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Archived Water-Related News
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Science
panel urges delay in filling Victoria reservoir
Credit:
Monday Magazine, Editorial Section
Week of November 22, 2004
Scientists
advising the Regional Water Supply Commission (for Victoria, BC) recommended
in October that the agency delay filling the expanded Sooke reservoir,
the source of Victoria's drinking water, "to see how the system responds
as we get nearer to the full level."
Since
a new dam was built in 2002, water has flooded newly cleared land, four
kilometers of an old railbed and seven kilometers of road, picking up
higher than usual levels of nutrients, which encourages the growth of
algae.
In a
report to the commission's November 17 meeting, the manager of the water
quality division, Stewart Irwin, and the general manager of the water
supply, Jack Hull, write, "The concentration of total phosphorus
continued to remain about the long term average and continued to drive
higher levels of algal growth. Chlorophyll concentrations (a measure of
overall algal numbers) remained above normal."
During
September and October the chlorophyll concentration was up to double what
had been normal before the new dam was built.
As has
been pointed out here before, much depends on what kind of algae is present.
In June there was a peak of blue-green algae, which can be toxic to
people. In Brazil in 1988, a bloom of a blue-green alga that grew
after a dam was built killed 88 people, and sickened 2,000. The conditions
in our drinking water source are moving in a direction, says Hull and
Irwin's November report, that favours blue-green algae growth, "which
is undesirable in Sooke Reservoir."
In early
2004 the water level in the Sooke Reservoir peaked at 78 centimeters below
the top of the new dam. According to the report, the Inundation Scientific
Advisory Working Group says the water supply managers should delay filling
the reservoir.
Hull
says, however, "There isn't a final decision at this point on a strategy."
The managers may choose instead to "fill and spill" to flush
out some of the nutrients. The changes in the reservoir's nutrient levels
and algae growth were expected, he adds, and "over the next few years
that will decline".
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Prozac
and painkillers found in tap water
Saturday, November
13, 2004
Sarah Staples - CanWest
News Service
Published in the Victoria Times Colonist
See
Editor's Note
The federal government's
first study of pharmaceuticals in drinking water will confirm traces of
common painkillers, anti-cholesterol drugs and the antidepressant Prozac
are ending up in the treated water that Canadians drink, Can West News
Service has learned.
A study by researchers
from the National Water Research Institute for Health and Environment
Canada, designed to gauge how efficiently plants removed traces of drugs
from drinking water, found nine different drugs in water samples taken
near 20 drinking water treatment plants across southern Ontario.
The drugs were mainly
from a class know as "acidic pharmaceuticals," and included
the painkillers ibuprofen and neproxin, and gemfibrozil, a cholesterol-lowering
medication.
Concentrations were
in the parts per trillion - comparable to one cent in $10 billion. "Barely
detectable" levels of Prozac were also found. The worst contamination
came from treatment plants located near rivers or downstream from sewage
treatment plants, as opposed to those plants sourcing water from lakes
or groundwater. The study has been submitted to the British scientific
journal Water Research and is expected to be published sometime
in the New Year.
While the amounts
are well below prescription doses, expects from the NWRI say confirmation
of even scant levels of a burgeoning assortment of drugs in Canada's drinking
water is a troubling find warranting further investigation.
"It's kind of
a brand new ball game and we don't know enough," said Jim Maguire,
director of the institute's aquatic ecosystem protection research branch.
Residues of hormones
are well know to disrupt the reproductive abilities of amphibians and
fish.
There is also suspicion
that antibiotic residues working their way up the food chain may promote
resistance to the drugs, while many other medications could harm fetuses,
and people who are ill or infirm.
The effects of pesticides
are better understood and regulated in Canada than personal care products,
such as lotions and cosmetics, or prescription pharmaceuticals, said Maguire.
"You need to
know how long (the contamination) is lasting, and if it's being continually
reintroduced but there's no country in the world that has enough information,"
he said.
"We're kind of
like where we were 2 years ago with PCBs and dioxides."
The government study
is the first official acknowledgment of long-standing suspicions voiced
by Canada's water quality experts.
