In June, the Natural Resources Defense Council — the same organization that sued Flint, Michigan, over lead in its drinking water — sued Newark, for violating drinking water rules meant to protect residents from lead.
Under Safe Drinking Water Act rules, cities are supposed to monitor lead levels in water samples taken from kitchen faucets, and states are supposed to make sure they do it.
Given the complexity of the problem and the need for additional data to support the drinking water DBP rules, the U.S. EPA, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the U.S. Army are working together to develop a comprehensive biologic and mechanistic DBP database.
Although upper limits for concentrations of unquestionably toxic chemicals such as arsenic, barium, cyanide, lead, and phenols have been established for drinking water, no general rules exist for the treatment of industrial wastes because of the wide variety of organic and inorganic compounds involved.
As part of its announcement, the agency said efforts were continuing on 14 drinking water standards, including rules regarding lead, copper, arsenic, atrazine — a popular herbicide — and possibly perchlorate, an unregulated rocket fuel additive that has generated controversy in the past.
Lead is ubiquitous in our environment, and its presence in glass, equipment, tea, coffee, and drinking water cannot be ruled out.
Nonetheless, the possibility that there may exist a potent carcinogenic CDBP present at low levels in drinking water cannot be ruled out.
His response pointed to a regulation promulgated under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act -- a rule that Chaffetz said the Environmental Protection Agency had not enforced aggressively enough or updated fast enough.
As supplying arsenic-free drinking water can not totally rule out chances of arsenic contamination from other sources, the problem of eradicating arsenic related diseases can not be addressed through such effort alone.
