82—Uncartr Farming. Saturday. March IS. 1975
•m
ORGANIC LIVING
B 1
Robert Rodale
THE MYTH OF CLEAN WATER
By Robert Rodale
Residents of New Orleans got some bad news recently.
The Environmental Protection Agency told them that the
Mississippi River water they've been drinking is loaded
with chemicals. And some of those compounds arc potent
cancer-causers.
That's bad enough. But the hard-headed reaction of city
officials was even worse. One suggested that bad water
was one of the smaller hazards of life in New Orleans. If a
mother wants to insure the safety of her child, one council
person said, she should buckle the child's auto safety belt
not worry about tap water. After all, the official con
tinued, the biggest cause of death and injury for those
under 35 is auto accidents.
Safety in the short term is all that counts to some
people. Chemicalized water is a problem that kills over
decades, and isn't going to go away unless strong
measures are taken.
A nationwide EPA survey now under way is very likely
to pinpoint similar poisons in the water supplies of many
other cities. We can expect the situation to get worse
before it improves unless we all change our attitudes.
Public indifference to bad water is the biggest problem.
A new story or two about cancer-chemicals in water will
get people worked up for a few weeks. There will be some
protests and letters to the editor. Then a feeling of
helplessness will set in. Water has come from the tap for
years, and people have been drinking it all along without
dropping over dead right away. So why change things
now?
Old pioneer attitudes are at the root of the problem.
Europeans first came to a country of endless forests and
fresh streams, and we, their descendants, have adhered to
the belief that a river automatically and naturally purifies
itself every seven miles. My mother told me that when I
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taminanta only entered a stream at occasional points.
But let's face facts. Most rivers today are overused
bodies of water bearing little resemblance to what they’re
supposed to be. And the Mississippi ranks as one of the
worst.
Environmentalists consider the Mississippi "the colon
of America," filled with the industrial and human waste
products of two-thirds of the United States. Manufac
turing plants pour millions of tons of toxic materials into
its muddy waters. Oil spills, raw sewage, pesticide runoff
... you name it. If Americans don’t want it, chances arc
it's ended up in the Mississippi at one time or another.
In the community of East Alton, Illinois, a sign along the
river warns picknickers to avoid eating lunch near the
Mississippi. They might get sick if their food should ac-
cidentally come in contact with spray from the polluted
river.
To me, that the New Orleans water contains things it
shouldn’t is completely logical. How can a river any
river—recover from a massive load of wastes like those
poured into the Mississippi?
Obviously, it can’t.
Logic tells me to question another assumption that the
people of NeW Orleans have been making for years.
How can purification systems, built to treat wastewater
of another era, deal with the sophisticated wastes of the
20th century, complete with indestructible, man-made
substances that have a lifetime of a million years? We're
finding out that they can’t.
Some myths take a long time to die. The myth that
everyone who opens a tap can expect a healthful glass of
water may not last much longer, however. When the EPA
study of the nation’s drinking water is completed in a few
months, we’ll know for sure.
I suspect that the results will still be challenged. Of
course, there will be more press conferences. I’ll even be
willing to bet some official will publically drink a glass of
water just to “prove” that there is nothing wrong with it.
Some of the people will turn to bottled water. Others will
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shrug off the reports as nonsense. The fact remains
however, that everyone deserves a clean glass of water!
Either we will have to stop river pollution at its source, or
find new and safer ways to treat water before we drink it.
(Editor’s Note: The opinions appearing in "Organic
Living" are those of Its author, Robert Rodale, an in
dependent columnist. Rodaie’s comments do not
necessarily reflect the thinking of the Lancaster Farming
editor or anyone else on the Lancaster Farming staff.)
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