Reducing Arsenic Holds Risks

Albuquerque Journal (Subscription Required) ^ | Tuesday, March 26, 2002 | Patrick Armijo

[CedarDave]

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Reducing Arsenic Holds Risks

By Patrick Armijo
Journal Staff Writer

    Several Albuquerque researchers contend that any health benefits derived from reducing arsenic in drinking water are so marginal they could be negated by accidents involving the trucks that would take treatment chemicals to water plants.
    The federal government is requiring water systems to lower the standard of arsenic allowed from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion by 2006 — a move estimated to cost at least $400 million in New Mexico.
    The researchers, including an epidemiologist and a university professor, dispute the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's contention that the new standards will have significant health impacts, primarily lowering bladder-cancer rates.
    According to their statistical model — which they contend is more realistic than methods used by the EPA — the new standards will avert two deaths over 70 years in the Albuquerque area.
    They said their model shows the new standards could lead to anywhere from 76 to 129 traffic accidents caused by trucks carrying chemicals to water plants during the same period.
    Those crashes would be expected to lead to anywhere from 0.6 to 1.4 deaths and between 30.8 and 53.4 injuries.
    "We're pretty confident people will be killed due to the increased risk of the added transportation needed to take chemicals to and from water-treatment plants," said Floyd Frost, a senior epidemiologist at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. "You can figure out how many deaths that will cause with a good amount of certainty using statistical methods.
    "What's really uncertain," he added, "is the benefits, if any, we will see from lowered arsenic standards based on the new standards. It's a real uncertainty that you will save anybody. It's not based on any real evidence. In fact, it's an act of faith."
    Frost is one of several researchers whose work will be published in the April issue of Risk Analysis, an academic journal specializing in mathematical modeling used to estimate health risks and other risks in society.
    Bruce Thomson, a civil engineering professor at the University of New Mexico, and John Stomp, of the Albuquerque Public Works Department, are the other two in-state experts involved.
    EPA spokesman David Bary said risk analysts from the agency would have to examine the paper before commenting.
    Thomson and Frost said the few studies available involving arsenic concentrations lower than 300 parts per billion tend to show negligible effects of lowering arsenic concentrations below the current drinking-water standard.
    Most of the research relied on in setting the new standard, Thomson and Floyd said, involves arsenic concentrations above 300 parts per billion.
    Frost said traffic accidents have a greater chance of killing younger people, while bladder cancer, the typical cancer most likely to be lowered by the new standard, typically sets in when people are in their 70s.
    That means the total years of life lost due to the new standard likely will be greater than if it were never adopted, he said.
    Thomson said the researchers did not figure in other accidents that could be expected from the new arsenic standard.
    For example, in rural areas, individual homeowners might be forced to use bottled water instead of tap water.
    "If the new standard forces elderly people in rural areas to use bottled water, you can imagine there's a pretty good probability of more deaths from falling if you have elderly people carrying 5-gallon or 10-gallon jugs of bottled water up stairs," he said.
    Frost said the EPA methodology excluded such indirect costs from its assessment.
    "I think the bigger message that has to get across," Thomson said, "is that we need a regulatory process that looks at all the costs and benefits of a proposed change, or at least all the costs and benefits that we can predict from a proposed change."
    Additionally, Frost notes, the $400 million needed to meet the standards could have better public-health uses.
    "My gut feeling tells me we ought to spend the money in a way that delivers the most benefit to the most people," frost said. "You can imagine how much good $400 million would do in this state if it were directed to the prevention and treatment alcoholism or lowering smoking rates."

Copyright 2002 Albuquerque Journal

[CedarDave]

Not that it will change the minds of the enviro-nazis, but this study presents evidence that should have been evaluated before adoption of the new standard.

Check out the earlier article about Albuquerque and Arsenic here:

Albuquerque Battles to Leave Arsenic in the Water

[CedarDave]

BUMP!
(p.s. someone please bump this to the arsenic and environment files/archives, I can't seem to find a link to do so.)

[Own Drummer]

"[the benefits] could be negated by accidents involving the trucks that would take treatment chemicals to water plants."

Perhaps the trucks could be routed through the districts of all the Congress-turds who voted for this bill...

[Judith Anne]

And the EPA says they have to examine the paper before making any decision? Are these people in the EPA braindead?

[DB]

"My gut feeling tells me we ought to spend the money in a way that delivers the most benefit to the most people," frost said. "You can imagine how much good $400 million would do in this state if it were directed to the prevention and treatment alcoholism or lowering smoking rates."

