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Keeping harmful chemicals out of water
A rack of test tubes
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Steve Chiotakis: There's a House subcommittee today that will ask whether the government is doing enough to prevent harmful chemicals from getting into our drinking water. And as Sarah Gardner reports from the Marketplace Sustainability Desk, scientists are worried about a whole new class of chemicals that may harm human reproduction.
Sarah Gardner: They're called "endocrine disruptors," and you'll probably be hearing a lot more about them. That's because public health advocates are pressing the EPA to keep them out of our drinking water.
These synthetic chemicals are found in everything from shampoo to pesticides. They've already linked to sexual abnormalities in male fish. And now there's worry these chemicals could be affecting humans.
Wenonah Hauter is director of Food and Water Watch:
Wenonah Hauter: We think that there should be closer regulation, we need more federally funded research on these endocrine disruptors and we need these products that contain these chemicals to be labelled.
Researchers says these chemicals could be contributing to conditions like genital abnormalities in newborn boys and obesity. If Congress passes legislation introduced last year, suspect chemicals could be banned. Sewage plants could also be forced to more aggressively treat waste water.
I'm Sarah Gardner for Marketplace.
The fluoride added to tap water is fluorosilicic acid - toxic waste from phosphate fertilizer factory chimney scrubbers. It's more poisonous than lead and only slightly less so than arsenic. I's linked with many adverse health effects and should be kept out of water.
Aluminium is also added to tap water to make it look clear, whereas in the past water was filtered through sand. Aluminium has been linked to Alzheimer's.
The do-gooder scientists are on the attack again. They think that just because the polar caps are melting that there must be global warming. Now they are after better living through chemistry. Look, if we did not let chemical companies create chemicals that they could sell then they wouldn’t be able to recoup their R&D costs. That would have negative multiplier: advertising, marketing, distributors, on down the line. If you prevent toxic chemicals such as endocrine disrupters, herbicides, pesticides and inorganic chemicals like nitrogen from entering the environment an polluting our food and water then you destroy the market for new pharmaceuticals to treat their effects like cancer, sexual or neurological disorders. The medical industry would also suffer.
If you prevent the antibiotics from being used in livestock just because it reduces the effectiveness of existing antibiotics for people then you take away the opportunity for big pharma to create new patented antibiotics and continue their rent seeking business models. You also reduce the profit of big pharma who sells the antibiotics to the livestock industry in the first place. Further, removing antibiotics would reduce the profits of the livestock industry because either more land would be needed to hold their animals or many would die from infectious diseases. And what about the drugs used by livestock owners to make their animals drink excess water so they weigh more when slaughtered? That practice boosts their margins. And what about the fact that 80 percent of groundwater pollution in America is from agricultural runoff, principally nitrogen, phosphorous and potash applied to fields? If you prevent those from being applied merely to have safe drinking water then profits in the agricultural industry could suffer. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until the water is unsafe then rely on technology to save us? That would enable corporations to profit from the problem while preserving the free market.
Preventing drugs and chemicals from entering the environment and eventually us just because they make us ill and shorten our lives would reduce the velocity of money and hence GDP. We have to think of the life cycle costs of reforms that are not in the interests of established financial and economic interests. As the efficient market theorists staunchly maintain, we must preserve the free market at all costs and not be so selfish as to demand that our health or the health of children come first. After all, it’s our new religion.
