This post first appeared at Earth Policy Institute.

People do not normally leave their homes, their families, and their communities unless they have no other option. Yet as environmental stresses mount, we can expect to see a growing number of environmental refugees. Rising seas and increasingly devastating storms grab headlines, but expanding deserts, falling water tables, and toxic waste and radiation are also forcing people from their homes.

Advancing deserts are now on the move almost everywhere. The Sahara desert, for example, is expanding in every direction. As it advances northward, it is squeezing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria against the Mediterranean coast. The Sahelian region of Africa—the vast swath of savannah that separates the southern Sahara desert from the tropical rainforests of central Africa—is shrinking as the desert moves southward. As the desert invades Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, from the north, farmers and herders are forced southward, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land. A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe.

In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water number in the thousands. In Brazil, some 250,000 square miles of land are affected by desertification, much of it concentrated in the country’s northeast. In Mexico, many of the migrants who leave rural communities in arid and semiarid regions of the country each year are doing so because of desertification. Some of these environmental refugees end up in Mexican cities, others cross the northern border into the United States. U.S. analysts estimate that Mexico is forced to abandon 400 square miles of farmland to desertification each year.

In China, desert expansion has accelerated in each successive decade since 1950. Desert scholar Wang Tao reports that over the last half-century or so some 24,000 villages in northern and western China have been abandoned either entirely or partly because of desert expansion.

China is heading for a Dust Bowl like the one that forced more than 2 million “Okies” to leave their land in the United States in the 1930s. But the dust bowl forming in China is much larger and so is the population: China’s migration may measure in the tens of millions. And as a U.S. embassy report entitled Grapes of Wrath in Inner Mongolianoted, “unfortunately, China’s twenty-first century ‘Okies’ have no California to escape to—at least not in China.”

With the vast majority of the 2.3 billion people projected to be added to the world by 2050 being born in countries where water tables are falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. They will be most common in arid and semiarid regions where populations are outgrowing the water supply and sinking into hydrological poverty. Villages in northwestern India are being abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water. Millions of villagers in northern and western China and in northern Mexico may have to move because of a lack of water.

Thus far the evacuations resulting from water shortages have been confined to villages, but eventually whole cities might have to be relocated, such as Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, and Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Sana’a, a fast-growing city of more than 2 million people, is literally running out of water. Quetta, originally designed for 50,000 people, now has a population exceeding 1 million, all of whom depend on 2,000 wells pumping water from what is believed to be a fossil aquifer. In the words of one study assessing its water prospect, Quetta will soon be “a dead city.”

Two other semiarid Middle Eastern countries that are suffering from water shortages are Syria and Iraq. Both are beginning to reap the consequences of overpumping their aquifers, namely irrigation wells going dry. In Syria, these trends have forced the abandonment of 160 villages. And a U.N. report estimates that more than 100,000 people in northern Iraq have been uprooted because of water shortages.

A final category of environmental refugee has appeared only in the last 50 years or so: people who are trying to escape toxic waste or dangerous radiation levels. During the late 1970s, Love Canal—a small town in upstate New York, part of which was built on top of a toxic waste disposal site—made national and international headlines. Beginning in August 1978, families were relocated at government expense and reimbursed for their homes at market prices. By October 1980, a total of 950 families had been permanently relocated. A few years later, the federal government arranged for the permanent evacuation and relocation of all 2,000 residents of Times Beach, Missouri, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered dioxin levels well above the public health standards.

While the United States has relocated two communities because of health-damaging pollutants, the identification of more than 450 “cancer villages” in China suggests the need to evacuate hundreds of communities. China’s Ministry of Health statistics show that cancer is now the country’s leading cause of death, and with little pollution control, whole communities near chemical factories are suffering from unprecedented rates of cancer. Young people are leaving for the city in droves, for jobs and possibly for better health. Yet many others are too sick or too poor to leave.

Another infamous source of environmental refugees is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Kiev, which exploded in April 1986. This started a powerful fire that lasted for 10 days. Massive amounts of radioactive material were spewed into the atmosphere, showering communities in the region with heavy doses of radiation. As a result, the residents of the nearby town of Pripyat and several other communities in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were evacuated, requiring the resettlement of 350,400 people. In 1992, six years after the accident, Belarus was devoting 20 percent of its national budget to resettlement and the many other costs associated with the accident.

