Chemicals in Drinking Water...

I read yesterday that a new study was just released that shows dozens of unwanted chemicals present in the drinking water of about 41 million Americans. Very alarming, indeed. Then, towards the end of the report I saw that these elements were found in concentrations of one part per billion or even trillion. Well, that starts to put things in perspective, I think.

Now, I am not one to want *bad* chemicals in my drinking water, but it would be nice if someone really explained what "one-part-per-trillion" concentration of some chemical water would do to me, before I start freaking out and stop drinking water.

I recall, about 20 years ago, when there was a report that some major brand muffin mix (don;t want to mention names) was found to contain a bad toxin. Front page news in most newspapers for a week, or so. Panic stricken consumers started calling supermarkets, which in turn proceeded to promptly remove all muffin mixes of that brand from their shelves. People were worried about muffin mix they had already consumed. Parents were distraught about having unknowingly fed their young children such muffins.

I happened to be in a position to secure a copy of the actual results of the study done by a lab in Washington, sanctioned by the EPA. I gave it to some co-workers that had expertise in those types of analyses, and asked him to spend some time carefully reviewing it. It turned out that all the experiments were done on mice, and then extrapolated to humans. No problem so far, that's done all the time (after all you don't want to run experiments with humans, possibly risking human life!). Looking at the numbers closer, it turned out that laboratory mice were fed 1/1000-th of their body weight of the toxin every day for 3 months, and their chance of cancer was increased by 22 % over that of the control group. It also turned out that the toxin concentration in the offending muffin mix was about 1 in 10o,000 parts. Doing the math quickly, it turned out that a person of average weight of 150 lbs, would have to consume 0.15 lbs of toxin, i.e., 15,000 lbs of muffin mix, i.e. 120,000 muffins a day (conservatively assuming 2 oz of muffing mix per muffin), every day for three months, i.e. a total of 3,600,000 muffins in order to possibly increase their risk of cancer by 22%. Looking at the further extrapolation calculations in the report (for long term exposure), it turned out that the same 150 lb consumer would have to eat 329 muffins a day, seven days a week, for 30 years to increase their chance of cancer by 22%. Give me a break!!!

So now I wonder. Is this "chemicals in drinking water" the same type of "alarmist" report? Don't get me wrong, as I said before I don't want any bad chemicals in my drinking water, but please, someone tell us what the AP report findings really means. Do we have to drink 100 gallons of water a day, every day for 50 years to increase our chance of cancer two-fold, or something?

I wonder...