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January 23, 2007

Cost of Arsenic Compliance

The headline in the January 22nd (2007) issue of the Columbus Dispatch (p. B7) speaks volumes: " 3 Ohio cities paying high price to cut arsenic levels in water".   New federal limits on how much arsenic can exist in public water supplies have sent treatment costs soaring in some communities.  It has been estimated that 4,100 public water systems across the country were in violation of the standard that was recently lowered from 50 parts per billion to 10 ppb.

Middlefield, a community of 2,400 not far from Cleveland, is spending $7.4 million to drop the arsenic level from 12 ppb to meet the new standard. The Geauga Count Health Commissioner, Bob Weisdack, was quoted as saying "Is the juice worth the squeeze, or are we regulating just to regulate." The consensus seems to be that the EPA may have underestimated compliance costs, anticipating that the national cost of compliance would be $3.62 billion over 20 years. Contrast this with the figures from the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, which pegged the actual cost closer to their initial estimate of $4.6 billion to $21.5 billion over 20 years. 

For the responsible chemist, there are two primary issues:

1) Given the degree of analytical uncertainty and the extreme levels of data measurement, how much difference really exists between 12 ppb and 10 ppb ?  And how much is Public Health affected by this difference ?

2) Does gaining a few ppb in the arsenic level justify millions of dollars of expense, or are there better ways to spend money to protect the public ?

Similar questions have been raised about the action in some states to put limits on perchlorate exposure at one ppb, especially when, like arsenic, perchlorate has been shown to occur naturally in various environments.  It is incumbent upon all scientists to be engaged in issues like this in order to ensure that regulatory policy is responsibly built upon good science.

January 23, 2007 in Economic Impact | Permalink

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