When a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, the ensuing nuclear crisis at the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. Whether they will be able to return or will become permanently displaced is a question that remains unanswered.

Separating out the geneses of today’s refugees is not always easy. Often the environmental and economic stresses that drive migration are closely intertwined. But whatever the reason for leaving home, people are taking increasingly desperate measures. Some of their stories are heartrending beyond belief.

As a general matter, environmental refugees are migrating from poor countries to rich ones, from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to North America and Europe. Some of the largest flows will be across national borders and they are likely to be illegal. The potentially massive movement of people across national boundaries is already affecting some countries. The United States is erecting a fence along the border with Mexico. The Mediterranean Sea is now routinely patrolled by naval vessels trying to intercept the small boats of African migrants bound for Europe. India, with a steady stream of migrants from Bangladesh and the prospect of millions more to come, is building a 10-foot-high fence along their shared border.

Maybe it is time for governments to consider whether it might not be cheaper and far less painful in human terms to treat the causes of migration rather than merely respond to it. This means working with developing countries to restore their economy’s natural support systems—the soils, the water tables, the grasslands, the forests—and it means accelerating the shift to smaller families to help people break out of poverty. Treating symptoms instead of causes is not good medicine. Nor is it good public policy.

Adapted from World on the Edge by Lester R. Brown. Full book available online at www.earth-policy.org/books/wot.

Lester R. Brown is president of Earth Policy Institute, an organization dedicated to building a sustainable future. He has authored or co-authored over 50 books, the most recent of which is Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, and has received 24 honorary degrees and numerous awards, including the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, a MacArthur Foundation “genius award,” and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C.

This article was reposted from: http://www.alternet.org/story/152253/

ATHENS, GA—Air quality in homes, offices, and other indoor spaces is becoming a major health concern, particularly in developed countries where people often spend more than 90% of their time indoors. Surprisingly, indoor air has been reported to be as much as 12 times more polluted than outdoor air in some areas. Indoor air pollutants emanate from paints, varnishes, adhesives, furnishings, clothing, solvents, building materials, and even tap water. A long list of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs [including benzene, xylene, hexane, heptane, octane, decane, trichloroethylene (TCE), and methylene chloride], have been shown to cause illnesses in people who are exposed to the compounds in indoor spaces. Acute illnesses like asthma and nausea and chronic diseases including cancer, neurologic, reproductive, developmental, and respiratory disorders are all linked to exposure to VOCs. Harmful indoor pollutants represent a serious health problem that is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths each year, according to a 2002 World Health Organization report. 

Stanley J. Kays, Department of Horticulture, University of Georgia, was the lead researcher of a study published in HortScience that tested ornamental indoor plants for their ability to remove harmful VOCs from indoor air. According to Kays, some indoor plants have the ability to effectively remove harmful VOCs from the air, and not only have the ability to improve our physical health, but also have been shown to enhance our psychological health. Adding these plants to indoor spaces can reduce stress, increase task performance, and reduce symptoms of ill health. 

The ability of plants to remove VOCs is called “phytoremediation”. To better understand the phytoremediation capacity of ornamental plants, the research team tested 28 common indoor ornamentals for their ability to remove five volatile indoor pollutants. “The VOCs tested in this study can adversely affect indoor air quality and have a potential to seriously compromise the health of exposed individuals,” Kays explained. “Benzene and toluene are known to originate from petroleum-based indoor coatings, cleaning solutions, plastics, environmental tobacco smoke, and exterior exhaust fumes emanating into the building; octane from paint, adhesives, and building materials; TCE from tap water, cleaning agents, insecticides, and plastic products; and alpha-pinene from synthetic paints and odorants.” 

During the research study, plants were grown in a shade house for eight weeks followed be acclimatization for twelve weeks under indoor conditions before being placed in gas-tight glass jars. The plants were exposed to benzene, TCE, toluene, octane, and alpha-pinene, and air samples were analyzed. The plants were then classified as superior, intermediate, and poor, according to their ability to remove VOCs. 

Of the 28 species tested, Hemigraphis alternata (purple waffle plant), Hedera helix (English ivy), Hoya carnosa (variegated wax plant), and Asparagus densiflorus (Asparagus fern) had the highest removal rates for all of the VOCs introduced. Tradescantia pallida (Purple heart plant) was rated superior for its ability to remove four of the VOCs. 