Transcripts obtained
by CanWest News Service of a Health Canada-sponsored international workshop
in 2002 show government chemists voicing serious concern over the possible
negative effects of trace pharmaceuticals, at a time when U.S. and European
studies were starting to reveal antibiotics and chemotherapeutics, drugs
for epilepsy and depression, anti-inflammatory drugs, veterinary drugs,
fragrances such as musk, and hormones in treated sewage run-off tap water.
Editors
Note: Reverse Osmosis units are nearly 100% effective in removing chemicals,
heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and more from water. Click
here to see residential units.
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Canada
needs water plan, internal document says
CanWest News Service
- Taken from the Victoria Times Colonist
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
OTTAWA - Canada has
become a nation where provinces and industries squabble over urgent water
issues - chiefly pollution and water shortages - in an atmosphere of distrust
with no national leadership, an internal Environment Canada assessment
says.
The blunt briefing
note to Environment Canada Minister Stephane Dion says Canada is one of
the world's most water-rich countries, and our image in foreign affairs
rests heavily on our moral responsibility to protect water. Yet the document
charges there's no national plan, and little federal leadership for an
issue on which people's lives depend. "Our current approaches are
fragment, short-term and inadequately informed," it says. Worse,
it says our failure to protect water has caught up with us:
- Water shortages
on the Prairies caused $5 billion in economic damage in 2001 alone.
Shortages threaten to stifle economic development in the West.
- Diseases from contaminated
water cost our health system $300 million a year. Between 20% and 40%
of rural wells are more contaminated than drinking water guidelines
recommend.
- Low water levels
on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River threaten vital shipping and
reduce the energy we get from hydroelectric dams.
- Canada will need
$41 billion in the next 10 years for water treatment and distribution,
and sewage disposal. Currently, 22% of Canadians have no public sewage
treatment, and another 19% have "crude" treatment.
- Water shortages
cause friction between provinces, between industries, and even between
Canada and the U.S.
- We don't know how
much groundwater we have, and don't understand the effects of flushed
pharmaceuticals, or "gender-bending" pollutants that disrupt
human sex hormones.
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Algae
toxin linked to Alzheimer's
By Margaret Munro
CanWest News Service
Taken from the Victoria
Times Colonist, April 23rd, 2005
Researchers find
same chemical in brains of victims in Canada, Guam
A potent toxin produced
by common algae has been found in the brains of nine Canadians who died
of Alzheimer's disease.
The same neurotoxin
has turned up in neural tissues taken from people in Guam who died of
dementia, say researchers, who warn that chronic exposure to the algal
toxins may pose a public health threat.
It "may now
be prudent" to monitor drinking water and food for the toxin
known as BMAA, short for beta-n-methyl-lamino-L-alaninie, and international
team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academic of Sciences
this month. BMAA is produced by cyanobacteria, ubiquitous algae common
to lakes, oceans and the soil, and can build up in the food chain.
A Canadian dementia
specialist stresses the evidence linking the toxin to Alzheimer's disease
is circumstantial. But he says it is "intriguing" and warrants
followsup. "It's a red flag, an alert, that we've got to look into,"
says Dr. Jack Diamond, scientific director of the Alzheimer Society of
Canada.
He stresses that many
risk factors are linked to the mind-destroying disease, and more study
is needed to prove BMAA is one of them.
The international
team, headed by Paul Cox of the Institute for Ethnomedicine in Hawaii,
reports "BMAA was recently discovered in the brain tissues of nine
Canadian Alzheimer's patients." The toxin was not detected in 14
other Canadian who died of causes unrelated to neurodegenerations.
Dr. Patrick McGeer
at the University of British Columbia is reported to have supplied the
Canadian brain samples. McGeer is traveling and could not be reached for
comment.
"Cyanobacteria
might be the ultimate source of the BMAA in the Canadian Alzheimer's patients,"
Cox and his colleagues suggest in their paper. The team has shown that
BMAA is produced by many species of cyanobacteria around the world.
It has long been
known cyanobacteria pose health hazards. Drinking water heavily contaminated
with the organisms has led to hospitalization and in some cases death.
