[Note: The text below is quoted from

"Tap Water Poisons–Proving Toxicity After the Fact," Alternative Medicine (24), July 1988]

"Tap Water Poisons–Proving Toxicity After the Fact"

"One reasonably wonders how long public officials need to wait after being notified of a serious health risk before taking the science seriously. Evidently, California health officials figured 18 years was about the right time gap between scientific study and policy change."

"Two articles in the Medical Journal Epidemiology (March 1988) shocked the California public and sent alarm ripples through the country when their conclusions were reported in the mainstream media.

"Researchers unequivocally correlated an increased risk of miscarriage, or spontaneous abortion, among 5,144 pregnant women with their consumption of chlorinated tap water. The study also showed that public health officials conveniently ignore data and that scientists themselves may be tardy and neglectful in assessing public health risks.

"The women, drawn from three California counties and with an average age of 28, were interviewed retrospectively regarding water consumption in the first trimester of their pregnancy which occurred between 1989 and 1991.

"According to study directors Kirsten Waller, Ph.D., and Shanna H. Swan, Ph.D., those women who drank at least five cups daily of cold, unfiltered, chlorinated tap water, containing more than 75 parts per million (ppm) of trihalomethanes, had a 15.7% rate of miscarriage (or a 1.8 times higher risk–nearly double).

"Women who drank less than this amount or whose tap water contained less than 75 ppm of trihalomethanes had a miscarriage rate of 9.5%. However, the Waller-Swan study showed that 18.4% of the women drank water with much higher trihalomethane levels, ranging up to 157 ppm.

"The trihalomethane content of tap water was gathered from the records of 78 municipal water utilities in the three counties involved in the study. Trihalomethanes, such as chloroform, are common by-products found in chlorinated water, produced when chlorine reacts with organic matter (humic and fulvic acids) in untreated water.

"The Epidemiology report was shocking in itself, yet what is more alarming is the fact that similar results were published in this same journal in 1992, drawn from comparable studies conducted by the same researchers for the California Department of Health Services.

"The scientists found significantly higher risk (10% to 15%) of spontaneous abortion among 5,000 women in a single California county (one of the three in their 1998 report) who drank more tap water than bottled water during the first eight weeks of pregnancy.

"Specifically, they found that women who drank at least six cups daily of cold, chlorinated tap water had an average of 2.17 times increased risk of miscarriage (the risk ranged from 1.1 to 3.9 times). Two other studies, also published in 1992, found that consuming at least four glasses of tap water produced a 12.7% to 14.2% miscarriage rate; the data of Waller and Swan placed the risk at 12.4%.

"Even more unsettling was Waller and Swan’s conclusion: "This study confirms the association between cold tap water and spontaneous abortion first seen in this county [Santa Clara] in 1980.""

"One reasonably wonders how long public officials need to wait after being notified of a serious health risk before taking the science seriously. Evidently, California health officials figured 18 years was about the right time gap between scientific study and policy change. Or maybe we should reckon it as 90 years since chlorine was first introduced into U.S. water supplies as a disinfectant in 1908.

"Apparently, California State health statisticians found clever ways to disqualify some of the 1992 data, claiming faulty or biased retrospective recall by the women polled; this got them off the hook for six years until another study, statistically airtight, confirmed the 1992 data on an even larger scale. Now they have to act.

"The implications are distressing and national in scope. Not only are health officials ignoring or downplaying the published scientific data and delaying their protection of public health, but the scientists themselves are looking in the wrong direction. They should be asking what other serious health problems might chlorinated tap water or trihalomethanes be producing? Toxicity studies should have been mounted long ago, covering all contingencies, before millions of Americans were exposed to chlorinated water.

"After all, trihalomethanes are everywhere: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that essentially all chlorinated water supplies in the U.S. contain these contaminants. Though not documented, their toxic effects are already under way all across America. Toxicity should not be proven after the fact, looking backwards and seeing that people were made sick. Toxicology studies should be used preventively, before more consumers are exposed to dangerous tap water by-products.

"Evidence exists to begin answering the question of potential toxicity. Animal studies have already linked the consumption of chlorinated tap water with reproductive disorders, involving embryos and sperm integrity. Human studies have linked chlorinated tap water (though not trihalomethanes) with cancer.

"In 1993, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee reported that exposure to chlorination by-products produced a 15% increase in the risk of all cancers, but for organ-specific cancers, it was higher. For bladder cancer, the risk was 21%, and for rectal cancer, it was 38% times greater. A 1997 study involving 28,237 women also associated the consumption of chlorinated by-products with higher risks of all cancers (25%) but especially with colon cancer (up to 68%).

"At least one of the three California counties included in Waller and Swan’s study plans major changes in its water system. The Santa Clara Valley Water District, which services 1.6 million customers, will convert over the next eight years from chlorine to an ozone gas disinfectant system. This is expected to cost $150 million and will raise local water rates by 50%.

"Once again, the public pays dearly, both in financial and health terms, for the ignorance and intransigence of scientists. Ozonation of public water is widespread in other countries, used in at least 2,000 cities, but this approach has been scorned in the U.S. because of a bias by scientists (supported by FDA derision) against oxygen-based technologies and therapies. It’s time to exchange prejudice, misinformation, and neglect for science in the service of public health."

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Jock Doubleday

Director

Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.

http://www.SpontaneousCreation.org

director@spontaneouscreation.org