The study concluded that simply introducing common ornamental plants into indoor spaces has the potential to significantly improve the quality of indoor air. In addition to the obvious health benefits for consumers, the increased use of indoor plants in both ”green” and traditional buildings could have a tremendous positive impact on the ornamental plant industry by increasing customer demand and sales. 

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The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortScience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/44/5/1377

Founded in 1903, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) is the largest organization dedicated to advancing all facets of horticultural research, education, and application. More information at ashs.org

Our world is awash with petro-chemicals. From plastics to pesticides they are integral to modern life. Wayne Ellwood argues that we are all paying the price for the release of these hazardous substances.

‘Every time I come here my body gets sad and angry at the same time,’ says Ron Plain. ‘You can’t put into words what it means to me.’

We’ve just tumbled out of Ron’s jeep near the end of a three-hour tour of Sarnia, Ontario’s ‘chemical valley’. Ron calls it his ‘toxic tour’. He’s done it dozens of times so the patter is easy and familiar. Sarnia is a gritty blue-collar community of 70,000 people at the top of the St Clair River, on the Canadian side, about a 100 kilometres north of Detroit. The river is wide and fast-flowing here, a natural link from Lake Huron, south to Lake Erie and east to Lake Ontario.

Ron is a member of the Chippewa First Nation of Aamjiwnaang and we’ve stopped at his community’s cemetery, a quiet patch of land ringed by a high steel fence. He’s 46 years old but tells me he doesn’t expect to make it to 60. Ron points out the graves of his parents, his grandparents and great grandparents, his aunts and uncles. Carbon dating shows his ancestors have been living in this area of southern Ontario for 6,000 years. It’s a warm day in early spring and the trees are just starting to leaf out. But nothing can hide the looming petro-chemical plant which abuts the graveyard. A tall chimney burns with an orange flame in the bright sun. To the east, a few hundred yards away, is a parking lot and another chemical complex. The cemetery is a microcosm of the whole reserve. Aamjiwnaang is literally surrounded by dozens of chemical plants. The community of 900 souls on the southern edge of Sarnia sits in the middle of the densest collection of petro-chemical industries in Canada and one of the densest in North America. There are 62 plants within a 25-kilometre radius, 40 per cent of the country’s total. The players include some of the word’s biggest and most powerful corporations – Dow, Shell, Nova, Bayer and Imperial Oil (Exxon) all operate within five kilometres of the reserve, most of them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Gender bending

In 2005, according to a study by the environmental NGO Ecojustice, these factories released more than 131,000 tonnes of pollutants into the air – a toxic load of 1,800 kilograms for every resident of Sarnia and the Chippewa reserve.¹ There is growing evidence that both Aamjiwnaang and the local townspeople are suffering a range of serious health problems as a result of this rain of toxic chemicals. A community-wide survey carried out with the Sarnia Occupation Health Clinic in 2004-05 found widespread cancers, kidney and thyroid problems. Asthma is ubiquitous (40 per cent of Aamjiwnaang residents use an inhaler) and 23 per cent of children aged 5 to 16 had learning and behavioural problems.

But two of the survey’s findings were particularly unsettling and sparked worldwide attention. The first was an unusually high miscarriage rate – 39 per cent of women on the reserve had experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. The second was a significant shift in the sex ratio of live births. Starting in the late 1990s the number of boys being born on the reserve began to plummet. Fewer than 35 per cent of live births were male compared to the normal average of just over 50 per cent.  No-one knows for sure what is causing this skewed birth pattern. But there is a strong suspicion that gender-bending pollutants are at the root of the problem.

Research by pioneering scientists like Dr Theo Colborn in the early 1990s showed that common synthetic chemicals introduced into the environment over the past half-century could mimic natural hormones, alter sexual and neurological development and impair reproduction. Dozens of studies have documented the impact of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on animals, frogs, fish and birds with deformed genitals, brain damage, cancers and damaged reproductive systems. EDCs have also been linked to declining male testosterone levels and declining male birth rates in areas with concentrated chemical industries.

Many of the animal studies were in the Great Lakes bioregion where Aamjiwnaang is also situated – an area with a history of polluting heavy industries.