Cox and his colleagues
believe the BMAA produced by the algae may also act as a "slow toxin."
The chemical can be bound by proteins, and gradually released over many
years.
They have shown BMAA,
from soil-dwelling cyanobacteria, concentrate in plants and flying bats
in Guam. The bats are a traditional delicacy of the indigenous Chamorro
people, who suffer a high rate of a dementia-related disorders. BMAA has
been found in the brains of affected individuals, leading Cox to suggest
"Chamorros may unwittingly ingest high levels of BMAA in their traditional
diet."
BMAA's chemical signature
in the brains of Canadian Alzheimer's patients indicates the problem may
not be unique to Guam.
Diamond says the sample
size of nine Alzheimer's patients is far too small and a well-controled
study looking at elderly people with and without Alzheimer's is needed
to establish a link. "It's an epidemioloty study that's needed at
this stage," he says. "A big one."
Health Canada scientists
are aware of the report and are tracking the scientific literature, says
Christopher Williams, one of the department's media relations officers.
He says there is no plan at this stage to launch a followup study.
Cox's team argues
the possible health consequences of chronic exposure to low levels of
BMAA deserve more attention.
"It may now be
prudent to monitor BMAA concentrations in drinking water contaminated
by cyanobacterial blooms," they say. They also advise checking for
BMAA in fish and animals that may be ingesting the microbes.
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Water
- hot topic in West Van
- by Niki Graham
Published in the "WaterMark" Volume 13 Number 3
Fall 2004
Collect
rainwater for your garden. Visit the Rainwater Connection at www.rainwaterconnection.com
to help you reduce your water bill.
Water became one hot topic at a recent West Vancouver District council
meeting. At the meeting, council finally approved mandatory water metering.
Water
meter installation means, on average, that a $600 installation fee will
be added to meter bills, which will be read monthly and paid quarterly
along with the user fees. Project installation will take 18 to 24 months
and will likely start in the fall, said utilities manager Raymond Fung.
Annual
rate increases of 5% will be required to offset the escalating rate increases
from the GVRD and some users will experience an overall rate increase
unless there is a noticeable change in consumption, according to Fung's
report.
Those
in single-family homes will likely see the greatest increase in their
payment, Fung told council at the meeting.
Despite
the potential for a fee increase for heavy users, council supported mandatory
water metering for the impact meters will have on the environment and
equitable payments.
"It's
not fair to pay a flat rate," Councilor Victor Durman said. The new
system, which will be operated by Neptune Technology Group, rewards those
who conserve water, he added.
Councilor
Pamela Goldsmith-Jones also praised the project and said, as the GVRD
rates go up, metering will prove more efficient.
"It
puts the cost on those who use the system," she said.
Water
consumption in the district on a per capita basis is the highest in the
GVRD, and even higher than the national and provincial averages, Fung's
report stated.
Water
metering is gradually being adopted within the GVRD, but West Vancouver
will be showing leadership by undertaking the universal metering project,
according to Fung.
The
total project is estimated to cost $6.5 million. Any increased costs can
be offset, however, if customers adjust their consumption habits, the
report states. If the level of water consumption goes down by the "conservatively"
estimated 11%, the district will break even on the investment, Fung explained.
The
district has been considering universal water metering since November
2002. Water meters for new development and service connections have been
required since 1999.
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Arsenic
found in BC Ferry Supply
Credit:
BC Global
November 5, 2004
See
Editor's Note Below
Arsenic has been detected
in drinking water aboard the B.C. Ferries Queen of Cowichan, but ferry
officials insist there is no danger to its passengers. Deborah Marshall,
director of media relations for B.C. Ferries, says travellers complained
about the taste of tap water on the ferries several days ago. One subsequent
test of the drinking water showed levels of arsenic about five times what
is considered acceptable.
"As a precautionary
measure we shut the system down for human consumption," Marshall told
Global News Friday.
"We flushed the tank,
and then our procedures are to take three separate tests 24 hours apart
to ensure the quality of the water.
"Two of those tests
have come back clear, and we're awaiting the results of the third test
today." (That test later confirmed normal levels of arsenic.)
