Pure Water Occasional, November, 2022
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Greetings from Pure Water Products, the Pure Water Gazette, and the Pure Water Occasional.
In this holiday season Occasional you'll hear about the EPA's renewed interest in Chromium 6, the politics of wastewater testing, new information about water contamination caused by water treatment, whole house cartridge filters, the history of handwashing, "sponge cities" in China, "shocking lead levels" in Chicago, and a burning river in Cleveland. And, as always, there is much, much more.
Thank you for reading and sincere thanks from Pure Water Products for your continuing support. We consider our greatest asset to be the many faithful customers who have kept us going over the years. We really appreciate your support! |
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Thanks for reading!
Please visit the Pure Water Gazette, where you will find hundreds of articles about water and water treatment.
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The EPA says, finally, that Chromium 6 probably causes cancer
Those who saw the 2000 film Erin Brockovich will remember hexavalent chromium, also known as Chromium 6, as the chemical spreading in a plume beneath the town of Hinkley, California, from a disposal site run by Pacific Gas & Electric.
Thirty years after Erin Brockovitch. with considerable help from a Julia Roberts movie about her, brought attention to the dangers of hexavalent chromium, the EPA has said that it probably causes cancer.
“Chromium-6 is ‘likely to be carcinogenic’ if consumed in drinking water, according to an EPA draft review of the metal’s toxicity. The draft review, once finalized, will be the scientific underpinnings of EPA’s assessment of risks associated with exposure to chromium-6 and could lead to stricter EPA regulation.
Our advice: Hexavalent chromium is a drinking water issue. There is little if any dermal uptake during bathing or otherwise using the water. See Systemic uptake of chromium in human volunteers following dermal contact with hexavalent chromium, published by the National Library of Medicine. Sensible home treatment is to treat drinking water with an undersink reverse osmosis unit, which removes hexavalent chromium handily, and to not worry about whole house treatment.
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Dealing with the Future by Looking at the Past
by Gene Franks
A few years ago a researcher at a local university showed that the school's enrollment figures can be determined with a fair degree of accuracy by monitoring wastewater for the presence of an easily detected ingredient of birth control pills. The higher the enrollment, the more college women peeing estrogen into the sewage system.
With Covid, wastewater monitoring for the virus has been found to be not just an effective method, but the most effective method for tracking the number of cases.
In addition to the presence of coronavirus and birth control use, wastewater testing can effectively measure the presence of any number of environmental toxins, diseases like ebola, tuberculosis, flu and polio, anthrax, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, guns (by measuring gun residue), alcohol, mental illness (by testing for stress hormones), and even food and lifestyle choices.
In today’s highly charged political atmosphere it’s easy to see how wastewater monitoring might become controversial as a “rights” issue. Sewage typically travels through publicly owned infrastructure to a treatment plant operated by a utility. Researchers and officials currently sample wastewater for public health related issues such as flu and polio without public objection. Samples are usually collected with permission of the utility, but no one asks the households being sampled if they are willing to participate. The “founding fathers” did not mention freedom from wastewater monitoring as one of our inalienable rights, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see that looking for evidence of polio in waste water could be bitterly condemned as a plot to turn children into robots via a sinister vaccination program.
The world keeps getting more complicated.
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From the Pure Water Gazette’s Famous Water Pictures Series: Dr. Semmelweis Washing His Hands
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before attending to patients.
History of Hand-Washing
The idea that “germs” that cause disease get on people’s hands and that they can be spread from person to person by unclean hands hasn’t been around that long. In fact, it was 19th-century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who, after observational studies, first advanced the idea of “hand hygiene” in medical settings. Here’s how Semmelweis, working in an obstetrics ward in Vienna in the 19th century, made the connection between dirty hands and deadly infection.
Hand-Washing in the old days
While we certainly don’t know the name of the first guy to wash his hands, the history of hand-washing extends back to ancient times, when it was largely a religious practice. The Old Testament, the Talmud and the Quran all mention hand-washing in the context of ritual cleanliness, and it may be that ritual hand washing had some public health implications. During the Black Death of the 14th century, for instance, the Jews of Europe had a distinctly lower rate of death than others. Researchers believe that hand-washing prescribed by their religion probably served as protection during the epidemic.
Dr. Semmelweis
Hand-washing as a health care practice did not really surface until the mid-1800s, when a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis did an important observational study at Vienna General Hospital.
Semmelweis started working in obstetrics, a relatively new and not very prestigious area for physicians, in the Vienna Hospital in 1846. Obstetrics had to that time been dominated by midwifery and conventional doctors were trying to expand into the childbirth business.
The leading cause of maternal mortality in Europe at that time was puerperal fever–an infection, now thought to be caused by the streptococcus bacterium, that killed postpartum women. Prior to 1823, about 1 in 100 women died in childbirth at the Vienna Hospital. But after a policy change mandated that medical students and obstetricians perform autopsies in addition to their other duties, the mortality rate for new mothers suddenly jumped to 7.5%.