Jim Brophy, Director of the Occupation Health Clinic for Ontario Workers in Sarnia, knows the district well. His centre helped map the pattern of illness and disease in Aamjiwnaang. ‘Millions of tons of reproductive toxins are spewed out by these facilities year in, year out. Their effect on animal life has been well documented throughout the Great Lakes. To think these poisons would affect everything else and not the human population is bizarre.’

Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring launched the environmental movement nearly 50 years ago, would have been outraged but not surprised by the findings at Aamjiwnaang.

‘The chemical war is never won and all life is caught in its violent crossfire,’ she wrote. It was Carson who first promoted the notion of ecology, the complex web that binds human life to the natural world. ‘The serious student of earth history knows that neither life nor the physical world that supports it exists in little isolated compartments… harmful substances released into the environment return in time to create problems for mankind… We cannot think of the living organism alone; nor can we think of the physical environment as a separate entity. The two exist together, each acting on the other to form an ecological complex or ecosystem.’²

Carson’s warnings about the toxic nature of industrial society were prescient. Weight of evidence is building that the millions of tons of chemicals released into the environment are altering the basic foundations of life. Male fertility in the West has dropped by an estimated 50 per cent since 1940; breast cancer, testicular cancer and prostate cancer have jumped by 200 to 300 per cent. More and more male babies are being born with genital abnormalities.³

Families tested

We are living in a stew of toxic chemicals, most of which did not exist before modern synthetic chemistry was born in the crucible of World War Two. Estimates vary – there are more than 80,000 chemicals in industrial production today with hundreds added each year. Few have been tested for their effect on human health or the environment. And, critically, there is almost no knowledge of how chemicals interact with each other to affect our health or the wider environment. When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed in the US in 1976, more than 62,000 chemicals were ‘grandfathered’ into the market – ie no testing, no questions asked. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admits that 95 per cent of all chemicals in the US have not undergone even minimal testing for toxicity. In the European Union (EU) it’s estimated that two-thirds of the 30,000 most commonly used chemicals have not been vetted. The EPA has banned just five chemicals in the past quarter-century.⁴

All of us live with this toxic burden. The poor, the marginalized, people of colour, those who are cheek-by-jowl with industrial plants, suffer the most – the Chippewa of Aamjiwnaang are a case in point. But, as Rachel Carson understood, where the environment is concerned we all live downstream.

Detailed analyses across Europe, Canada and the US have found hundreds of dangerous chemicals in the blood and urine of ordinary citizens. In Europe, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) tested three generations of women and found everything from banned pesticides like DDT to deadly PCBs. When the Environmental Working Group in the US tested the umbilical cords of 10 infants in 2005 scientists discovered more than 280 chemicals. Greenpeace came up with similar numbers in Europe.⁵ In Canada, the NGO Environmental Defence tested five families from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Those included seven children, five parents and one grandparent. On average, 32 chemicals were in each parent and 23 in each child. Of the 46 chemicals detected in total: 38 were cancer-causing substances; 38 were chemicals that can harm reproduction and child development; 19 can harm the nervous system; 23 can disrupt the hormone system; and 12 chemicals were linked to respiratory illnesses.⁶

The Canadian study found that children were less polluted than their parents by PCBs and organochlorine pesticides, most of which were banned before the children were born – an indication that regulatory action can make a difference. But the study also found that some children were more polluted than their parents by chemicals still in use. These included PFCs (used as stain and water repellents in clothing and furniture and for non-stick cookware) and PBDE flame-retardants.

‘Safe’ household items

Many of these chemicals are linked not just to the petro-chemical industry but to the toxins that infuse our daily lives: solvents, detergents, cosmetics, herbicides, pesticides – plastics. As the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center concluded in its recent study of chemical contamination: ‘much of our exposure may be from products we have assumed to be safe for use.’⁷

Recent concern has focused on plastic, perhaps the most ubiquitous material of the modern age. The profusion of plastic has peppered the world with potentially deadly chemicals. One of the most powerful is bisphenol A (BPA), the lifeblood of the plastics industry. Nearly three million tons of the stuff is manufactured every year. It’s used to make polycarbonate plastic, a rigid hard plastic used in everything from baby bottles and sports water bottles to CDs, DVDs, dental sealants and the resin lining food and drink containers. Polycarbonate plastic can be clear or coloured and usually has the number ‘7′ marked on the bottom. The problem with BPA is that it doesn’t stay put. As plastic ages or when liquids are heated or stored in BPA containers the chemical migrates into our bodies. In 2005 the CDC in Atlanta found BPA in the urine of 95 per cent of Americans sampled. In November 2006, 38 leading scientific experts on BPA warned of ‘potential adverse health effects of exposure’ to polycarbonate plastic.