Marshall says the
Queen of Cowichan and several other ferries pick up their water at Departure
Bay terminal.
Both B.C. Ferries
and the city of Nanaimo have since done tests on the water there, and
there is no indication of high levels of arsenic in the water supply.
Tests of water on
several other ferries have also come back clear, she says.
"This may have been
a testing anomaly," says Marshall.
Water quality guidelines
say levels of arsenic up to 0.025 milligrams per litre are deemed acceptable.
The test that has officials concerned registered 0.133 milligrams, or
just over five times that threshold.
Marshall says there
have been no reports of illness, and the only complaints B.C. Ferries
has received were about the taste of the water.
She insists there
is a significant buffer between what's considered an acceptable level
of arsenic and the amount that would be harmful to humans.
Arsenic is both a
poison and a naturally occurring element in the earth's crust. It can
enter water systems by natural means or in discharges of industrial waste.
Bottled water was
used in the ferries' pop and coffee machines, and signs went up aboard
the Queen of Cowichan advising customers not to drink the tap water.
Now that the third
and final test has come back clear, Marshall says B.C. Ferries is in the
process of reopening the normal water systems on the vessel.
Editor's
note: The US has more stringent standards on water quality than Canada.
The current maximum acceptable limit of arsenic in drinking water in the
US is 10 ppb and is being reduced even further to 5 ppb. That puts the
133 ppb found in ferry water supply at over 26 times the limit
of 5 ppb! Canada's limit is 25 ppb.
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Air
pollution may cause genetic damage that crosses generations: study
HELEN BRANSWELL Canadian
Press
Thursday, May 13,
2004
Everyone knows exposure
to air pollution can be dangerous to one's health - but can it have a
detrimental effect on one's unborn children?
New work from a team
of Canadian researchers suggests pollution may indeed exact a toll that
crosses generations. The researchers, from McMaster University in Hamilton,
found that the offspring of mice exposed to high levels of air pollution
- near two steel mills and close to a major highway - had significantly
greater rates of genetic mutations than mice housed in a non-polluted
environment.
Their findings were
reported Friday in the journal Science.
While mice and men
are not the same beast, lead researcher Jim Quinn of McMaster said he
believes exposure to air pollution could be having the same impact on
people.
"I think I would find
the same thing in humans," said Quinn, a professor of biology who specializes
in ecological studies. He admitted he finds the idea disturbing.
"Yeah. I think the
way to view it is it's like the canary in the coal mine kind of thing.
It's an early warning."
An expert in particulates,
the sooty airborne pollution particles that appear to be the culprit here,
described the study as "elegant" - high praise in the scientific world.
But Jonathan Samet said it's early to try to interpret the findings in
relation to human health.
"I think the human
extension of this work needs to be done very cautiously," said Samet,
an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Md., who wrote a commentary on the findings for the journal.
"I know scientists
are always cautious in calling for more research. But I think this is
a case where there is an initial, very interesting observation in an animal
system that now really needs follow up."
Quinn and his team's
work stems from research he did in the early 1990s, studying herring gulls'
colonies in the highly industrialized Hamilton harbour area. He observed
that colonies living closest to the two steel mills had markedly higher
levels of genetic mutations than those based further afield.
Gulls are awkward
to deal with, from a research point of view. So his team devised another
study, using two colonies of mice. One was housed in a garden shed in
the harbour area, the other in a rural setting 30 kilometres away.
When the mice were
bred, the team observed that the mutation rate among the offspring of
the city mice was 1.5 to two times higher than the country mice. Those
findings were reported in 2002.
In this study, the
mice were divided into three groups: the country mice, the city mice and
a subset of city mice enclosed in a Plexiglas container. The air supply
for the container passed through a high-efficiency particulate air - or
HEPA - filtration system.
The offspring of the
mice breathing the filtered air had the same rate of genetic mutations
as the country mice, despite being as close to the smoke stacks of the
steel mills as the unprotected city mice.
That both provides
strong evidence that the particulates in the air were responsible for
the mutations and shows that something can be done to protect human health
in industrialized settings, Quinn said. "If I were living in an area that
is heavily industrialized, I would have HEPA filtration systems in my
house," he said.
