The old faithful of alarmist "consumer" organizations, the Environmental Working Group, just issued another in a long string of frightening but baseless "studies." This one notes that there are 260 different chemicals in the water supplied to 230 million Americans from 40,000 water supplies.
Oh no, not again. The alarms keep on sounding, day in and day out. This one is so spectacularly ludicrous that it must be addressed.
What should we do now? Switch to orange juice, beer, or maybe eggnog -- despite the rampant obesity epidemic? I don't think so. Nope, let's just keep on drinking that water, and I expect that our generally excellent health, declining rates of almost all diseases, and increasing longevity will continue, despite -- or perhaps because of? -- the "pollution" in our water.
To paraphrase "Da Ali G Show": chemicals is all around us. In fact, we are all made of chemicals, including several of those discovered in our water by the intrepid investigators at EWG. Yes, some of the chemicals in our water can be toxic -- at high enough doses. But even the official guardians of our environment, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), stated (in response to the EWG survey findings) that "nearly 100% of the community water systems...are meeting clean water standards." The EWG spokesperson advised us to be "concerned" but not alarmed. Whew!
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released their biennial report on "biomonitoring" last spring, they noted that the mere presence and detection of chemicals in our bodies doesn't imply a health threat. ACSH's own publication on the subject reinforces that point. It's the dose that makes the poison, after all. Tiny amounts of chemicals pose no risk to anyone's health. We should be more concerned about keeping our water systems safe from infectious contaminants such as bacteria and viruses -- rarely a problem now, thanks to the introduction of chlorination decades ago.
This whole campaign to scare us away from drinking our tap water reminds me of a farcical episode from a few years ago, when a high-school student wrote an essay about the dangers of "dihydrogen monoxide" and the way it killed hundreds of Americans each year. This scare got picked up by the Internet, as usual, and soon made its way around the globe. In fact, this scare story was true -- but the substance in question (like the one in EWG's release) was water! Yes, good old H2O, chemical name dihydrogen monoxide, is indeed responsible -- in excess, e.g., drownings and floods -- for many deaths each year. Yet we go on living because of it as well.
So keep on drinking our country's safe tap water, and pay no attention to publicity-seeking activists trying to scare you about nothing, again.
Gilbert Ross, M.D., is Executive and Medical Director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).