BPA was first identified as an estrogen mimic in 1936. Hundreds of animal studies have shown that low-dose exposure to BPA could lead to a range of human health problems including reproductive tract abnormalities, breast and prostate cancer, spontaneous miscarriage, type 2 diabetes and obesity.

The evidence is not conclusive. Frederick Vom Saal of the University of Missouri, a leading researcher on the health effects of BPA, admits as much. ‘We don’t know for sure,’ he says. ‘Some of these trends are so prevalent they almost seem normal: abnormal puberty changes, fertility difficulties for both men and women, breast cancer, prostate cancer. All of these trends parallel the onset of the plastics revolution… Part of this is just connecting the dots.’⁵

The tide is turning

Although the plastics industry continues to deny the risks of BPA, the tide is turning. Industry officials brushed aside critics of BPA, claiming that the amounts found in humans were so small as to be insignificant. But hormone-mimicking chemicals like BPA don’t work that way. In fact researchers have found that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are more dangerous at lower doses, a notion which overturns the traditional pharmacological view that ‘the dose makes the poison’.  ‘At low doses hormones stimulate their own receptors,’ says Vom Saal. ‘At higher doses they inhibit their responses.’⁸

In April 2008 Canada became the first country to limit BPA exposure, labelling the chemical ‘a dangerous substance’. Polycarbonate plastic baby bottles were banned and strict targets set for BPA migration from infant formula cans. Within days major BPA manufacturers threw in the towel, including Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Playtex.

BPA is one of hundreds of synthetic chemicals that alter gene behaviour, what writer Pete Myers calls ‘gene hijacking’.⁹  Other plastic additives with the same gender-bending properties include phthalates and brominated flame-retardants (BPDEs). Phthalates are an essential ingredient in one of the most common of all plastics, PVC. They are used to make vinyl soft and pliable. You can find them in thousands of products, from squishy children’s toys and vinyl shower curtains to medical tubing. The chemical is also found in personal care products – shampoos, soaps, fragrances, and as a coating on some pills. ‘Phthalate syndrome’ is the term scientists coined to describe the constellation of symptoms found in animal studies. These include reduced penis size, lower sperm count, incomplete male genital development, infertility and testicular cancer. The EU has banned phthalates in children’s toys and the state of California has followed suit.

The third major group of plastic toxins are BPDEs. Half of these flame-retardants are used in the casings of myriad consumer electronics – computers, cell phones, printers, TVs, you name it. BPDEs are both persistent – they don’t break down easily in the environment – and bio-accumulative. They build up in the bodies of animals and humans through the food chain.  They also pass easily across the placental barrier in the developing foetus. BPDEs can act as endocrine disruptors and they can harm the brain of developing infants, disrupting learning and memory. They’ve also been linked to thyroid malfunctioning, reproductive problems and increased risk of testicular cancer. North Americans have levels of flame-retardants in their blood up to 40 times higher than people in Europe or Japan. ‘These compounds have the same properties as PCBs and DDT,’ says Ake Bergman, head of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University. ‘It’s just a matter of time before we have a toxic effect. We knew less about PCBs when they were banned than we know about BPDEs today… Didn’t we learn from PCBs?’¹⁰  Proven carcinogens, PCBs were banned in the 1970s. But because they bio-accumulate they are still found in the environment and in the bodies of animals and people.

Tomorrow’s tobacco

Sweden has been one of the main countries pushing the ‘precautionary principle’, a common-sense notion which the chemical industry, driven by a blinkered concern with profits and growth, has fought tooth and nail. The concept is simple: if a chemical looks like it may cause problems, let’s think twice about using it. Better safe than sorry, even if the science is not 100 per cent certain. The chemical giants (in league with Big Oil) reason differently: if it kills someone then it’s time to do something.