Quinn also said the
findings should be considered by urban planners trying to determine the
location of highways or whether to remove or plant trees in a city setting.
Trees act as a natural filtration system for particulates.
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USEPA
Report: Scales and Films in Pipes Can Accumulate and Leach High Levels
of Contaminants
From The Water Treatment
Dealer magazine , March/April 2004 issue
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (USEPA) personnel reported disturbing drinking water
distribution system revelations at the Inorganic Contaminants Workshop
sponsored by the American Water Works Association in February.
Agency field engineers
have been discovering that "regulated inorganic and radiological
contaminants present in source water above detectable [analytical detection
levels] but less than safety standard, can accumulate in distribution
systems to a significant umber of items above their respective standard
and this is a largely unknown, unexplored, and universal phenomena."
In other words, though
the water leaving a municipal treatment plant compiles with all USEPA
criteria, events occurring in the water distribution systems after water
leaves the plant can lead to significant spikes in contamination levels.
Case histories were
reported in which scales and biofilm that sheared off or otherwise leached
form pipe walls have caused drinking water levels exceeding tens and thousands
of milligrams per liter for iron and copper and exceeding hundreds of
micrograms per liter as well for arsenic, lead, zinc, and manganese -
well above levels considered safe for consumption.
This same phenomenon
occurs with radium and causes two distinct problems:
- Radium in pipe
deposits far exceeds the Safe Drinking Water Act MCL of 5 picoCuries
per liter.
- Radium decays to
radioactive radon, which is released into the flowing water supply.
One USEPA researcher
reported that scales in household plumbing could literally cause the home's
water pipe system to exceed the federal government's toxicity characterization
leaching procedure (TCLP) limits - making those deposit, by definition,
a "hazardous waste".
Another meeting report
noted a related adverse reaction in household plumbing that is actually
being created by the increasing use of chloramination for public water
system disinfection. Chorine typically dissipates from chloramines as
water resides in home water pipes. This auto-decompostion creates ammonia,
which can then change to nitrites. This "nitrification" lowers
water pH in low alkalinity waters - which can lead to iron and copper
corrosion in home plumbing.
WQA Technical Director
Joseph F. Harrison, P.E., CWS-VI says, "Water Quality Association
supports the need for further research into the public health significance
of these discoveries. We also urge new research into all possible remedies,
such as more effective central treatment and control schemes and the feasibility
of using point-of-use and point-of-entry (POU/POE) water treatment approaches
inside the home to provide safeguard barriers for consumers' public health
protection".
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Water
droplets spread SARS - BOSTON
2004
The deadly SARS virus
spread through a Hong Kong apartment complex last year by hitching a ride
on water droplets, according to a recent study, Reuters said in a story
reported by CNN. The new research, published in today's edition of The
New England Journal of Medicine, debunks previous theories about how Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) spread through the private Amoy Gardens
apartments. SARS killed 299 of the 1,755 people known to have contracted
it in Hong Kong. Worldwide, about 8,000 people were infected and some
800 died, the article said. A team led by Ignatius Yu of the Chinese University
of Hong Kong said in the study that investigators from the World Health
Organization were partly accurate when they concluded that the illness
initially spread within the building because an exhaust fan in a bathroom
drew the virus up through traps in the floor drain. The fan then sent
the virus, riding on invisible water aerosol droplets, to other parts
of the 36-story building. After building a mock-up of the drainage system,
"we found that huge numbers of aerosols were generated" in the plumbing
system when toilets were flushed, the Yu team said in the article.
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Clean
drinking water would reap $84 billion - GENEVA
Meeting goals to halve
the number of people who lack safe drinking water would repay the costs
more than seven times over, according to a United Nations study published
April 27, the Financial Times reported. In a report prepared for the World
Health Organization (WHO), it was estimated that providing 1.5 billion
people with an improved water supply and 1.9 billion people with basic
sanitation by 2015 would cost an extra $11.3 billion a year over and above
current investment, the article said. But the economic benefits, in terms
of health and higher productivity, could be as high as $84 billion annually,
the study said. Further reductions in exposure to contaminated drinking
water, for instance by disinfecting water after collection, could produce
overall benefits between five and 60 times the amount invested, according
to the report. Across the world, an estimated 1.1 billion people lack
safe drinking water, the article said.
