website dedicated to explaining a few things about chromium-6.
It doesn’t mention the chemical’s studied carcinogenic danger at all, and only cites data from a 1991 study, which it states is the most comprehensive information to date.
According to the 28-year-old study, “continued exposure to chromium-6 could result in allergic dermatitis.”
If it seems strange for a proven carcinogen to only be regarded as a skin irritant by the federal government, that’s because it is. This is the politics of drinking water.
The chemical is still showing up in nearly all of Long Island’s drinking water according to each district’s most recently released water quality report, though some of which still include 5-year-old testing in their 2019 report as the latest update.
Despite this, there are few efforts on the horizon for change. Public attention has switched to a new offender, 1,4-Dioxane.
1,4-Dioxane is another carcinogen in Long Island drinking water, and unlike chromium-6, the government is taking small steps to address it.
Numerous towns across Long Island are suing companies they deem responsible for polluting their drinking water. They claim the companies knowingly included the carcinogen in their products without regard for the environmental and human consequences.
“What will be key is identifying the polluters because none of this should fall on taxpayers,” said Liz Moran of NYPIRG.
They want the companies to pay to remedy the situation. This could entail paying for the advanced filtration systems to specifically treat and minimize the presence of 1,4-Dioxane in our water systems.
These suits could work, but they’ll also take years.
Sarah Meyland, director of the New York Institute of Technology’s Center for Water Resources Management and member of the Drinking Water Quality Council — the council that set the standard for 1,4-Dioxane in drinking water — shared her thoughts on the process.
“Typically when a drinking water standard is adopted, whenever that is, it becomes legal, and compliance becomes mandatory. The water supply community is saying ‘we need 2–3 years of time to gear up and get this technology installed.” She said.
She elaborated on why they’re asking for this time, “Once they violate the law, they have to make a public announcement to the customers and they know that would just bring a lot of grief on them from their customers that say ‘I don’t want to drink that water, forget it,’”
This attitude of keeping vital information from the public is disturbingly common.
Liz Moran had her own views to share on this, “I think that municipalities and the state are often fearful of dealing with residents that are angry or fearful, of dealing with residents who are scared to drink their water. The thing is, it’s their job to inform the public about what’s going on.”
It seems that Long Island water suppliers are more concerned with staying on the right side of the law than doing right by their customers’ health.
According to Meyland, when determining the standard for allowable carcinogenic content in the drinking water, the greatest pushback came from the suppliers themselves.
“We went to a weaker standard, and that was at the urging of the water suppliers because they knew that they were going to be challenged by getting everything in place whatever the standard was going to be.”
The suppliers of Long Islander’s water know it’s dangerous, but they also know it’s expensive.
Meyland has tried to strike a balance in the face of this troubling outcome.
“The goal is public health protection up to some point that we simply say, we’ve done as much as we can and to do more is gonna be unaffordable.” She says.
The New York State Department of Health has the next say in this bureaucratic process, and according to Ms. Meyland, it’s going to be a while.
The next standards set may deem today’s tap water undrinkable, but the Island’s suppliers appear to abide by the “ignorance is bliss” approach with their consumers. Even so, the standards themselves are obscured by too many factors beyond their actual purpose — health.
All that is clear, is that Long Islanders’ drinking water remains in limbo, as they remain in relative darkness about its conditions. It’s fine until they say it's not.