The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is getting into the act now. It’s concerned that BPA is harming aquatic life. In an announcement, the agency cites several studies that have found BPA to have an impact on the growth, reproduction and development of aquatic organisms, even in tiny amounts.

BPA, you recall, is a plastics additive that’s also an estrogen, providing all of us with plenty of unwanted exposure. It’s not only in water and soda bottles and cans, but in canned foods, on cash register receipts, and in a host of other products. More and more studies are questioning its safety.

The Federal Regulation Brief for July 27 contained the following announcement from the EPA, asking for public comment.

Testing of Bisphenol A: Advance notice of proposed rulemaking, published July 26, 2011, comments by Sept. 26, 2011

Bisphenol A (BPA), a high production volume chemical, is a reproductive, developmental, and systemic toxicant in animal studies and is weakly estrogenic. The Environmental Protection Agency is requesting comments on requiring toxicity testing to determine the potential for BPA to cause adverse effects, including endocrine-related effects, in environmental organisms at low concentrations.

The EPA is also requesting comments on requiring environmental testing consisting of sampling and monitoring for BPA in surface water, ground water, drinking water, soil, sediment, sludge, and landfill leachate near expected BPA releases to determine whether environmental organisms may currently be exposed to concentrations of BPA in the environment at or above levels of concern for adverse effects, including endocrine-related effects.

This advance notice of proposed rulemaking is directed only toward the environmental presence and environmental effects of BPA. The EPA is working with the Department of Health and Human Services on potential human health issues, but is not considering any additional testing specifically in regard to human health issues at this time.

Source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/01/38622.htm

More than 60,000 chemicals could get into our drinking water, while the EPA patrols limits on fewer than 100 of them, says the magazine. Are old pipes in your city water system adding interesting things to the mix? The article details a lot of things to worry about.

Is bottled water a solution? Not according to Reader’s Digest, which headlined a small article “6 Reasons Bottled Is All Wet.” For one thing, it’s generally just tap water. For another, it costs a fortune to move around. They didn’t even dwell on the BPA issue, where plastic bottles introduce false estrogens into our bodies. Experts consulted all seem to be drinking tap water; Reader’s Digest suggests a home water filter. More RD advice:

1. Pick a filter or system certified by NSF International, “which sets recognized standards in this field.”

2. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for installation and use.

3. Replace filters on schedule. Otherwise you invite bacteria growth.

According to Reader’s Digest, you can consider a carbon filter in a pitcher, an under-sink model that includes reverse-osmosis technology, or a whole-house system.

Good news! Multi-Pure fits the bill on all of these with a proven, reliable set of filters, NSF-certified, to meet the level of filtering you want.

Source: Reader’s Digest, August 2011, pp. 102-113.

The signers, representing 40,000 researchers and clinicians, want federal regulators to use to better and broader assessments of new chemicals.  Prompting the letter is the controversy over BPA, the plastics additive that is being blamed for a host of ills in the population, including erectile dysfunction, delayed puberty for boys, early puberty for girls, and higher rates of diabetes, along with cancer. BPA is commonly found in soda and water bottles, store receipts, and tin can linings.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulators in charge of permitting new chemicals, often lack information about the hazards of chemicals produced in high volumes, charged the scientists. “The need for swifter and sounder testing and review procedures cannot be overstated,” the letter states.

Rather than using outdated toxicology, the regulators need to be relying on scientists who have studied the effect of substances on the body. “We need geneticists, we need developmental and reproductive biologists and we need the clinical people on board to actually help interpret and evaluate some of the science,” said Patricia Hunt, a professor in the Washington State University School of Molecular Biosciences and corresponding author of the letter. “As things stand now, things get rapidly into the marketplace and the testing of them is tending to lag behind.”

Hunt said the letter was driven in particular by growing concerns about chemicals like the plasticizer bisphenol A, or BPA, subject of more than 300 studies finding adverse health effects in animals. Because such chemicals look like hormones to our body, they’re like strangers getting behind the wheels of our cars, Hunt said.

“Hormones control everything—our basic metabolism, our reproduction,” she said. “We call them endocrine disruptors. They’re like endocrine bombs to a certain extent because they can disrupt all these normal functions.”

Hunt’s testimony last year helped make Washington the fifth state to outlaw BPA in children’s food containers and drinking cups.

The organizations signing the Science letter are: the American Society of Human Genetics, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Endocrine Society, the Genetics Society of America, the Society for Developmental Biology, the Society for Pediatric Urology, the Society for the Study of Reproduction, and the Society for Gynecologic Investigation.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/wsu-scf030111.php

March 10, the agency issued an action plan under the Toxic Substances Control Act involving:

• Adding BPA to the agency’s chemical Concern List.
• Ordering data collection on BPA in U.S. water supplies.
• Evaluating the reported disproportionate effect BPA has on children.
• Evaluating the effect on wildlife.
• Finding ways to reduce unnecessary BPA exposure and releases into the environment while further studies are being conducted.