No, you shouldn't raise the water rates and collect that $400 million in the first place. Let the consumer do as they please with their money.

[editor-surveyor]

"It's not based on any real evidence. In fact, it's an act of faith."

We don't need no steeeinking Evidence!

Look how sucessful we were with the Lynx study.

[oldvike]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that Bush allowed these rules to go into effect. I don't believe congress had anything to do with it. I'll have to look into this.

[Eva]

They did have all the information that showed that reduced arsenic levels may not be necessary, they just deleted it from the Harvard Arsenic study, before submitting it to the government. I know, I read the whole report, before it was finalized and shortened to fit the agenda.

[B4Ranch]

That last paragrah is amazing! Common sense is so nice to see.

[snopercod]

Another thing not considered is the number of deaths and reduced quality of life due to people being forced to pay for treating their water rather than spend the money on health care. "Arsenic Money" taken from them is money that can't be used for other needs.

And before anybody scoffs at this, when I quit my "good" job and moved to the woods, the wife and I went for three years with only catastrophic health insurance. As a result, we went without the routine physicals, eye exams, and dental care that we had become used to. We didn't see a doctor unless we were seriously ill.

It needs to be reiterated that poverty is the biggest contributor to unhappiness, disease, and early death in the world. It also needs to be reiterated that socialism causes poverty.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[CedarDave]

I presume that others had access to the Harvard arsenic study report before it was finalized. That type of information may be useful in Albuquerque's lawsuit. Do you know if the on-line draft is still available anywhere, or has it been yanked because, as you said, the study results did not agree with the study premise?

If you find it, I'll try to pass the information onto the City of Albquerque folks for use in their lawsuit.

[harpseal]

Science is not science when it is based on fraud or bad mathematics. Soviet genetics were a joke for decades because Stail supported Lyshenko in his genetic studies that showed learned behavior could be inherited. Of course those studies were all rooted in fraudulent data. There are many prices we pay for fraudulent "science." Fraudulent science has been atool of the left for years.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[Eva]

Arsenic was a bit of a political football in my county, and I was discussing it on FreeRepublic, when another poster, a geologist, mentioned that arsenic was a naturally occurring substance in areas of former volcanic eruptions. I asked him what other substances might be found in those areas and he mentioned selenium. So, I did a search on selenium and came up with the Harvard Arsenic Study.

The study included alot of information about the interaction of selenium and arsenic and the fact that one flushes the other from the system. Selenium is a natural anti-carcinogen, so if selenium levels are low, and arsenic is flushing it from the system, a person may become more susceptible to cancer.

The completed study is all that is currently on line. I couldn't believe it when I went back to re-read the information and it was gone. I believe that the main study that showed the arsenic/selenium relationship was done in Indonesia. If someone seriously is interested in the study, though, I would go to the source, the guy who wrote the arsenic project is now in charge of the gov't arsenic program. I would say that I was doing research on selenium and would he share the information that he collected or at least the source of the information.

[hattend]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that Bush allowed these rules to go into effect. I don't believe congress had anything to do with it. I'll have to look into this.

Actually, one of the first things Bush did was table the lowered arsenic standard until a further study could be made. EPA is doing what it has always done...whatever it wants. Carol Browner, meet Christie Whitman.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the ping.

I can remember many who know a lot more than I do about the arsenic levels saying that Clintoon signed this Bravo Sierra levels into law to be a timebomb for the Bush administration!

[alaskanfan]

And then blamed Bush for posioning the water when he withdrew to the same levels of arsenic that Clinton had held to for eight years.

[Grampa Dave]

af posted: And then blamed Bush for poisoning the water when he withdrew to the same levels of arsenic that Clinton had held to for eight years.

Our local fishwrap started the poisoning of America BS after GW became president. I sent them an email challenging them to a public debate to why they, the other so called news mediots and Club Sierra didn't say a damn thing from Jan 1993 to Feb 2001 about poisoning America. I told them that if these levels were poison, then they and the enviral groups were guilty of spiking the news of the mass poisoning of Americans for 8 years. So they had abetted mass poisoning of Americans for 8 years by spiking the news.

Suddenly they dropped their phoney editorials and phoney letters to the editor about GW poisoning us.

[Madame Dufarge]

The EPA plays this ppb game with everything.

When I lived on Cape Cod, it was nitrates. They just keep upping the threshold until it's damn near impossible to meet their standards, and they don't care how many millions you have to spend to solve their invented "problem."

Hey, job security for the environmental Nazis.

Have I mentioned that I hate them to the very breadth and depth of my soul?