Progressive Democrat Issue 99: THE ONGOING POISONING OF AMERICA

Some believe that one contributing factor to the decline of the Roman Empire was the fact that they used lead pipes for drinking water. Chronic lead poisoning, it is argued, sapped the Romans of their health and intelligence, contributing to their decline.

I personally think this is an unlikely scenario...but, in an Empire known for its extensive public water system, it is possible. But one thing is indeed clear, poisons like lead and arsenic in drinking water are a major health hazard. And this health hazard is one part of the Republican poisoning of America.

This is another one of my pet issues: the ongoing poisoning of American by Republican policies. This is not an accidental thing. It is a byproduct of intentional deregulation, intentionally ignoring clear warning signs of health problems, and allowing companies and utilities to circumvent environmental regulations. Sometimes it is very specific: Bush ordering the EPA to lie about the toxicity of the World Trade Center smoke plume, thus poisoning thousands of New Yorkers, particularly first responders, leading to a syndrome known as "Ground Zero Cough" which has struck New York's rescue workers or Conrad Burns (A Montana Republican now happily ousted from the Senate by Jon Tester, a populist organic farmer) advocating testing pesticides on humans. Other times it is a more general increase in dangerous pollutants thanks to Republican blind faith in deregulation. But there is now a clear pattern of Republican policies threatening the health of Americans through our air, drinking water and soil.

The latest threat is lead in our drinking water. There has been a noticable increase in lead contamination in America, leading to a real health risk. Yet the EPA under Bush is ignoring the problem despite having a good idea that it is happening and why. From Salon.com:

In the spring of 2003, home inspectors from the District of Columbia's Department of Health came to Andy and Shelli Bressler's century-old house in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood, looking for lead. Like 300,000 young children in the U.S. each year, the Bresslers' 2-year-old twins had elevated lead in their blood, which their doctor picked up during a routine checkup. Lead affects neurological development in children, and twins Adam and Casey had taken a long time to reach milestones such as walking and talking...

Then, in January 2003, Bressler read in the Washington Post that thousands of homes in D.C. had high lead in their drinking water. The problem constituted one of the worst episodes of water contamination in U.S. history and signaled a potential crisis in metropolitan areas across the country. In Washington, tens of thousands of people unwittingly drank tap water contaminated with lead for several years; in a few cases, the tap water contained enough lead to be classified as a hazardous waste. When tests confirmed that their tap water contained high lead levels, Bressler says, "we immediately stopped drinking and cooking with tap water. Finally, the boys' lead levels came down."

To this day, officials involved in the D.C. crisis contend that no one was significantly harmed by D.C.'s lead problem. But Salon has recently learned that one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the "no harm" conclusion has been falsely represented. During the crisis, the city's Water and Sewer Authority and Health Department sent inspectors to the homes of children with elevated blood lead to look for the source. At a 2004 congressional hearing investigating the causes of the exposure, D.C. water authority general manager Jerry Johnson testified that in every case the assessments showed that water was not the source of the child's lead exposure.

But a recent examination of the assessment reports reveals that water is the sole source of the blood poisoning in some homes and that assessors found high levels of lead in tap water in many other homes. The reports were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by Virginia Tech environmental engineer Marc Edwards, a leading authority on water corrosion, who first called attention to D.C.'s lead problem. Since then, Edwards has been conducting his own investigation of the crisis and has established a clear connection between lead-contaminated water and elevated blood lead levels in some D.C. children. "The assertion that no one was harmed in D.C. contradicts decades of scientific research on dangers of lead in drinking water," he says...

[In] Greenville, N.C...John Morrow, director of public health in Pitt County, which encompasses Greenville, wanted to find the source of lead in a blood-poisoned infant, 1-year-old Conner Jackson. Inspectors had looked all over Jackson's house but failed to find a source. As the child's blood lead climbed higher, Morrow, who had heard about the D.C. lead crisis, started to wonder if water could be the source of Conner's blood poisoning...

Morrow turned for advice to experts in Washington. He found materials on the Web from Tee Guidotti, director of occupational medicine and toxicology at George Washington University and the Washington water utility's paid advisor on lead. Information from Guidotti downplayed the role of water. "These all indicated to me that drinking water lead and blood lead are not related," says Morrow.

It wasn't until 11 months later, in February 2005, when Conner's mom, Laura Jackson, showed Morrow a letter from the Greenville water company saying that her lead levels were high, that water was even considered as a possible source. When inspectors did sample the water, they found it contained an unsafe amount of lead. Ironically, Conner's blood lead stayed high after he stopped drinking the water.

It now appears that food cooked in the water had become laced with minute particles of lead solder. Tests conducted on pasta cooked in the water revealed that a single serving had more lead than a dime-size chip of lead paint. Over a year after Connor's problem was identified, the Jacksons finally stopped using the contaminated tap water for cooking and Connor's blood lead finally started to come down.

Just as it did in D.C., the lead from solder got into the Jacksons' tap water because the local water utility switched water treatment to comply with the EPA's Disinfection Byproducts Rule. This caused the water to attack solder in the Jacksons' home. Greenville water treatment plant manager Barrett Lasater says that although the EPA's new rule had indirectly caused the lead problem, he had to solve it on his own. "We made these changes to reduce disinfection byproducts. We had no idea they would affect lead," he says...

Following the Greenville experience, North Carolina now requires health inspectors to sample tap water when they look for lead. Thanks to this common-sense change, public health officials in Durham linked a child's lead poisoning to drinking water just a month after his problem was identified. An inspection of the child's house found unsafe levels in tap water and no other source in his mother's apartment, according to Durham County health officer Marc Meyer. Further testing found elevated lead in dozens of Durham homes. Drinking fountains at eight schools were disconnected when sampling found high lead there...

Edwards says that public health officials will continue to ignore the risk of lead in water, and that the CDC and the EPA will downplay the risk. But as the case in Washington, D.C., proved, the misinformation can no longer be ignored. "Now that we know the agencies were wrong and the science was right, we can stop debating whether lead in water is a real public health concern, and start determining how to better detect and mitigate the hazard," he says.

A change in EPA regulations (in this case to avoid problems with chlorination) has led to this unexpected rise in lead in our drinking water. But the EPA is ignoring the problem, acting like a tobacco company that denies its product kills people despite clear evidence to the contrary. I know people in the EPA. This is not mere sloppiness on the part of your average EPA employee. They are dedicated people. This is a policy from the top, right up there with advocating teaching Creationism and its bastard child, unIntelligent Design, and denying global warming science. Coincidentally, this comes out right when we took our son for his most recent lead test. I now await the results with more concern because I do not have faith in our nation's government under Bush. We have to complain about this and get our government, now run by the more responsible Democrats, to act on this issue. Please write the media and your Congress Critters to tell them what you think about the Republican poisoning of America.


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