The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) has said that the federal drinking water standards need to be much stricter than what they really are if people want to protect the community especially pregnant women, children and other vulnerable groups. This statement has been released when water providers in Brevard County and every where in Florida are struggling to supply safe reliable drinking water to ever-swelling populations.
The chemicals EWG has mentioned are arsenic, disinfection byproducts, ambivalent chromium and fire retardants compounds. They are saying the regulators have underestimated health risks from for decades. Though the EWG has pointed out to the utilities’ own data to prove their point, but some professional toxicologists and pro-industry groups are saying the health risks the nonprofit Environmental Working Group has warned about for years are overstated.
Now the Washington, D.C bases EWG has released an updated version of the tap water database in which they have detailed all the contaminants in almost 50,000 utilities nationwide. The database is user friendly and is available on their website. It includes ideas for those distrustful of current federal standards to reduce contaminant levels in their tap water. The group’s database, they say, is the most comprehensive consumer resource available on drinking water quality in the United States.
The data shows that in Brevard, the most prevalent problem is one that’s nagged local utilities for decades – the presence of disinfection byproducts in the water. These disinfectants, when they react with warm river and lake water containing algae and other organic matter which are precursors to the disinfection byproducts they are bound to and known to increase lifetime cancer risk.