I am happy to see this. Apparently 1 million pounds per year of BPA are released into the environment, and no one has been a watchdog for us. It’s about time.

Want to avoid BPA? Don’t eat canned food. Don’t touch credit card receipts. (I know, we have to touch them.)   And of course, don’t drink water or soda that has been stored in plastic bottles.

And where else are those one million pounds per year being used?  Somewhere else that impacts each of us, I bet!

Source: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/78110048d7f696d1852576f50054241a!OpenDocument

Drinking water contaminations have affected water piped to more than 49 million Americans since 2004, according to an  exhaustive study just completed by The New York Times.  And while the government is aware of the violations, it has rarely fined or punished the violators.

In its Dec 7 issue, the Times reported analyzing federal data on violations since 2004 of rules regulating toxins found in city water. These violations document illegal concentrations of chemicals, radioactive substances, or dangerous bacteria from sewage. More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems, often the smaller systems, broke the EPA regulations.

These violations were reported as they occurred. But only six percent of the water systems that broke the law received fines or other punishments from state or federal officials.  Some violations constituted one-time events, but others persisted for years, according to the Times.

Members of Congress, responding to the Times reporting, demanded an explantion from the EPA at a hearing Dec. 8. Enforcement leadership at the EPA is pledging to overhaul its system, according to ABC News.

The Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of each state. For example, in prosperous Ramsey, NJ, too-high concentrations were found of arsenic and tetrachlorethylene, a cleaning solvent. Both are linked to cancer. In New York State, 205 water systems were found to contain illegal amounts of bacteria.

Ramsey, NJ, was not fined–but it did update its filtration systems. In New York, just three water systems were penalized.

According to the Times, research indicates that diseases follow the contaminants and show that as many as 19 million Americans get sick each year from parasites, viruses, and bacteria found in drinking water.  And we all know cancer rates are rising; could this fact be related to increasing levels of carcinogens in our drinking water?

A home water filter is the best way to protect y our family, experts agree.  For the best of the best, get a Multi-Pure triple-carbon filter that’s certified to remove the most pollutants of any carbon filter, while leaving in beneficial minerals. Or, if you want to remove everything and add the beneficial minerals back in, you can get a Multi-Pure reverse osmosis system plus the carbon filter. Multi-Pure filters provide you with peace of mind and a warranty unmatched in the industry. I love mine. You’ll love yours too.

That’s a question the EPA is dodging, according to the watchdog Environmental Working Group. (See previous post.) This rocket fuel has been contaminating our waters since Cold War rocket launches and is “a potent thyroid toxin that may affect fetal and infant brain development,” according to the EWG article.

The EPA has been shielding defense contractors from the potential hundred-million-dollar cost of cleaning our waters, said the EWG, and continued to do so when the EPA last fall decided not to regulate perchlorate as a water pollutant.

In response to concerns expressed by scientists, the EPA in January issued a “health advisory” on perchlorate and asked for review of the issue from the National Academy of Sciences. Meanwhile, infants are getting too much perchlorate, from both the powdered formula and from the water used to mix it.  The perchlorate from the powdered formula comes from polluted water drunk by the cows, presumably.

The CDC study published in March “said that reconstituting cow’s milk/lactose formula with water contaminated with perchlorate at just 4 parts per billion (ppb) would cause 54 percent of the infants consuming the mix to exceed the so-called ‘safe’ dose set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” said the EWG. ” Many scientists contend that the EPA ‘safe’ level is too high to protect public health.”

While all this politicking is going on, I am doing something to protect my family from pollutants: I got a triple-carbon filter for my tap water from Multi-Pure, the leading brand. I’m very happy with my durable unit. Check out a home water filter today!

The study was published in March by the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. In it, Joshua G. Shier, of the CDC Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects, led a team that reported on testing 15 powdered infant formula brands. The study did not name the brands but said that just two of them acounted for 87 percent of the market in the US for powdered infant formula in 2000.

A summary at medicalnewstoday.com said that the study found perchlorate contamination in all brands, and that cow’s milk formulas contained significantly higher perchlorate contamination than soy and other formulas.

But the study conclusion that caught the public’s eye was the one that said the EPA safety limit may be exceeded when certain cow’s milk formulas are mixed with perchlorate-contaminated water, according to medicalnewstoday.com.

Perchlorate was spread across America during Cold War weapons testing and now contaminates food as well as drinking water. The compound also occurs naturally in small amounts.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) identifies perchlorate as a thyroid toxin that particularly affects infants and fetuses.

The EPA last year decided not to regulate perchlorate as a drinking water pollutant, according to the medicalnewstoday.com article.

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty concerned about the state of our tap water. I hope you consider a home water filter.