The US EPA approves 700 new chemicals a year on the assurance of the industry that they are safe. Meanwhile, there is growing public unease about the toxic storm that engulfs us. In June 2007, the EU adopted its REACH legislation (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) despite a full-throttle attempt by corporate lobbyists (especially from the powerful German chemical industry) and the Bush Administration to derail the law. The result is a compromise: companies have 11 years to prove safety and chemicals produced in volumes of less than 10 tonnes a year are exempt. But the basic principle of producer responsibility is firmly in place.  Companies can no longer sell a chemical without first providing information about its safety – an important breakthrough which should have global repercussions. Elsewhere environmental and citizens’ groups are advocating ‘right to know’ legislation so polluters can no longer hide their actions from public scrutiny. Power is slowly shifting. There is a growing consensus that the current model is bankrupt. Critics predict that in 10 years the fallout from the petro-chemical and plastics plague will rank with tobacco and pesticides as a major global public health issue.

Back in Aamjiwnaang, Ron Plain would be the first to agree. He’s not about to give up his fight to force industry to clean up its act.

‘Every one of these people tells me to keep going,’ he says, gesturing to his ancestor’s graves. ‘I won’t allow them to be forgotten. This is our connection, this is who we are.’

1. E MacDonald, S Rang, Ecojustice, ‘Exposing Canada’s Chemical Valley’, Toronto, October 2007, www.ecojustice.ca
2. JB Foster, B Clark, ‘Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique’, Monthly Review, New York, February 2008
3. Robert Allen, The Dioxin War, Pluto Press, London, 2004
4. Mark Schapiro, Exposed: the toxic chemistry of everyday products, Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vermont, 2007
5. Libby McDonald, The Toxic Sandbox, Penguin, New York, 2007
6. ‘Pollution in Canadian Families’, Environmental Defence, Toronto, June 2006, www.toxicnation.ca
7. Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, ‘Is It In Us? Chemical Contamination in Our Bodies’, Bolinas, California 2007, www.isitinus.com
8. Martin Mittelstaedt, ‘Inherently toxic chemical faces its future’, Globe & Mail, 8 April 2007
9. Pete Myers, ‘Good genes gone bad’, American Prospect, April 2006
10. Maria Cone, ‘Cause for alarm over chemicals’, Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2003.

Reprinted from New Internationalist.

Walmart Sam’s Choice Brand Exceeds Legal Limits in California

WASHINGTON – Ten popular U.S. bottled water brands contain mixtures of 38 different pollutants, including bacteria, fertilizer, Tylenol and industrial chemicals, some at levels no better than tap water, according to laboratory tests recently conducted by Environmental Working Group (EWG).

Walmart‘s Sam’s Choice at several locations contained contaminants exceeding California’s bottled water quality standards and safety levels for carcinogens under the state’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. Giant Food’s Acadia brand consistently retained the high levels of cancer-causing chlorination byproducts found in the suburban Washington DC tap water from which it is made.

Overall, the test results strongly indicate that the purity of bottled water cannot be trusted.

“It’s buyer beware with bottle water,” said Jane Houlihan, Vice President for Research at EWG. “The bottled water industry promotes its products as pure and healthy, but our tests show that pollutants in some popular brands match the levels found in some of the nation’s most polluted big city tap water systems. Consumers can’t trust that what’s in the bottle is anything more than processed, pricey tap water.”

“For years the bottled water industry has marketed their product with the message that it is somehow safer or purer than tap water,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the non-profit consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “This new report provides even more evidence that the purity of bottled water is nothing more than a myth propagated to trick consumers into paying thousands times more for a product than what it is actually worth.”

Laboratory tests conducted for EWG at one of the country’s leading water
quality laboratories found 38 contaminants in ten brands of bottled water purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in nine states and the District of Columbia. The pollutants identified include common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals, an array of cancer-causing byproducts from municipal tap water chlorination, heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes, fertilizer residue and a broad range of industrial chemicals. Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria.

Unlike tap water, where consumers are provided with test results every year, the bottled water industry does not disclose the results of any contaminant testing that it conducts. Instead, the industry hides behind the claim that bottled water is held to the same safety standards as tap water. But with promotional campaigns saturated with images of mountain springs, and prices 1,000 times the price of tap water, consumers are clearly led to believe that they are buying a product that has been purified to a level beyond the water that comes out of the garden hose.

