Anguishing over arsenic

Are we worrying too much about arsenic in the water? The anguish is
making us more aggrieved than the actuality!

In late March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked
for a 60-day extension of the effective date of the arsenic standard
for drinking water released Jan. 22. Administrator Christine Todd
Whitman announced that the EPA would seek “independent reviews of both
the science behind the standard and of the estimates of the costs to
communities of implementing the rule.” The rule would have reduced the
acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water from 0.05 parts per
million to 0.01 ppm.

Predictably the green tree huggers responded with the usual pathological
hyper-reflexes, and some chose to feign grand-mal seizures.

The current American standard of 0.05 ppm was first set in 1942. In
1903, The Royal Commission of London responded to an episode of
arsenic poisoning from beer and set a drinking water standard of 0.108
ppm. Higher levels of exposure have caused all outbreaks of arsenic
poisoning since then. The current standard was set with a four-fold
safety margin; in other words, people would have to be exposed to
arsenic levels four times higher than now allowed before reaching
threshold exposures. Many common medicines, such as the heart medicine
digitalis, have lower safety factors.

Most parts of the country have water supplies with much less arsenic
than the standard. The average arsenic concentration in United States
drinking water is 0.005 ppm, already 10 times less than the current
standard. Some areas have levels at the current 0.05 ppm standard.

When the government published the new arsenic standards in January, it
acknowledged that hundreds of millions of dollars would need to be
spent to reduce arsenic levels to meet the new standard. According to
Jason K. Burnett and Robert W. Hahn of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center
for Regulatory Studies, when, “people have fewer resources, they spend
less to reduce risks. The resulting increase in risk offsets the
direct reduction in risk,” due to government action. In other words,
the EPA needs to factor in a dose of common sense in its proposals.

In trying to simplify the issue, many writers and government officials
ignore the fact that many substances poisonous at high levels actually
promote health at low levels, including Vitamin A, Vitamin C, selenium,
alcohol, and ionizing radiation. Almost all poisonous substances are
harmless if diluted enough — including arsenic.

There’s no reasonable expectation of any benefit in reducing arsenic
to the proposed level. It’s likely that these proposals would kill
more Americans than they might save. Risk analysis studies conclude
that resources expended wastefully actually cost human lives. Economic
risk estimates vary, with the waste of from $10 million to $50 million
per year estimated to cause one premature American death per year.
The hundreds of millions of dollars wasted meeting illusionary
standards might be better spent expanding the federal children’s
health insurance program to cover low-income working parents.

The Bush administration seems to understand that tiny amounts
of arsenic have been with us forever. Because arsenic is the 12th most
common atomic element in our environment, it’s impossible to avoid
completely. According to a National Academy of Sciences projection,
tiny amounts of arsenic actually could be essential to good health.

In the April 2 Washington Post, Whitman elegantly answers her critics
by writing, “I have ordered further review of the science behind the new
standard, as well as of the compliance cost estimates and the cost-benefit
analysis that were made in support of it. That review will result in a new
standard.”

Whitman assures and assuages us further: “Because the new standard was not
scheduled to take effect in most places until 2006, this review will not
result in any delays in implementing a new standard based on solid,
objective information.”

We applaud the new EPA officials for reviewing the Clinton arsenic and old
lace policy. We hope they balance real hazards, risks, excessive angst and
other complications against real benefits. President Bush also should be
praised for “pursuing correctness” rather than pandering to the
“politically correct.”

As for us, we still intend to drink the water.