MAINE: What's in the water?
Last year, the Spotlight on America investigation team collected tap water in the nation’s capital, including in the US Capitol and EPA headquarters. Many samples contained PFAS chemicals.
Short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS chemicals have been linked to serious health issues including heart, liver and kidney disease, birth defects, and cancer. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they break-down very slowly and are nearly impossible to eliminate from the environment. Or from a person’s body.
These chemicals are prevalent at airports and military bases. They’re used in the manufacturing of thousands of products including non-stick cookware, oil- and water-repellent clothing, household furnishings, and food wrappers. Like nearly everything else that gets rinsed, washed and disposed of these toxic chemicals eventually end-up in the ground water and water treatment plants.
We tested several brands of bottled water. Unlike the tap water, there were no detectable PFAS chemicals. The International Bottled Water Association told us nearly 70% of all bottled water is produced using city water sources.
“It's safer to drink from a bottle of water than it is from the municipal water,” Rudy Ramon told us. He is the CEO of Artesia Springs bottled water company.
A multi-stage purification process is why bottled water at the supermarket that came from a municipal water utility is cleaner and safer than the same city water that comes from your tap.
Whether it comes from a natural spring or the local water utility, the source water goes into a tank where chlorine is injected to kill bacteria, viruses, and disease-causing microorganisms.
It then goes to another storage tank where sediment and carbon filters remove the excess chlorine, and dissolved solids such as minerals, salts and metals.
Next, the water goes through reverse osmosis. This purifies the water and filters out contaminants and sediments that may have slipped thru the earlier filtering process.
In many bottling plants, oxygen is added. Some believe it offers health benefits including increased hydration.
Then there is one more filtration process. The water will go through a 5 micron or smaller filter to capture any remaining microscopic contaminants. One micron is invisible to the naked eye.
Finally, the water is bottled, labeled, and packaged for shipping.
We visited Artesia Springs bottled water company in Texas and spoke with Ramon to understand why bottled water consumption increases each year.
“When I grew up, everyone drank water out of the tap. We drank out of the garden hose,” observed correspondent Mark Hyman. “So what's changed?”
Ramon replied, “I think a lot of it is for the fear of what's in the water.”
The Beverage Marketing Corporation told Inside Your World per capita consumption in the US has increased by more than 50 percent in the just the last 10 years.
“People are buying our five gallons by the pallets. I mean, it's becoming more and more accustomed to not having any confidence in that municipal source,” Ramon told us.
We took our tap water investigation to Maine and collected samples throughout the state. They were tested by the certified labs of SGS North America.
We collected water serving the University of Maine, fright novelist Stephen King’s home, tourism hot spot Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, Maine Maritime Academy, Maine State House, scenic Bath, the house where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, LL Bean, the city of Lewiston, and Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital.
Sometimes an organization or homeowner wouldn’t allow us to take a water sample for testing. But their neighbors did. That meant we still got to sample the water our target locations were getting from the local utility. And those very helpful neighbors requested we not identify them.
Nearly half the locations were getting water that contained PFAS contaminants. Four had PFOA that has been designated a possible carcinogen. Water serving the State House and the Children’s Hospital had PFOA and PFOS, the other chemical linked to cancer.
On the plus side, none of the 18 PFAS contaminants we tested for were detected in the water serving the other six locations tested.
Overall, there were 8 different PFAS chemicals detected. Seven of them – including four that are generally considered among the most toxic: PFOA, PFOS, PFBS and PFHxS – were found in the water supplied to the State House where the governor and all 186 state legislators work.
The level of PFOA detected in every location exceeded the limits in the EPA’s interim health advisory released last year. At the State House, the detected PFOA was more than 1,000 times the EPA limit.
All of this raises a very important question. If a bottled water plant uses municipal water, purifies it, and makes it safe to drink then why doesn’t the city utility do the same thing with the water it supplies to the community?
“A lot of its expense. They don't want to put the money into it,” Ramon told Inside Your World.
“And let's be fair, they have a monopoly,” replied Hyman.
Ramon agreed, “They have a monopoly. Yes, they do.”
The lab result for each location that tested positive for PFAS has been sent to the appropriate municipal water authority and to state officials. We are awaiting their comments.
The EPA is proposing a national drinking water regulation targeting several PFAS chemicals including some of those found in the Maine tap water samples.
