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Executive Summary
As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this report.
Chlorinating tap water is a critical public health measure that saves thousands of lives each year by reducing the incidence of waterborne disease. But chlorination is no substitute for cleaning up America’s waters.
By failing to clean up rivers and reservoirs that provide drinking water for hundreds of millions of Americans, EPA and the Congress have forced water utilities to chlorinate water that is contaminated with animal waste, sewage, fertilizer, algae, and sediment, in order to provide water free of disease-causing microorganisms. Chlorine, when combined with the organic matter in this pollution, produces harmful byproducts collectively referred to as chlorination byproducts (CBPs). In spite of the diligent
efforts of the water utilities to filter and clean the water before they chlorinate, CBP levels remain high in the water consumed by millions of people each day. Approximately 240 million Americans drink tap water contaminated with some level of CBPs.
Industrial water pollution is not a major contributor to CBPs in tap water. Instead the main causes are sediments, nutrients, and pollution from agricultural and urban runoff, and in some small systems, inappropriate overuse of chlorine. Until Congress and the EPA act to limit pollution from farms and urban runoff so that water entering drinking water treatment plants is much cleaner than it is today, CBP levels will remain at unacceptably high levels.
This first ever national analysis of chlorination byproducts in tap water from both large and small cities, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that, although most water suppliers are in compliance with current and future drinking water standards:
• 137,000 pregnancies nationally and 10,456 pregnancies in New Jersey are at increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects each year from exposure to CBPs in tap water. (See Table 1, Page 3)
• Since 1995, more than 16 million people in 1,200 communities across the nation have been served water contaminated with chlorination byproducts for 12 months in a row at levels above the legal limit going into effect in January 2002. (See Table 2, Page 4)
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