THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 8, 1994 TAG: 9411050020
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
An extensive study of herbicides in drinking water, released on Oct. 18 by the Environmental Working Group and Physicians for Social Responsibility, found that 14 million Americans in 13 states and the District of Columbia are drinkingwater contaminated by five cancer-causing herbicides. The states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Most of these herbicides enter water supplies in agricultural runoff from land used to raise animals for human consumption.
Unfortunately, herbicides and other pesticides are only one category of pollutant carried by agricultural runoff. Others are dissolved solids (primarily sodium chloride, which raises water salinity), suspended solids (soil particles that settle to the bottom, smother fish eggs and silt up waterways), organics (crop debris which promotes growth of microorganisms that deplete oxygen and kill the fish) and nutrients (nitrates and phosphates, which promote growth of oxygen-depleting algae). Agricultural runoff contributes more pollution burden to America's waterways than all other human activities combined.
Until Carol M. Browner took over, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had largely ignored the agricultural-runoff problem for both economic and political reasons. Blocking the flow would be very costly because of the enormous areas involved. Browner's efforts to overhaul the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act were killed in the 103rd Congress by meat-industry opposition.
The good news is that citizens at large can help repel this massive assault on the public and environmental health by demanding effective water-pollution-control legislation and by reducing their consumption of meat and other animal products. Since 90 percent of agricultural land is used for growing animal feed, even a small reduction in the national consumption of animal products would allow producers to plant the most erosion-prone land with erosion-resistant trees, shrubs and grasses. The only other option is to give up drinking water and practicing water recreation.
JACK NORRIS
Norfolk, Oct. 20, 1994 by CNB