As some of you may have heard, the EPA has just issued its ruling on the new Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for arsenic in drinking water. On Wednesday of this week, the EPA ruled that the new MCL for arsenic in drinking water be lowered from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. (See article below).
The question of concern in this bulletin is how this lowered MCL for arsenic will effect the fluoridation program.
We’ll start first with a discussion of the levels of arsenic known to exist in fluoridation chemicals, and then move on to a discussion of the implications of the new arsenic Maximum Contaminant Level.
Arsenic levels in fluoridation chemicals:
Over 90% of the fluoride which is used to fluoridate water is an industrial waste product from the phosphate fertilizer industry. Being an industrial waste product, these fluoridation chemicals (hydrofluosilicic acid & sodium silicofluorides) contain a number of impurities, most notably of which is arsenic.
The body responsible for testing water treatment chemicals for impurities is the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF International). According to a letter from the NSF to Florida’s Department of Public Health (4/24/2000), arsenic is the most common contaminant found in fluoridation chemicals, and it is the contaminant found at the highest levels (see letter at http://www.fluoridealert.org/NSF-letter.pdf). When detected, the average arsenic concentration in the chemicals would lead to an addition of 0.43 parts per billion to the water supply. The highest level of arsenic which the NSF has admitted to finding would lead to an addition of arsenic to the water supply of 1.66 parts per billion.
The problem with arsenic contamination of fluoridation chemicals has recently been recognized by the American Water Works Association. According to the October 2000 issue of the AWWA’s Journal, “about 90 percent of the arsenic…contributed by treatment chemicals is attributable to fluoride addition.”
Implications of the new Arsenic MCL:
In the world of water treatment there is a phrase called “Maximum Allowable Level” or MAL. The MAL determines how much of a particular contaminant a water treatment company is allowed to knowingly add to the water supply. The MAL for each contaminant is determined by dividing the EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level by a factor of ten.
(MAL = Maximum Contaminant Level divided by 10)
Thus, if the EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level for arsenic is now 10 parts per billion, than the MAL for arsenic has now become 1 part per billion. With the MAL for arsenic being 1 ppb, no water company can knowingly add more than 1 part per billion arsenic to the water supply.
So how does this new MAL effect the US fluoridation program?
Based upon the NSF’s testing data, we can now expect that certain batches of fluoridation chemicals will have arsenic levels that exceed the Maximum Allowable Level of arsenic that a water supplier can add to the water. The NSF admitted as much in its letter to the Florida Department of Health. In its letter, the NSF stated that if the MCL for arsenic was lowered, “future tests of fluoridation chemicals may result in increased product failures.” As noted above, the NSF has already found samples of fluosilicic acid which add 1.66 parts per billion of arsenic to the water. These samples will now be what the NSF termed “product failures”, i.e., they have too much arsenic in them to add to water.
The question we now need to ask is: can we rely on the NSF and water treatment companies to detect the “product failures” before they are dumped into our water?
The answer: Most likely not.
Since 1992, the NSF has done relatively little testing of fluoridation chemicals. In its letter to the Department of Health, the NSF stated that “the exact number of laboratory tests performed is not readily available, but these products have been tested more than 100 times.” More than 100 times, however, is barely adequate when considering the hundreds of thousands of barrels of fluosilicic acid which have been dumped into the water over the past 8 years.
Another question which we need to ask, and which will bring us to the front end of this problem, is: why on earth are we using industrial effluent from the phosphate fertilizer industry as our source of fluoride for fluoridation? Who, other than Cargill Fertilizer and the phosphate fertilizer companies, would find this deal attractive?
Mike Connett
Fluoride Action Network
http://www.fluoridealert.org
p.s. A valuable source of information concerning the health concerns of low level arsenic exposure is the Natural Resources Defense Council’s paper “Arsenic & Old Laws”, available at: http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/arsenic/aolinx.asp
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