A Landmark Event in the Understanding and Control of Waterborne Diseases

by Pure Water Annie

Gazette technical writer Pure Water Annie describes a landmark moment in the history of water’s role in disease.

Waterborne diseases like infectious hepatitis,  bacterial dysentery, cholera, and giardiasis were common until fairly recently.  Throughout the world, health impacts were staggering. Entire villages in Europe were wiped out by plagues in the 11th and 12th centuries.   In 1848 and 1849 in a single cholera epidemic alone, 53,000 people died in London.

 Dr. John Snow’s 1854 Pump Study is a landmark in the development of epidemiology (the study of infectious diseases).

The Broad Street Pump Findings

Dr. John Snow, a London obstetrician,  became interested in the cause and transmission of cholera after witnessing severe outbreaks of the disease in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1849 he published a pamphlet that suggested that cholera was transmitted by contaminated drinking water.  Many theories about the cause of cholera were in circulation at the time, and Dr. Snow’s polluted water theory was not widely accepted. The then-dominant theory was the miasma theory that stated that diseases such as cholera or the Black Death were caused by a noxious form of “bad air.” This was a short time before Pasteur’s “germ theory” became popular.

In 1854 Dr. Snow carefully plotted the locations of the illness and compared his findings to the subscriber lists of two private companies that provided water for London. His research showed that cholera occurred with greater frequency among the customers of one of the companies–the one that drew its water from the lower Thames river which was contaminated by London sewage. The other company used upper Thames water, which was less polluted.

Dr. Snow’s maps indicated a strong correlation between cholera cases and the proximity to the intersection of Cambridge and Broad Streets. The obvious conclusion was that the main cause of the cholera epidemic was the water drawn from a community pump on Broad Street.

Although few at the time believed Dr. Snow’s theory, the handle was removed from the pump to prevent further use of the water and the plague of cholera was broken.

Both the pump and its handle are on public display today and Dr. Snow’s discovery remains a landmark achievement in public health.

Reference: Thomas V. Cech: Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, and Policy. (John Wiley and Sons, 2005).

Texans Getting Creative With Water Conservation

WICHITA FALLS, Tex. — As this North Texas city struggles through one of the most severe droughts ever, saving water is no longer just about avoiding fines or staying in the good graces of one’s neighbors.

Since the city raised water rates by 53 percent in October, it is also about saving money.

“We have big buckets in our showers that catch the cold water as it warms up, and we carry those out and pour them on trees or bushes or whatever,” said Katie Downs, who lives with her husband and 8-year-old daughter near the edge of town.

Wichita Falls’s hefty rate increase is unusual, and it is in part because extraordinary conservation efforts by residents have meant that the utility was selling less water and needed to make up for lost revenue. Water and sewer bills are going up substantially across Texas and in many other places around the country as utilities struggle to maintain aging infrastructure, deal with drought or come to grips with the rising costs of a scarce resource while searching for new supplies. 

 This Wichita Falls Nursery Specializes in Plants that Don’t Need Much Water

“People have been hit on both sides,” said Jeff Hughes, director of the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The rates have been increasing higher than inflation, but also, salaries and wages have gone down in many regions.”

Those increases are causing people to get creative. Ms. Downs said her family saved the last 2 ounces in bottles of drinking water for houseplants or their dog. Other residents in the city of 100,000 spoke of taking “Navy” showers — quick showers taken on ships with limited water supplies — or replacing water-intensive lawns with drought-resistant plants.

The popularity of such plants has been a boon for Paul Dowlearn, who owns a nursery and sells plants that can withstand drought, like red yucca and Texas sage. “I’m selling plants that can live on the rainfall, and I’m not talking cactus and gravel,” Mr. Dowlearn said, standing in the nursery’s small indoor area, where two large rainwater collection bins are surrounded by brightly colored plants.

One reason for rising water rates is simply the need to catch up, Mr. Hughes said. Most water utilities, which are government-owned, have been loath to raise rates enough to keep pace with the cost of maintaining old and expensive infrastructure — until breakdowns and staggering debt force increases.

“We have about $5 billion worth of infrastructure, and you’ve got a lot of things you need to do,” said Terry Lowery, assistant director of business operations for Dallas Water Utilities, which plans to raise rates 3 to 6 percent each year for the next five years. “Moving water is expensive.”

In the Dallas area, invasive zebra mussels that clog water intake pipes have caused spikes in water rates. And the fast-growing region’s search for new supplies, which could include a hotly contested multibillion-dollar reservoirin Northeast Texas, is likely to send rates even higher.