Americans paid $12 billion to drink 9 billion gallons of bottled water last year alone. Yet, as EWG tests show, several bottled waters bore the chemical signature of standard municipal water treatment — a cocktail of fluoride, chlorine and other disinfectants whose proportions vary only slightly from plant to plant. In other words, some bottled water was chemically almost indistinguishable from tap water. The only striking difference: the price tag. The typical cost of a gallon of bottled water is $3.79 – 1,900 times the cost of a gallon of public tap water.

Unlike public water utilities, bottled water companies are not required to notify their customers of the presence of contaminants in the water, or, in most states, to tell their customers where the water comes from, how it is purified, and if it is spring water or merely bottled tap water. Given the industry’s refusal to make available data to support their claims of superiority, consumer confidence in the purity of bottled water is simply not justified.

The bottle water industry has also contributed to one of the biggest environmental problems facing the world today. Only one-fifth of the bottles produced by the industry are recycled. The remaining four-fifths pile up at landfills, litter our neighborhoods and foul our oceans. About halfway between Hawaii and California, an area twice the size of Texas is awash in millions of plastic water bottles and other indestructible garbage.

Read the Reports Executive Summary here.

Read entire report here.

Reprinted from the Environmental Working Group.

UC researchers have found that more than 30 percent of American public schools are within 400 meters, or a quarter mile, of major highways that consistently serve as main truck and traffic routes.

Research has shown that proximity to major highways-and thus environmental pollutants, such as aerosolizing diesel exhaust particles-can leave school-age children more susceptible to respiratory diseases later in life.

“This is a major public health concern that should be given serious consideration in future urban development, transportation planning and environmental policies,” says Sergey Grinshpun, PhD, principal investigator of the study and professor of environmental health at UC.

To protect the health of young children with developing lungs, he says new schools should be built further from major highways.

“Health risk can be mitigated through proper urban planning, but that doesn’t erase the immediate risk to school-age children attending schools that are too close to highways right now,” he adds. “Existing schools should be retrofitted with air filtration systems that will reduce students’ exposure to traffic pollutants.”

The UC-led team reports its findings in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, an international scientific journal. This is believed to be the first national study of school proximity and health risks associated with major roadways.

For this study, Grinshpun’s team conducted a survey of major metropolitan areas representative of all geographical regions of the United States: Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis and San Antonio.

More than 8,800 schools representing 6 million students were included in the survey. Primary data was collected through the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

Schools within this data set were then geocoded to accurately calculate distance to the nearest interstate, U.S. highway or state highway.

Past research on highway-related air pollution exposure has focused on residences located close to major roads. Grinshpun points out, however, that school-age children spend more than 30 percent of their day on school grounds-in classrooms, after-school care or extracurricular activities. 

“For many years, our focus has been on homes when it comes to air pollution. School attendance may result in a large dose of inhaled traffic pollutants that-until now-have been completely overlooked,” he adds.

These past studies suggest this proximity to highway traffic puts school-age children at an increased risk for asthma and respiratory problems later in life from air pollutants and aeroallergens.

This includes research from the UC Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study (CCAAPS) which has reported that exposure to traffic pollutants in close proximity to main roads has been associated with increased risk for asthma and other chronic respiratory problems during childhood.

Grinshpun’s team found that public school students were more likely to attend schools near major highways compared to the general population. Researchers say the rapid expansion of metropolitan areas in recent years-deemed “urban sprawl”-seems to be associated with the consistent building of schools near highways.

“Major roads play an important role in the economy, but we need to strike a balance between economic and health considerations as we break ground on new areas,” says Alexandra Appatova, the study’s first author. “Policymakers need to develop new effective strategies that would encourage urban planners to reconsider our current infrastructure, particularly when it comes to building new schools and maintaining existing ones.”

The state of California, for example, has passed a law prohibiting the building of new schools within 500 feet (168 meters) of a busy road. New Jersey is moving a bill through the legislature to require highway entrance and exit ramps to be at least 1,000 feet from schools.

This study was funded in part by grants from UC’s Center for Sustainable Urban Engineering and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. UC’s Patrick Ryan, PhD, and Grace LeMasters, PhD, also participated in this study. Appatova was an intern in UC’s department of environmental health when the study was being conducted.

Reprinted from University of Cincinnati