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REPORT: Nearly All of U.S. Drinking Water Contaminated With Cancer Causing Chemicals

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The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit research organization environmental watchdog, released a searchable database Thursday that shows almost 50,000 public water systems in the U.S. are contaminated with dozens of harmful chemicals.

Some of the chemicals found in your drinking water include – arsenic, hexavalent chromium, radiation, chloroform, perfluorooctanoic acid, Bromodichloromethane, Dichloroacetic acid, Barium, and Uranium; and that’s just scratching the surface of the 250-plus contaminants the group discovered.

EWG researchers spent the last two years collecting data from independent state agencies and the EPA for drinking water tests conducted from 2010 to 2015 by 48,712 water utilities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Researchers tested the utilities for approximately 500 different contaminants, finding a whopping 267 contaminations of Americans’ water supplies.

EWG’s database is an interactive map where you can click on each state and review their test results.

In the results are listed contaminants found above health guidelines and above legal limits.

A subsequent report released with the database noted that contaminants detected in the nation’s tap water included:

93 linked to an increased risk of cancer. More than 40,000 water systems had detections of known or likely carcinogens exceeding established federal or state health guidelines – levels that pose minimal but real health risks, but are not legally enforceable.
78 associated with brain and nervous system damage.
63 connected to developmental harm to children or fetuses.
45 linked to hormone disruption.
38 that may cause fertility problems.
Chromium-6, made notorious by the film “Erin Brockovich.” This carcinogen, for which there are no federal regulations, was detected in the drinking water supplies serving 250 million Americans in all 50 states.
1,4-Dioxane, an unregulated compound that contaminates tap water supplies for 8.5 million people in 27 states at levels above those the EPA considers to pose a minimal cancer risk.
Nitrate, chemical from animal waste or agricultural fertilizers, was detected in more than 1,800 water systems in 2015, serving 7 million people in 48 states above the level that research by the National Cancer Institute shows increases the risk of cancer – a level just half of the federal government’s legal limit for nitrate in drinking water.

“Legal is not safe,” argued Nneka Leiba, director of Healthy Living Science at the EWG. “In many cases, it’s far from safe.”

Overall, the organization found more than 250 million Americans are drinking water with “unsafe” levels of various contaminants.

Last year, the EWG found that two-thirds of Americans’ water is contaminated with the carcinogen that Erin Brockovich exposed – chemical chromium 6 or hexavalent chromium – affecting the tap water of more than 218 million Americans. That’s an additional 32 million Americans that are affected by other chemicals highlighted in this new study.

A 2008 study by the National Toxicology Program found that chromium-6 in drinking water caused cancer in rats and mice that were exposed to the chemical.

EWG is urging consumers to use a drinking water filter to reduce the level of chemical intake in the human body. They’re also pressing the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to update their rules on chemical contaminants found in drinking water that “can pose what scientists say are serious health risks – and still be legal.”

“Americans deserve the fullest picture possible of what’s in their tap water,” EWG President Ken Cook said. “But they won’t get that information from the government or, in many cases, from their utilities. The only place they’ll find that is EWG’s drinking water report.”

“Just because your tap water gets a passing grade from the government doesn’t always mean it’s safe,” Cook added. “It’s time to stop basing environmental regulations on political or economic compromises, and instead listen to what scientists say about the long-term effects of toxic chemicals and empower Americans to protect themselves from pollutants even as they demand the protective action they deserve from government.”

It’s been 20 years since the EPA last passed any new drinking water regulations. Regardless, it’s clear that municipalities have not been following them.

If you’re in the U.S. you can check your own water supply by visiting the Tap Water Database, which allows anyone in the U.S. to enter their zip code or local utility’s name and find out what’s lurking in their local water supply. (For more from the author of “REPORT: Nearly All of U.S. Drinking Water Contaminated With Cancer Causing Chemicals” please click HERE)

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“Situation Critical”: New Data From NASA Shows How the World Is Running out of Water

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The world’s largest underground aquifers – a source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people — are being depleted at alarming rates, according to new NASA satellite data that provides the most detailed picture yet of vital water reserves hidden under the Earth’s surface.