In San Antonio, the city’s water system is considering a pipeline project that would cost $3.4 billion, bringing in groundwater from 140 miles away. That would add 16 percent to current water rates, the utility estimates. On top of that, more rate increases are needed to pay for repairs to an aging sewer system that has had multiple failures in the past several years, contributing to a forecast from the utility that combined water and wastewater rates in San Antonio will increase 41 percent over the next five years. (The San Antonio Water System is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.)

Representing a San Antonio coalition of congregations, schools and unions, Diane Duesterhoeft told the City Council at a hearing last week that low-income and middle-class families would be hit hardest. “It doesn’t take a lot of courage to spend someone else’s money,” Ms. Duesterhoeft said. “It does take courage to face the public and gain their informed consent on such a critical decision.”

The San Antonio Water System said it had long offered discounts of close to 25 percent to people whose incomes fall near or below the poverty level. About 20,000 customers a month took advantage of that last year, the utility said. Another program offers one-time payment assistance financed by private donations for those struggling with their bills.

The programs are not common, and most government assistance for households is focused on electricity bills, which are generally significantly higher than water bills. Thousands of households in both Dallas and San Antonio — about 1 to 1.5 percent of ratepayers — have water service cut off for not paying, both cities’ utilities said. They send out multiple notices over a few months before cutting off someone’s water.

“We’ll still maintain our position as one of the lowest rates in the state,” said Greg Flores, a spokesman for the San Antonio Water System. He added that the utility was considering establishing a lower water rate for those using less than 3,000 or 4,000 gallons a month — more than someone living alone in an apartment would use, and perhaps barely enough for a family of four that did not have a lawn.

In Dallas, water rates have risen much more slowly for households that use low amounts of water, and the bigger increases have been reserved for those who use a lot of water, Ms. Lowery said.

Wichita Falls does not have any city-funded programs for water bills. But Jim Dockery, the city’s chief financial officer, said some nonprofits helped those in need, and the city was considering printing messages directly on billing statements that encouraged customers to donate to the cause or ask for help.

Mr. Dockery said he expected things to get better once the drought ends, but rates would still have to be high. That is because the habit of conservation is likely to continue, which means the utility will keep selling less water.

“A lot of customers have installed water conservation measures that they will likely continue using after the drought is over,” he said. “The price is going to continue to be high.”

But Mr. Dowlearn, the nursery owner, is not worried. He had rainwater collection systems at work and in his home long before the drought started.

“My wife and I have not paid a water bill in over 25 years,” he said.

Source: Texas Tribune.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Study: Some cancer cases could be avoided through water treatment

by Jo-Anne MacKenzie

CONCORD — Hundreds of cases of cancer could be avoided if more New Hampshire residents tested — and treated — their private wells, according to a new study.

The study, funded by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at the long-term health effects of drinking water with elevated levels of arsenic. It estimates between 450 and 600 cases of lung, bladder or skin cancer here could be avoided if well water was tested and treated.

Some 46 percent of N.H. households get their drinking water from a private well, according to Paul Susca, a supervisor in the Department of Environmental Services drinking water division. Ninety percent of those wells are bedrock wells, which is where the arsenic is found.

Maine and New Hampshire rank highest nationally in the percentage of residents who use private wells, he said.

About one in five — some 20 percent — of private wells in New Hampshire have elevated levels of arsenic, according to NHDES Commissioner Thomas Burack.

Arsenic is considered a Class 1 carcinogen. It’s long been known that there’s a high incident of arsenic in many private wells, particularly in Rockingham, Merrimack, Strafford and Hillsborough counties. As many as 41,000 people in those four counties alone may be drinking water with arsenic levels higher than the EPA standard, the study says.

But there’s a problem just as significant as the arsenic levels — getting residents to have their well water tested and then doing something about it if arsenic or other contaminants are found. Although radon is even more commonly occuring, this study only looked for arsenic.

Dartmouth College did the report for NHDES and the state Department of Health and Human Services. The reporters held focus group meetings with residents of four towns, including Londonderry, each with a high number of private wells, all in areas with relatively high arsenic levels and all with a high percentage of children.

The experts found many residents associated contaminants in water with taste, smell or appearance, none of which hold true for arsenic, radon and many other contaminants.

There appeared to be a significant lack of knowledge among residents about water testing standards, according to the report. Those who did have their water tested often stopped there, the study showed, either because the results were tough to interpret or because they thought the cost of treatment would be prohibitive.

But, Susca said, cost ought not to be a factor.