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Drinking
water law overhaul may cost $500 billion - WASHINGTON
The Lead-free Drinking
Water Act of 2004 has been introduced in the US House and Senate, and
would allot $200 million a year for the next four years to help replace
lead water lines across the country, The Washington Times reported. The
proposed law could result in spending $500 billion in 20 years to restructure
the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act and the 1991 amendments to it, the article
said. If Congress approves the bill, $40 million will go to Washington,
where an estimated 23,000 homes have been found to have lead in the tap
water, the article said. "This is not just a District of Columbia bill,"
Norton said in the article. "There is a crisis existing in every state."
One of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), told the paper,
"I don't think the EPA knows how big a problem this is around the United
States."
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Cryptosporidium
case settled in Saskatchewan
From the Water Conditioning
& Purification Magazine, February 2004 issue
A $425,000, out-of-court
settlement was reached with a group of about 100 people made ill by a
parasitic their drinking water in Saskatchewan, Canada, two years ago.
The settlement comes on the heels of a $3.2 million settlement reached
with another group of about 700 people last August. Both settlements include
compensation for pain and suffering, lost income, out-of-pockets expenses
and legal fees. Costs will be shared equally between the province and
the city of North Battleford. Payments will be made to individuals based
on the extent of their suffering. An estimated 7,000 people experience
vomiting, diarrhea and high fever in 2001 when Cryptosporidium
got into North Battleford's drinking water after maintenance work was
done on a filter at the treatment plant. Lab tests confirmed 361 cases
of the illness. No one died. It was later learned the city's water treatment
plant hadn't been inspected by the province for 10 years.
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B.C.:
Canada's worst water
From the Water Conditioning
& Purification Magazine, February 2004 issue
British Columbia has
some of the worst drinking water in Canada and some of the country's lowest
standards governing quality, provincial reports show. At least 29 waterborne
disease outbreaks were confirmed since 1980, caused by such microorganisms
as Giardia, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, toxoplasma and Campylobacter.
The provincial government is working on a "drinking water action
plan" in which 3,500 source-to-tap water systems across the province
will be studied. Results, including fixes, will take five to 10 years
to implement. Water systems in Vancouver and Victoria were found to be
of good quality and will improve as new systems are put in place. A new
$500 million water filtration plant is being built in North Vancouver
using ultraviolet light to disinfect drinking water. A $40 million ozone
water treatment plant opened in Coquitlam last year. It's smaller, older
systems run by people with little training that are at risk. The United
States, Quebec and Ontario have roughly 80 standards governing chemical
and other contaminates while B.C. has only three.
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California
systems add chloramine
From the Water Conditioning
& Purification Magazine, February 2004 issue
The drinking water
in 30 northern California communities may have tasted different beginning
in February as a result of a switch in chemical used to treat water against
bacteria. Local officials believed the change from chlorine to chloramine
would go unnoticed by most residents. Still, people who use kidney dialysis
machines, keep fish in aquariums, or use highly processed water for their
business are being asked to take certain precautions. A mix of chlorine
and ammonia, chloramine produces lower levels of trihalomethanes, suspected
carcinogens that form when chlorine mixes with natural organic substances
in water. Communities affected buy some or all their water from the San
Francisco system, which is making the treatment switch.
Note: Victoria,
BC uses the same substance in their water. Victoria water can contain
a high level of organic substances that are passed down from the Sooke
reservoir.
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Pro
Star is now Watertiger™
Water purification
products that were previously sold under the Pro Star Mechanical Technologies
Ltd. name are now being sold under the Watertiger™ name.
Our location and contact
information are the same. We have the same staff and management. We possess
the same devotion to our customers.
The only change to
note is the new name: Watertiger™.
Pro Star Mechanical
Technologies will continue to serve the HVAC and mechanical contracting
services that we have delivered in the past. Should you have any questions,
please contact our office.
Visit
the new Pro Star web page at www.prostar-mechanical.com!
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