Water Pollution - The Drinking Water - page 161

by those wells to contract leukemia and die over a span of 12 years—a rate
several times the national average for a community of its size. The families
involved sued two companies for dumping toxic waste. Their attorney, Jan
Schlichtmann, emphasized that Woburn was only one example of an under-
lying pathology that threatens many other communities.
Many who have read the topic or have seen the movie may mistakenly
get the notion that Woburn, a toxic “hot spot,” is a rare occurrence. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Toxic “hot spots” abound. Most striking are
areas of cancer clusters, a short list of which includes not only Woburn but
also Storrs, Connecticut, where wells polluted by a landfill are suspected of
sickening and killing residents in nearby homes. In Bellingham, Washington,
pesticide-contaminated drinking water is thought to be linked to a sixfold
increase in childhood cancers. Cancer is now the primary cause of child-
hood death from disease. Drinking water contamination is a problem—a
very serious problem. In this chapter, we discuss a wide range of water con-
taminants, the sources of these contaminants, and their impact on drinking
water supplies from both surface water and groundwater sources.
Sources of Contaminants
If we were to list all of the sources of contaminants and the contaminants
themselves (the ones that can and do foul our water supply systems), along
with a brief description of each contaminant, we could easily ill a topic. To
give you some idea of the magnitude of the problem we condensed a list of
selected sources and contaminants (our “short list”) to the following:
• Subsurface percolation —Hydrocarbons, metals, nitrates, phosphates,
microorganisms, cleaning agents (e.g., trichloroethylene, or TCE)
• Injection wells —Hydrocarbons, metals, non-metal inorganics, organic
and inorganic acids, organics, microorganisms, radionuclides
• Land application —Nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, hydrocar-
bons, microorganisms, radionuclides
• Landills —Organics, inorganics, microorganisms, radionuclides
• Open dumps —Organics, inorganics, microorganisms
• Residential (local) disposal —Organic chemicals, metals, non-metal
inorganics, inorganic acids, microorganisms
• Surface impoundments —Organic chemicals, metals, non-metal inor-
ganics, inorganic acids, microorganisms, radionuclides
• Waste tailings —Arsenic, sulfuric acid, copper, selenium, molybde-
num, uranium, thorium, radium, lead, manganese, vanadium