“In most cases, people can use a point-of-use, under-the-sink kind of system to treat arsenic at levels that commonly occur,” he said. “It’s not a hazard for skin exposure, it’s the consumption, including cooking, so you only need to treat water you’re consuming.”

He said a typical under-the-sink system costs “hundred of dollars.”

Officials don’t have a firm grasp on the percentage of residents who use well water who have their water tested, Susca said, although a survey to get that number is underway.

Those conducting the study surveyed — or tried to — thousands of households with private wells. But the response rate was just about 3 percent.

Of those who did respond, 82 percent always or frequently drink tap water, according to the report.

The risk of consuming untreated well water with high levels or arsenic is significant. The study estimates of 688 cases of cancer among residents with arsenic-contaminated well water, 451 cases could be avoided if the water were treated for elevated arsenic levels.

Chronic arsenic exposure potentially leads to bladder and lung cancer. The state’s rate of bladder cancer is the highest in the country at 29.7 cases per 100,000, according to the National Cancer Institute.

That statistic can’t be entirely attributed to arsenic in well water, the study reports, but it’s noteworthy that Maine  ranks second for bladder cancer incidence and also has high levels of arsenic in its groundwater.

The study authors recommend improved communication about the importance of well water testing, testing events and campaigns in targeted towns as a next step.

“We want to emphasize that people should test their wells and do something about it if (arsenic) is at an elevated level,” Susca said.

The NHDES is working to develop an online tool that would allow residents to plug in their test results and get recommendations for treatment. That’s expected to roll out in the first half of 2015.

In the meantime, he said, people should have their water tested and if it needs treatment, consult several water treatment vendors.

There’s a lot of information available at http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/dwgb/.

Source: Eagle-Tribune

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Research: Fracking Uses No More Water Than Traditional Oil Production

Research done at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas has cleared fracking of one of the most serious allegations leveled against it by environmentalists who oppose the practice—that is uses a disproportionate amount of water and risks depleting water sources for agricultural and residential users, especially in already water challenges south Texas.

But researcher Dr. Bridget Scanlon tells Newsradio 1200 WOAI that claim is not true.

“The water used to produce oil using hydraulic fracturing is similar to the water used in the U.S. to produce oil using conventional techniques,” she said.

She says even though fracking works by blasting, or ‘fracturing,’ hard rock shale formations with a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals, the total amount of water used during the life of the well is not appreciably different than the amount of water used for traditional types of oil wells.

She says the only difference is the point in the drilling process where the water is used.

“We use the water for hydraulic fracturing up front, right after we drill the well,” she said.  “In conventional production, we use the water later in the production, with water flooding and enhanced oil recovery,” she said.

The alleged overuse of water is one of several techniques environmental groups have used to try to shut down or limit the fracking wells which are close to making the USA energy independent.

Scanlon says her research did not study whether water used for fracking is in fact depleting the water table under the Eagle Ford, but other studies have indicated that the total water use for fracking is about the same as the water used to keep a golf course irrigated.

“The reason we’re using more water is because we are producing more oil,” she said.  “Not because hydraulic fracturing is any more water intensive.”

Source: WOAI Radio News.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Gazette Numerical Wizard Bea Sharper brings you up to date on the current water news in numbers. These facts surfaced in water news stories during September 2014.

Percentage of trash found on Australian beaches that is plastic — 75%. 

Percentage of dead seabirds examined in a recent study that had plastic in their guts — 43%. 

Percentage of people in Georgia who drink water from private wells — 43%. 

Estimated percentage of US wells that have over 10 ppb arsenic — 7%. 

Estimated number of private wells in Georgia in 2012 — 648,000. 

Percentage of these wells that were tested during 2012 — 3.5%. 

Percentage of beer samples tested recently that contained plastic microfibers — 100% 

Number of years that it takes most plastic water bottles to decompose — 500. 

Number of African children who die each day of diarrhea – 4,000.

Amount that the California Water Resources Control Board has already allotted to buy bottled water for residents of East Porterville, which has run out of water. – $500, 000. 

Amount it would cost to connect East Porterville homes to the nearest municipal supply – $50,000,000. 

Time required for such a connection (if there were no political objections) – 5 years.

Year when the US Toxic Substances Control Act went into effect — 1976.

Number of times it has been updated since 1940 — 0.

Number of registered chemical compounds that have been recorded by the EPA — 84,000.

Number of these that have been tested fully for health effects on humans — unknown, but a tiny fraction of the total.

Rank by size in 1900 of the now dry Aral Sea among the world’s lakes — 4.

