Tainted drinking water kept under wraps

Milwaukee’s water department is an anomaly, posting on its Web site an 11-page detailed drinking water quality report that includes test results for 450 unregulated contaminants, including pharmaceuticals. While they found minute concentrations of cotinine, a nicotine derivative, they didn’t detect hundreds of other contaminants including estrogens and other hormones, acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

When asked what power the EPA had to require public disclosure when pharmaceutical contamination is discovered in a water provider’s supplies, Benjamin H. Grumbles, the agency’s assistant administrator for water, said, “We work very closely with utilities across the country and we encourage them to share with their community information they find out about their source water.”

But there’s no such requirement if the detected contaminant is not regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said in response to a question.

'More work to do'
Grumbles was asked how he thought water providers have been responding to the EPA’s “encouragement.”

“I think we have more work to do,” he said.

Several hours after the interview, Grumbles issued a statement: “As head of the National Water Program, I will do everything in my authority to make certain that public water suppliers inform their consumers if they detect pharmaceuticals in the drinking water.”

It’s not just the water departments that have failed to disclose such information.

The AP spoke with many scientists, federally funded researchers, university professors and private drinking water experts who have detected pharmaceuticals in drinking water, but would not say where they had obtained their samples.

Archibald said her organization joined an American Water Works Association Research Foundation study with the understanding that secrecy would be assured.

“We agreed ahead of time that no specific agency would be mentioned in terms of which place had detections,” Archibald said. She insisted that even she didn’t have the test results. “It’s all being held very carefully. Water agencies were assigned numbers so none of us would even know what was detected in each other’s water.”

Robert Renner, the foundation’s executive director, said AWWARF study participants are routinely promised anonymity. “Being involved in a study, they don’t want this information blown out all over,” he said.

Fearing public will overreact
Citing confidentiality agreements, he declined to name the 20 different drinking water treatment plants around the U.S. where pharmaceuticals have been detected in water heading to more than 10 million people.

“It’s a hard topic to talk about without creating fear in the general public,” Renner said.

Some said those fears could lead to much larger problems than the actual contamination.

Doctors “don’t want people to be afraid to take their medicine because of environmental concerns,” said Virginia Cunningham, an environmental executive for drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

Utilities also generally only allow scientists to test their water if they ensure confidentiality. In order for research to progress, scientists “need the confidence of utilities and other public/private stakeholders to allow us access to waters which we can study without any negative implications for those stakeholders,” said Howard Weinberg, an environmental chemist at University of North Carolina. “Without this confidence, such research could not be undertaken.”

John Vargo, program manager at the University of Iowa’s University Hygienic Laboratory, said he found traces of pharmaceuticals in the finished drinking water of several major Midwestern cities but, under terms of those contracts, he could not disclose their identity.

Peter Rogers, Harvard University professor of environmental engineering, said improvements in detection techniques could help fuel fears among the general public.

“We’re chasing this down to molecular-sized measurements, so the more you look, the more you find,” said Rogers. “I think the government and utilities are quite right to be very skittish about telling people their results. People will claim it is causing all sorts of problems. If I were a water utility, I would stop those measurements right away because if you measure something, it will get out, and people will overreact. I can just imagine a whole slew of lawsuits.”

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