Using demographic data to assess the cumulative cancer risk caused by tap water pollution

A peer-reviewed environmental working group study shows how water quality data, community water system maps, and demographic data (such as race and ethnicity) can help determine where the cancer risk from contaminated tap water has been plagued by other environmental injustices Community
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This study, which has just been published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, supports the EWG’s August request that the Environmental Protection Agency use drinking water as a measurement standard in its environmental justice mapping tool to develop fairer water quality.
Policies and actions
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Dr.
Uloma Uche, EWG Environmental Health Science Researcher and one of the authors of the study, said: “EWG’s analysis provides decision makers on how to make safe drinking water part of the equation when analyzing the impact of new and existing public health policies.
A framework
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The EWG framework aims to prove to EPA, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee under the EPA and other decision makers that it is both feasible and important to consider drinking water quality data when identifying communities with major and urgent environmental quality problems
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This framework fills in the EPA's environmental justice screening and mapping tool's ability to identify communities facing multiple environmental injustices
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EWG researchers applied this new framework to assess the cancer risk from a toxic mixture of tap water pollutants in California and Texas, where more than one-fifth of American residents live in these two states
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EWG scientists calculated the lifetime cumulative effects of 30 carcinogenic tap water pollutants found in more than 7,000 tap water systems in two states
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These pollutants include 21 federally regulated pollutants, such as arsenic, nitrate, radium, and disinfection by-products, and 9 non-federal regulated pollutants, including hexavalent chromium and 1,4-dioxane
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This new study builds on the EWG's peer-reviewed study published in Heliyon in 2019, which found that long-term exposure to a mixture of toxic chemicals commonly found in tap water in the United States may cause more than 100,000 cancer cases
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The EPA’s public health goal for tap water pollution is that the chance of cancer in a lifetime is one in a million
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Since 2000, the agency has not revised its list of regulated water pollution pollutants, and has rarely reconsidered its maximum levels of regulated pollutants, even though the latest scientific research shows that cancer or other serious diseases are harmful to the public.
The health risk is significantly lower than the upper limit prescribed by law
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EWG scientific analyst Sydney Evans, who participated in the two studies, said: “Drinking water rarely contains only one type of pollutant, but federal regulators only assess the public health of one type of tap water pollutant at a time.
Risk
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She said: "Through our latest research, EWG continues to make it necessary for decision makers to assess the actual threat posed by carcinogen combinations, because many people have no choice but to drink
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The drinking water infrastructure in the United States should have made large-scale investments long ago to significantly reduce pollution and better protect public health
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Evans said: "In the United States, everyone should have affordable and safe drinking water, no matter where they live
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The EWG study did not assess the level or risk of carcinogenic pollutants in private wells, which is not tracked by any government agency