Number of residents of Sao Paolo, Brazil, which is dangerously close to running out of water — 20,000,000.

Current percentage of capacity of Cantareira, the lake complex that supplies half the water for Sao Paolo — 7.6%.

Fraction of China’s farmland that is located in the northern part of the country — 2/3.

Fraction of China’s natural available freshwater that is in the northern part of the country — 1/5.

Year in which Mao Zedong first proposed sending water from southern China to the north — 1952.

Year in which the new Grand Canal project sending water to the north was completed — 2014.

Number of people moved from their homes to make room for the great new canal — 330,000 plus.

Factor by which Chinese industry uses more water than the average western industrial country — 10 times.

Gallons of sea water needed to produce one gallon of potable water by reverse osmosis desalination — 2.

Daily production capacity of the largest sea water desalination in the United States, located at Carlsbad, CA — 50,000,000.

Daily production of the modest sized plant in Santa Barbara, CA — 2, 800,000.

Number of US desalination plants currently in planning or under construction — 15.

Number in Mexico — 3.

Number of square miles covered by the extension of the great marine sanctuary created in September 2014 — 490,000.

Amount of increase in the antimony content of bottled water stored at 158 degrees F. as compared with the same water stored at refrigerator conditions – 319-fold.

According to recent NSF research, percentage of Americans who are concerned about contaminants in tap water — 82%.

Percentage who are concerned about detergents — 24%.

Rank of pesticides among the concerns documented in the survey — #1.

El Capitan girls water polo scores — 6-3, 4-2, 3-1.

These items appeared originally in the Pure Water Occasional during Sept. 2o14.

Final Barrier Treatment: A Concept that Makes Sense

by Pure Water Annie

The Water Quality Association of America uses the term “final barrier” to describe the practice of doing water treatment at the point where water is actually used.  In the case of drinking water, this means providing a “final barrier” of defense at the point where the water is consumed–the kitchen sink, in most  homes–rather than attempting to prepare perfect drinking water at a distant water treatment and send it through miles of piping to the point of use.

Only about 1% of the water that leaves the water treatment plant is actually consumed by people; the other 99% is classed as “working water” that  waters lawns, washes automobiles, flushes toilets and performs dozens of other tasks that require good quality but not perfect water.

According to the WQA, ” treating 100% of the water in a municipal system to ‘drinking water quality’ and then wasting 99% of that quality through leakage, flushing toilets, watering lawns, fighting fires, is an unsustainable strategy for the future .” 

Municipal water departments in advanced countries do an incredible job of turning millions of gallons per day of water from lakes, rivers, and wells into aesthetically acceptable and microbiologically safe water,  But to get to the end user,  the treated water has to pass through miles of often ancient and always questionable infrastructure where it is subject to ruptured pipes, accidental backflow contamination, corroding metal, and contaminants that are leached from the pipes themselves.

The practical solution is to threat the water immediately before human consumption with a “final barrier” device.

Final barrier devices are by now familiar objects.  The most common and reliable are reverse osmosis units, ion exchange devices,  carbon filters, and, to an increasing extent, small ultraviolet purifiers.

 A high quality undersink filter or reverse osmosis unit can turn tap water into  exceptionally high quality drinking water.

 The Water-Energy Nexus

 Click image for larger view.

Editor’s Note:  This piece is adapted from CleanTechnica.com.  Go to the source for a more complete version and additional references. –Hardly Waite.

Did you know that it takes 3,000-6,300 gallons of water per year to power just one 60W incandescent light bulb? Now, I know that that must sound a little farfetched, but unfortunately it’s true. But how can this be, don’t light bulbs use electricity? In short, yes, but what most people don’t know is that we use large amounts of water to produce electricity. You see, electricity and water are connected through what is known as the energy-water nexus, and while that phrase may not mean anything to you at the moment, it will by the end of this article. So what exactly is the energy-water nexus, and why should you care?

The water-energy nexus is best understood as a connection between water and energy, however it goes much deeper than that. First, let’s look at the connection between the production of energy and water. The three most common ways we produce power today are coal, natural gas and nuclear power and all three of these require the use of water. Essentially these systems heat fresh water and turn it into steam, and that steam spins a turbine which creates energy. Curious just how much water these systems use? Click on the image below to see just how much water each of these systems needs to produce just 1 kWh of energy:

As you can see, supplying power to our homes requires a ton of water, but what about supplying them with water? Well, in short, it requires a ton of energy. You see, before water reaches your home it’s passed through a water treatment plant which ensures that it’s safe to drink and use in your home. After its been treated a series of electrical pumps will bring the water to your home where it will be used and then pumped back to another waste water treatment facility to be re-treated and sent back out. All the while, using energy which requires water to create it. So what does this mean to you as both an energy and water consumer? Take a look at your latest water bill, odds are you’ll find an electrical charge listed under your current charges. This is to cover the cost of the electricity required to pump the water to your home.

