Milwaukee Leads The Way on Water Testing

Better sewage filtration

The sewerage district’s pilot study found that the new filtration system could remove an average of 75 percent of the 10 emerging contaminants examined, while also reducing concentrations of phosphorus.

The study was released last fall by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and Veolia, the French company that operates and maintains Milwaukee’s sewage treatment facilities.

Using its activated charcoal filtration system, known as Actiflo Carb, the company tested for the removal of chemicals including mood stabilizing drugs, disinfectants, antibiotics and blood pressure medications. They were chosen based on previous research showing they were difficult to remove with conventional sewage treatment.

Among those chemicals was triclosan, a germ-killing compound used in hand soaps, toothpastes, and detergents. The chemical, currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is known to disrupt hormones in fish, frogs and rats and potentially create widespread resistance to antibiotics. And when combined with chlorinated water and sunlight, triclosan may break down into dioxins, which can be highly toxic.

The new filtration process was able to remove around 90 percent of triclosan from wastewater.

Jim Hurst, chief technical officer of Veolia Water North America, said the new treatment system “will give wastewater facilities a way to stretch their treatment dollars while dramatically reducing pollution levels and achieving better water quality.”

Sewerage district officials said that while the pilot system is promising, they are not ready to invest in scaling it up, especially for the removal of unregulated contaminants.

“We need to be careful that we check out all the emerging technologies,” said Bill Graffin, public information officer for the Milwaukee sewerage district.  “Sure we got great results, but what if something better comes out tomorrow?”

Few answers on risks

Carrie Lewis, superintendent of Milwaukee Water Works, said the city tests its drinking water “for everything within reason” and releases the results to the public. Courtesy of Milwaukee Water Works

At Milwaukee’s Water Works,  Lewis worries about how to communicate with the public about emerging contaminants, given the uncertain science regarding the trace levels being detected.

“It’s hard for people to understand when we have to say the science isn’t there to tell us what this means,” she said. “The hope is that the data we’ve collected will help in figuring this out.”

Some argue the science is already pointing toward real risk.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, testified before a 2010 congressional committee that scientists are observing a growing list of endocrine-sensitive health outcomes. Increases in breast and prostate cancer, ectopic pregnancy, undescended testicles and early puberty are all reasons to be concerned about exposure to endocrine disruptors, she said.

In her testimony, Birnbaum also cautioned that small disruptions of the endocrine system — which is responsive to subtle changes in hormones — by low-level chemical exposures like those in water, may have negative health effects.

Other experts agreed the chemicals are worrisome, but said drinking water is not likely a big risk.

“From the data that I am aware of, I have seen no evidence of risk from the concentrations of pharmaceuticals occurring in drinking water,” Shane Snyder, professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Arizona, said in an interview.

Snyder, like Klaper, said people probably get more exposure to these chemicals from common household products like perfumes, shampoos and flame retardants.

“Consider that the highest concentration of any pharmaceutical we detected in U.S. drinking waters is approximately 5 million times lower than the therapeutic dose,” Snyder told a Senate committee in 2008, representing the American Water Works Association, a professional organization that includes water treatment plant managers.

In the interview, Snyder noted that current scientific evidence is limited in part because studies don’t assess the mixtures of chemicals that occur in water.

“The vast majority of our regulations are based upon assessment of one chemical in isolation,” Snyder said. “We need a better way to look at water from a mixture perspective.”

Prevention is better than cure

Kevin Shafer, executive director of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, said that changing, growing pharmaceutical use will force his industry to adapt. “We’re going to have to do that eventually, so we might as well get started now,” he says. Kate Golden/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Kevin Shafer, executive director of Milwaukee’s sewerage district, agreed that filtering out bad stuff from the water supply is important. But even better, he said, is to keep it out of the water system in the first place.

He noted the city’s success at creating a prescription medication disposal program to avoid water contamination. “We’ve collected tons and tons of medicines and gotten them out of the environment,” Shafer said.

Klaper said she is encouraged by the trend toward green chemistry, in which potential health or environmental consequences are accounted for during chemical design.

Calls for increased regulation

Twenty years ago, state and federal regulations in place at the time were not sufficient to stop the Cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee. Now, scientific organizations and advocacy groups are calling for taking a more precautionary approach to contaminants like endocrine disruptors.

Organizations such as the Endocrine Society have called for more research, and stronger regulation to reduce exposures to endocrine disruptors.

Some are pushing to update and strengthen chemical legislation.

In the meantime, Lewis, the Milwaukee Water Works superintendent, said the city will continue its aggressive monitoring of unregulated contaminants.

“We think it’s our public health responsibility to know what’s in the water,” she said.

Marion Ceraso is an independent journalist and a graduate of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reporter Kate Golden contributed to this report. This project was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for Environmental Journalism and The Joyce Foundation.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Wisconsin-Madison or any of its affiliates.

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