Twenty-one of the world’s 37 largest aquifers — in locations from India and China to the United States and France — have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than replaced during the decade-long study period, researchers announced Tuesday. Thirteen aquifers declined at rates that put them into the most troubled category. The researchers said this indicated a long-term problem that’s likely to worsen as reliance on aquifers grows.

Scientists had long suspected that humans were taxing the world’s underground water supply, but the NASA data was the first detailed assessment to demonstrate that major aquifers were indeed struggling to keep pace with demands from agriculture, growing populations, and industries such as mining.

“The situation is quite critical,” said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and principal investigator of the University of California Irvine-led studies.

Underground aquifers supply 35 percent of the water used by humans worldwide. Demand is even greater in times of drought. Rain-starved California is currently tapping aquifers for 60 percent of its water use as its rivers and above-ground reservoirs dry up, a steep increase from the usual 40 percent. Some expect water from aquifers will account for virtually every drop of the state’s fresh water supply by year end. (Read more from “New Data From NASA Shows How the World Is Running out of Water” HERE)

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With Dry Taps and Toilets, California Drought Turns Desperate

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Photo Credit: Jim Wilson / The New York TimesAfter a nine-hour day working at a citrus packing plant, her body covered in a sheen of fruit wax and dust, there is nothing Angelica Gallegos wants more than a hot shower, with steam to help clear her throat and lungs.

“I can just picture it, that feeling of finally being clean — really refreshed and clean,” Ms. Gallegos, 37, said one recent evening.

But she has not had running water for more than five months — nor is there any tap water in her near future — because of a punishing and relentless drought in California. In the Gallegos household and more than 500 others in Tulare County, residents cannot flush a toilet, fill a drinking glass, wash dishes or clothes, or even rinse their hands without reaching for a bottle or bucket.

Unlike the Okies who came here fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the people now living on this parched land are stuck. “We don’t have the money to move, and who would buy this house without water?” said Ms. Gallegos, who grew up in the area and shares a tidy mobile home with her husband and two daughters. “When you wake up in the middle of the night sick to your stomach, you have to think about where the water bottle is before you can use the toilet.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Aljazeera Reports that Egypt is Threatening War With Ethiopia Over Water

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Egypt’s president has warned Ethiopia that “all options are open” in dealing with its construction of a Nile dam that threatens to leave Egypt with a dangerous water shortage.

Speaking in a live televised speech before hundreds of supporters on Monday, Mohammed Morsi said Egypt was not calling for war, but it is willing to confront any threats to its water security.

“If it loses one drop, our blood is the alternative,” he said to a raucous crowd of largely Islamist supporters that erupted into a standing ovation.

Ethiopia’s $4.2 billion hydroelectric dam, which would be Africa’s largest, challenges a colonial-era agreement that had given Egypt and Sudan the lion’s share of rights to Nile water.

Experts estimate that Egypt could lose as much as 20 percent of its Nile water in the three to five years needed for Ethiopia to fill a massive reservoir.

Read more from this story HERE.

Green Energy, Black Water: Duke Energy Sued For Polluting Drinking Water

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Photo Credit: AP

Two environmental groups have accused Duke Energy, one of the Democratic Party’s major corporate supporters and a recipient of large green energy subsidies, of contaminating drinking water supplies in Charlotte, N.C.

The plaintiffs say Duke is misleading the public about its environmental record, and could face federal sanctions and a hit to its public image in Charlotte, where the utility is headquartered. Alleged environmental damage by Duke could also pose challenges for the Obama administration, which has strong ties to the company.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation (CRF) filed a notice of intent on Tuesday announcing that they plan to sue Duke for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

The plaintiffs claim Duke allowed carcinogenic chemicals from coal ash storage facilities to leak into Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte’s primary drinking water reservoir. “Duke is discharging polluted water into the lake. The pollution includes arsenic, cobalt, boron, barium, strontium, manganese, zinc, and iron,” SELC and CRF claimed in a Tuesday news release.

Duke’s closeness with the Obama administration could be problematic for the president, who is already under pressure from environmentalist groups to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

Read more from this story HERE.

Number Of Dead Pigs Found In Chinese Rivers Rises To 16,000

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Photo Credit: AP

The number of dead pigs recovered in the last two weeks from rivers that supply water to Shanghai has risen to more than 16,000.