When the hospital opened a second obstetrics division, staffed entirely by midwives, the older division, where Dr. Semmelweis worked, was quickly seen to have a much higher mortality rate than the new midwives’ division.
Semmelweis set out to investigate. He examined all the similarities and differences of the two divisions. The only significant difference was that male doctors and medical students worked in the first division and female midwives in the second.
What transmits disease?
At that time, the general belief was that bad odors called “miasma” transmitted disease. It would be two more decades at least before germ theory–the idea that microbes cause disease–took over as the accepted theory, the theory that persists until today.
Semmelweis reasoned that no midwives ever participated in autopsies or dissections, but students and physicians regularly went between autopsies and deliveries, rarely washing their hands in between. Realizing that chloride solution rid objects of their odors, Semmelweis ordered hand-washing across his department. Starting in May 1847, anyone entering the doctors’ obstetrical division had to wash his hands in a bowl of chloride solution. The incidence of puerperal fever and death dropped sharply by the end of the year.
Unfortunately, as in the case of his contemporary John Snow, who discovered that cholera was transmitted by polluted water and not miasma, Semmelweis’ work did not get him a place in history or even a promotion. In fact, he lost his job because his boss was envious of his success and got no recognition for the discovery during his lifetime.
Hand-washing has now, of course, become a part of the medical ritual, but it gets a definite bump of compliance whenever there is disease outbreak. Even in times of pandemic, though, we do not have a day on our calendar that honors Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis.
There is no justice.
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Gazette Introductory
Note: It took us several decades after public water suppliers started
using chlorine as a disinfectant to figure out that the disinfection
process was creating a seemingly countless number of pretty nasty
chemicals that we refer to collectively as “disinfection by-products” and
regulate as THMs. A rapidly growing number of water suppliers are switching disinfects from chlorine to chloramine to avoid creating EPA monitored THMs, although it is virtually certain that the numerous by-products created by chloramine will evenually be suspect.
It should not surprise us, then, than when we apply
hydrogen peroxide and UV light to eradicate water contaminants we create
“presumably less harmful chemicals” that the article below refers to as
“transformation products.” Nature is about change. We know that when we
“remove” something from water we are often just changing it to
something “presumably less harmful.” When we "remove" chorine with a carbon filter, chlorine doesn’t just go away: it
becomes chloride. So who knows what phenols from personal care products
might morph into when exposed to oxidation? A law of Nature that we like to forget is that when you destroy something you create something else.
Public water quality has received a lot of attention in recently
years as some disturbing discoveries have been made regarding lead
levels in cities across the country. Now, a new study from the Johns
Hopkins University pinpoints other chemicals in water that are worth
paying attention to — and in fact, some of them may be created,
ironically, during the water treatment process itself.
To rid water of compounds that are known to be toxic, water treatment
plants now often use methods to oxidize them, turning them into other,
presumably less harmful chemicals called “transformation products.”
Though earlier studies have looked at the byproducts of water treatment
processes like chlorination, not so much is known about the products
formed during some of the newer processes, like oxidation with hydrogen
peroxide and UV light, which are especially relevant in water reuse.
“Typically, we consider these transformation products to be less
toxic, but our study shows that this might not always be the case,” says
lead author Carsten Prasse assistant
professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at
the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and the university’s
Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Our results highlight that this is
only half of the story and that transformation products might play a
very important part when we think about the quality of the treated
water.”
Prasse, along with colleagues from the University of California,
Berkeley, chose to look at phenols, a class of organic chemicals that
are among the most common in the water supply, as they’re present in
everything from dyes to personal care products to pharmaceuticals to
pesticides as well as in chemicals that are naturally occurring in
water.
To determine what compounds the phenols transform into during treatment, the team, whose results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
first oxidized phenols using peroxide radicals, a process often used by
water treatment plants. Next, they borrowed a clever method from
biomedicine: They added amino acids and proteins to the mix. Depending
on what chemical reactions took place, Prasse and his team could do some
backwards calculation to determine what compounds the phenols must have
turned into in the earlier step. They discovered that the phenols converted into products including
2-butene-1,4-dial, a compound that is known to have negative effects,
including DNA damage, on human cells. Interestingly, furan, a toxic
compound in cigarette smoke and car exhaust, is also converted into
2-butene-1,4-dial in the body, and it may be this conversion that’s
responsible for its toxicity.
To test the specific effects of 2-butene-1,4-dial on biological
processes more fully, the team exposed the compound to mouse liver
proteins. They found that it affected 37 different protein targets,
which are involved in a range of biological processes, from energy
metabolism to protein and steroid synthesis.
One enzyme that 2-butene-1,4-dial was shown to bind is critical in
apoptosis, or “cell suicide.” Inhibiting this compound in a living
organism might lead to unchecked cell proliferation, or cancer growth.
And other compounds that 2-butene-1,4-dial interferes with play key
roles in metabolism. “There are a lot of potential health outcomes, like
obesity and diabetes,” says Prasse. “There’s a known connection between
pesticide exposure and obesity, and studies like ours may help to
explain why this is.”