As you can see water and energy a far more than just connected, and by conserving one we can directly conserve the other.

Source:  CleanTechnica.com. 

 The Aral Sea’s Disappearing Act

 by Anna Nemptsova

Satellite photos show how the depredations of dictators have turned the world’s fourth largest inland sea into a poisonous desert. 

The vanishing sea is a warning: a harbinger of the long feared war over water in Central Asia.

If the pictures are new, the news of the Aral Sea shrinking is old. The story goes back to a Soviet desire to create a new breadbasket, far from southern Russia and Ukraine and possible Western invasion, where, indeed, war rages today.

The giant irrigation projects began in the 1960s in the dry lands of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. To irrigate cotton fields in Central Asia, Soviet workers built 45 dams diverting the twin rivers of Central Asia’s “little Mesopotamia,” the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into the so-called “virgin lands.” By the late 1990s the sea level dropped by 16 meters, leaving fishing boats and ships resting on the sandy and salty bottom.

As a result, disaster struck dozens of villages and small towns. In vain, fishermen waited for the sea to come back: there were no fish, there was no money for their families. The wind blew dry, salty air from the former seabed far to the south and east. The air mixed with fertilizers and pesticides that for decades were washed from the fields into the sea by irrigation water. The noxious winds poisoned the local population.

The final chapter began in 2005, when the World Bank gave Kazakhstan the first $68 million credit to build a 13-kilometer-long dam to split the Aral Sea into halves: the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and the Southern Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The dam prevented water from Kazakhstan’s Syr Darya from flowing into Uzbekistan’s half of the sea.

By 2008, Kazakhstan had managed to completely take control over the Syr Darya water, reviving 68 percent of the northern sea, reducing the salinity by half, and once again developing the fishing industry.

On the southern, Uzbek side, however, the sea dried up that much faster. Uzbekistan, largely dependent on cotton, the industry of white gold, could not afford to re-channel water to its half. Also, with the water vanishing, the Russian oil company Lukoil found a silver lining in the disaster, setting out in 2006 to explore for oil and gas on the bottom of the Aral Sea in the Uzbek sector.

In the last couple of years, neighboring Central Asian countries have had tense disputes about their water, which is so vital to their prosperity.

The construction of a hydroelectric power plant in Kyrgyzstan, which has border skirmishes from time to time with Uzbekistan, threatened the future independence of cotton farmers there. Each year their fields need at least 53 billion cubic meters of water for irrigation. Once, in 2013, Kyrgyzstan halted water for its reservoirs, and at least 11 regions of Uzbekistan suffered shortages.

In the past decade both Russian and Western ecologists expressed concerns about the worsening environment for millions of local people exposed to the salty wind. But that is not the only risk posed by the ghost of this vanishing sea.

An abandoned Soviet military base sits on Renaissance, or Vozrozhdenie, island, and was a test site for the Soviet biological weapons program. Rumors persist that the weapons were buried there. Where better to test cultures of anthrax, typhoid, plague and tularemia than on an island in a sea in the middle of the desert? No longer on an island, the site is now left exposed to anybody willing to walk across the drying sands. 

via earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Article Source:  The Daily Beast

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Should you worry about BPA in reverse osmosis tanks?

Because of the widely publicized presence of BPA in some plastic products, the public has developed a general suspicion of all plastics as a source of BPA.  Actually, the plastic products that contain BPA are mainly the hard, shatter-resistant,  usually clear water bottles as well as baby bottles and a few other plastic containers. You normally will not find BPA in plastics like polypropylene and polyethylene.  BPA is not one of the materials used in preparing these plastics.

If a product is NSF certified (certified to ANSI/NSF standard 58), the certifying agency has scanned the product for BPA.  If the product contains BPA, it will fail the extraction test and will not be certified.

The materials in high quality RO tanks that touch the water are stainless steel (the spout only), polypropylene (the liner in the chamber that holds the water), and butyl (the bladder that holds air and pushes the water out of the tank).  The butyl (aka chlorobutyl) bladder material in high quality tanks is specially cured so that it will not put out bad tastes or contaminants.

There are lots of things that contaminate food and water that we should worry about.  but reverse osmosis tanks aren’t one of them.