The government in China’s financial hub said 10,570 carcasses had been pulled from its Huangpu river. That is in addition to 5,528 pigs plucked from upstream tributaries in the Jiaxing area of Zhejiang province.

Authorities give daily updates, telling the public that tests show Shanghai’s water is safe, but no official has given any full explanation about the massive dumping of pig carcasses.

Read more from this story HERE.

2800 Dead Pigs in China’s Drinking Water – Just the Tip of the Soot Covered Iceberg?

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

How this horrendous story slipped past China’s ministry of tourism is baffling…Or is this just too horrific to bury? Over the weekend it was announced that Chinese officials were fishing the carcasses of 2,800 dead pigs out of the Huangpu River. This river bisects Shanghai and is a source of drinking water for the city’s 23 million residents.

There was a recent outbreak of swine death in China’s farms due to cramped and unhealthy conditions and tens of thousands of animals died from infectious disease.

Chinese officials had forbidden farmers from selling diseased pig parts and were told to dispose of the carcasses in landfills. Evidently it was easier to dump almost 3,000 of these diseased carcasses into the river.

Of course Chinese officials say there is nothing to worry about, just move along…But China’s citizens give very little credibility to what they are told by their government. There is growing unrest among the population, due to deteriorating air and water pollution.

One resident summed it up with: “Have we been drinking dead-pig-polluted water? We are already panicked by the polluted air, now we have to worry about poisoned water too.”

China’s growing industrialization has been done at the expense of its environment and those chickens are coming home to roost…for China and the rest of the world.

Massive amounts of air pollution fueled by unfiltered or poorly filtered power plants, not only cause some of the worst smog in the world, they also send millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere to settle upon ice sheets which can cause ice melt to glaciers and ice packs. The culprit is soot, not carbon dioxide.

Many 3rd world countries want what the west has: Modern society, refrigeration, air conditioning, electric light, manufacturing, etc., but they can’t afford/won’t pay for the environmental protections the west has developed over the years.

Successful/heralded American companies like Wal-Mart and Apple, import and manufacture goods from these countries escaping our environmental/labor laws.

The problem is though, when Apple employs hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers to manufacture their I Pads and other products, the pollution doesn’t stay in China.

Ironically and dangerously, the very air pollution they help create in China, drifts over the Pacific to create air pollution in California.

The elephant in the California living room, is some of the air pollution environmental zealots are trying to crush with many of the harshest controls in the nation…Aren’t stemming from California, but instead are wafting over the golden state from manufacturing done in China, for California based companies.

How can American companies who manufacture products in the USA compete with companies like Apple and Wal-Mart, who don’t have to respect the environment in the host countries they set up shop in?

Can American companies compete with the almost antebellum labor practices (indentured servitude/slavery) practiced in countries of the 3rdworld, like China? Workers basically live on site in barracks and work long hours with poor pay and they are forced to buy from the company store. See CNN story on Apple/Foxconn

Conditions were so bad in some of the factories making Apple products; workers staged mass suicides by jumping off of buildings, to protest inhumane working conditions. Supervisors solved that problem by installing suicide nets to catch the jumping workers.

Apples manufacturer has also taken other steps to solve labor problem with the introduction of a million robots to do the work that humans once did.

Robots don’t complain, or throw themselves off buildings in protest…Robots also don’t mind if the air or water is polluted….The best of all worlds for corporations that only care for their bottom line.
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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Video: Federal Judge Rules EPA Overstepped Authority Trying to Regulate Water as Pollutant

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RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia officials scored a key victory Thursday in their battle with the Environmental Protection Agency over what EPA critics describe as a land takeover.

U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady in Alexandria ruled late Thursday that the EPA exceeded its authority by attempting to regulate stormwater runoff into a Fairfax County creek as a pollutant. O’Grady sided with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which challenged EPA’s stormwater restrictions.

“Stormwater runoff is not a pollutant, so EPA is not authorized to regulate it,” O’Grady said.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says the ruling could ultimately save Virginia taxpayers more than $300 million.

An EPA spokesman could not be reached for comment after business hours.

Read more from this story HERE.