FW: [Pharmwaste] Septic Systems Contaminate Drinking Water Wells on Cape Cod article

Tue Feb 9 08:08:55 EST 2016

Please note this email did not originate with me. I know some people are having problems posting to the list serve. I am working on a fix but for the meantime, if you try to post something unsuccessfully, please forward it to me and I'll post it for you.

Please also realize that the list serve is just a small part of my job and sometimes the list serve has to wait. If I am out of the office, no one else is responding to it for me.

Still, we're lucky to have this great way to communicate about these issues -
Thanks,
Laurie

From: John Anderson [mailto:JcAnderson27 at outlook.com]
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2016 11:40 AM
To: 'Tenace, Laurie'; 'pharmwaste at lists.dep.state.fl.us'
Subject: RE: [Pharmwaste] Septic Systems Contaminate Drinking Water Wells on Cape Cod article

Laurie,

Great post!

It is terrific to hear about anomalies on Cape Cod reverberating from the West Coast and Seattle!

A couple of points not mentioned:

*         Cape Cod is essentially a giant sand bar with ground water.  It stays fixed in its location thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers and battles fought by each town.

*         The aquifer is very high, therefore on Cape Cod, Groundwater = Surface Water

*         Similar concerns exist for the islands Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Jamestown in harbor of Newport RI

*         Sadly in some areas on Cape Cod, where there actually is town sewage, the towns often inject into the ground.  (I understand there may be some pre-treatment, but pre-treatment for what?)

One evening in Cambridge, MA at an event sponsored by MIT, where Pharma-Cycle was one of the featured companies presenting, one serial entrepreneur out of MIT lingered by our table.  The man was obviously thinking about some things he usually did not focus upon ion life.  In chatting with him I mentioned my septic in Boxford, MA was on the backyard behind my lawn and the well-head was on the front lawn.  Additionally my well in Boxford is 300 feet deep with a lot of solid New England ledge in between the two systems.  However, I told him that while shopping for houses I was laughed at as I had wells tested, sometimes with shocking results ... even in geologies assumed to be similar to Boxford's.

To my utter amazement, this very precise individual insisted his well at his summer home on either Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard (I cannot recall which) was only 9 feet deep!!!  He absolutely insisted 9 feet was the exact depth.  I would like to think he was terribly mistaken ... but he knew all sorts of other details regarding a broad range of subjects ... so maybe that evening he discovered a huge oversight and family health risk!  I remember suggesting Poland Springs Water!

I am hoping Jim Mullowney, who has brought some resources to bear on these questions and caused studies to be performed on Cape Cod, will follow-up this post with some temperate and thoughtful posts showing the Cancer Fish from Cape Cod, etc.

Thanks again for this very enlightening post showing some of the issues highlighted on Cape Cod are being heard nationally!

Best Regards!

John Anderson

jcanderson at HUBCFO.com<mailto:jcanderson at HUBCFO.com>
617-499-6900     Office
617-499-6900     Fax
978-837-0092     Mobile

From: pharmwaste-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us<mailto:pharmwaste-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us> [mailto:pharmwaste-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us] On Behalf Of Tenace, Laurie
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 9:16 AM
To: 'pharmwaste at lists.dep.state.fl.us'
Subject: [Pharmwaste] Septic Systems Contaminate Drinking Water Wells on Cape Cod article

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2016/world/septic-systems-contaminate-drinking-water-wells-on-cape-cod/

Cape Cod, the hooked arm of land that flexes eastward from mainland Massachusetts, is the iconic New England vacation spot. Less glamorously, it is also the perfect laboratory to study the relationship between wastewater and groundwater contamination.
The peninsula, whose population of 215,000 more than doubles during the summer, has tight clusters of septic systems and shallow household drinking water wells. Both are placed, on the same parcel of land, in sand and gravel soils through which water easily flows. Combined, it is a recipe for contamination. That is exactly what researchers at the Silent Spring Institute have found.
They tested 20 household drinking water wells for 117 organic compounds in an area that uses exclusively septic systems or cesspools, which are backyard means of disposing toilet waste and water that goes down drains. The organic compounds are pharmaceuticals, personal care products, sweeteners, and certain chemicals used to stop fire. In the well water, the researchers detected 27 of the compounds, some of which have been found to interfere with hormonal development and reproduction in fish species. Health guidelines exist for only 10 of the compounds they detected.
The study was published on January 27 online in the journal Science of the Total Environment<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969715312353>.
"Septic systems were not designed to remove these contaminants," Laurel Schaider, a research scientist and lead author of the study, told Circle of Blue. "In dense areas, many people are downstream of someone else's septic system."
A 2014 study<http://www.silentspring.org/resource/pharmaceuticals-perfluorosurfactants-and-other-organic-wastewater-compounds-public-drinking> from Silent Spring found similar contaminants in wells used by public drinking water systems.
Household drinking water wells are particularly vulnerable to septic system pollution<http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2015/world/americas-spreading-septic-threat/>. Well owners, unlike operators of public drinking water systems, are not required to test their water for contaminants. Household wells serve 14 percent of the U.S. population, more than 44 million people.
Finding the Medicine Cabinet in Groundwater
There is a well-established connection<http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2015/world/septic-system-pollution-contributes-to-disease-outbreaks/> between septic systems and nitrate and bacterial pollution in drinking water wells. This causes problems. Two-thirds of disease outbreaks<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwat.12121/abstract;jsessionid=9B4AA8F1A20F27E5E8B40D72290077B8.f02t04> in the United States due to untreated groundwater in the last four decades were linked to septic systems or a poorly designed well, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Schaider and her colleagues, however, were looking for a different type of contaminant on Cape Cod. Pharmaceuticals, flame retardants, and other similar compounds are known as "emerging" contaminants because their health effects are only beginning to be studied and few have federal drinking water standards .
Schaider was careful to note that the concentrations they detected - none of which exceeded health guidelines - were tiny, in the parts-per-billion range, which is thousands or millions of times lower than a medical dose. Even so, the cumulative, long-term effect of drin king water with low pharmaceutical concentrations, especially for children or pregnant women, is poorly understood.
"There are health concerns about the interaction of different chemicals in the body," Schaider said.
Remedies
What is a town or a homeowner to do? More than eight out of 10 homes on Cape Cod uses a septic system or cesspool and one in five uses a household well.
Gathering more information about well water quality is one recommendation. That information, however, is expensive. Schaider said that analyzing one water sample for the 117 contaminants in her study cost $US 1,800.
"It's not routine testing that everyone can do," she said.
The researchers looked for a shortcut that might help homeowners. They analyzed the relationship between different contaminants, to see if the presence of one could indicate the presence of others. Nitrate, which is not removed by traditional septic systems, was a suitable though imperfect match - imperfect because agriculture runoff is also a large source of nitrate pollution. Testing for nitrate is much cheaper, roughly $US 20 per sample.
Other recommendations involve more effort. Local ordinances that require a certain distance between septic systems and household wells could be revised, Schaider said. Or, instead of continuing to build individual wells, new developments could drill a community well to supply many homes. The well would be strategically located away from septic system runoff.
That option, of course, does nothing to address the root cause of the pollution, which is the septic system itself. Some communities on Cape Cod are experimenting with new treatment techniques<http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2015/world/americas-septic-system-failures-can-be-fixed/>, but more will be needed. Roughly one in five U.S. households uses a septic system.

Laurie Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Waste Reduction Section
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road, MS4555
Tallahassee, FL  32399
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us<mailto:Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us>
850.245.8759

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