Originally published December 14 2005
Interest groups blame tap water chemicals for birth defects
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Environmental Working Group and U.S. Public Interest Research Group claim that chlorination byproducts in tap water increase the risk of birth defects.
Two groups report that hundreds of thousands of pregnant women are at risk of birth defects and miscarriages from contaminated tap water.
The Environmental Working Group and U.S. Public Interest Research Group say that the problem is due to byproducts that form when adding chlorine to the tap water.
According to the report, chlorine added to water interacts with organic matter, particularly the soil and plant material that comes from run-off by agriculture and urban sprawl.
They note that a handful of large cities with a history of high CBP levels account for a large portion of the women at risk -- suburban Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, as well as urban centers like Philadelphia and San Francisco.
But more than 1,100 small towns (with fewer than 10,000 people) have also reported potentially dangerous levels of CBPs in their tap water over the past six years, according to the report.
They write that pregnant women living in small towns supplied by rivers and reservoirs are more than twice as likely to drink tap water with elevated levels of CBPs than women in large communities.
In total, the investigators list 42 cities across the U.S. -- both large and small -- that expose more than 500 pregnant women each year to trihalomethanes (THM), the most common chlorination byproduct.
A new standard put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency went into effect just this month that will lower the allowed levels of chlorination byproducts, including THMs.
Schwartz says a number of recent studies have linked chlorine byproducts to reproduction risks.
His group, for example, has found the substances could affect a baby's birth weight.
The more charcoal a particular filter uses, the more contaminants can be sifted from the water before you drink it.
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