The results are exciting since this is the first time these methods
have been applied to water treatment, Prasse says. In time, they may be
expanded to screen for other types of compounds beyond phenols.
Water purification is extraordinarily challenging, since contaminants
come from so many different sources — bacteria, plants, agriculture,
wastewater — and it’s not always clear what’s being generated in the
process. “We’re very good at developing methods to remove chemicals”
says Prasse. “Once the chemical is gone, the job — it would seem — is
done, but in fact we don’t always know what removal of the chemical
means: does it turn into something else? Is that transformation product
harmful?”
Prasse and his team point out that by the year 2050, it’s been
estimated two-thirds of the global population will live in areas that
rely on drinking water that contains the runoff from farms and
wastewater from cities and factories. So safe and effective purification
methods will be even more critical in the coming years.
“The next steps are to investigate how this method can be applied to
more complex samples and study other contaminants that are likely to
result in the formation of similar reactive transformation products,”
says Prasse. “Here we looked at phenols. But we use household products
that contain some 80,000 different chemicals, and many of these end up
in wastewater. We need to be able to screen for multiple chemicals at
once. That’s the larger goal.”
Coauthors on the study were Breanna Ford and Daniel K. Nomura of the
Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at the University of
California, Berkeley. The senior author was David L. Sedlak of the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of
California, Berkeley.
This research was supported by the National Institute for
Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program (Grant P42
ES004705) at the University of California, Berkeley.
SOURCE: Johns Hopkins University
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Recent Water News
"Sponge Cities"
China is having great success in water management through the creation of what are called "sponge cities."
Sponge cities address flooding, water shortage, and water quality.
“Sponge Cities are inspired by the ancient wisdom of farming and water management that use simple tools to transform the global surface at a vast scale in a sustainable way.”
"A ‘sponge city’ is a nature-based solution which uses the landscape to retain water at its source, slow down water flow and clean it throughout the process.
"The focus is to retain rainwater in urban areas by waterproofing the paved floor so that part of it evaporates and the rest is gradually drained. As well as proofing the roads and pavements, more trees are planted and smart buildings are constructed to adapt to the city's sponge. This means roofs are covered in grass for greater absorption of water and buildings are also painted in light colours to reflect more heat instead of absorbing it." Euronews.green.
"Shocking Levels of Lead in Chicago's Drinking Water"
Research reported in The Guardian revealed "shocking levels of toxic lead in Chicago's drinking water." The city has the nation's greatest concentration of lead service pipes and is moving at a snail's pace to replace them.
One home is south Chicago tested at a lead level of 73 times the EPA allowable of 15 parts per billion. "Numerous studies have shown that, even at low levels, lead can leave an indelible impact on young children and adults. Once in the blood, lead can cross the blood-brain barrier and affect the nervous system. It has been linked to lower IQ levels, behavioral disorders and worsening performance in reading and math.
"In adults, low levels of lead are associated with kidney problems and increasing blood pressure, which can lead to a host of cardiac effects.
"Chicago has an estimated 80% of homes with water connections made of lead, more than any other city in the nation. Yet efforts to get it out of the ground and out of people’s drinking water seem to be stalled in bureaucratic gridlock." The Guardian
Water and Dairy Foods
It takes almost 500 gallons of water to make a pound of cheese. The US dairy industry is quickly becoming unsustainable in drought-plagued California (the nation's largest producer of dairy products).
Salon.com.
Remembering the Cuyahoga River Fires
The EPA held a celebration fittingly on the banks of the Cuyahoga River to celebrate the 50 th aniversary of the Clean Water Act.
" In the 1960s, the Cuyahoga River infamously caught fire more than a dozen times, prompting environmental action and advocacy that, in part, inspired the creation of the EPA and the eventual passage of the Clean Water Act. Under the Clean Water Act, EPA has worked with partners across the country to implement vital programs that have reduced pollution, made our waterbodies safer and cleaner, and ensured businesses that rely on clean water can thrive. Since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, waterways around the country have been transformed into national treasures and economic engines." Water Online
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"Call to Order"
Our main website has a growing number of products marked "Call to Order" in place of the standard shopping cart link.
"Call to order" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is not available or the price shown (if any) is not valid. Often it means that availabilty changes day to day and it makes more sense to share exact "lead time" expectation than to take a shopping cart order for a product with a lead time that is unacceptable to the customer.
Some products (whole house reverse osmosis, for example) are by nature call to order items simply because they involve options and choices that aren't apparent from a website presentation. Certain product categories are now marked "call to order" because pricing and availability change frequently and we want to be sure that what you order is what you need. Mineral tanks are a prime example. Returning a pair of socks to an internet vendor is easy, but you may be surprised at how very expensive and troublesome it is to return an 18" X 65" fiberglass tank.
It's better to call to order than to make several calls about delayed delivery or returning a product that doesn't meet your needs.
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Places to visit for additional information:
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Thanks for reading. The next Occasional will be out eventually--when you least expect it.
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