Proposed water additive causes concern

Tag : ammonia water

DALLASTOWN - Nancy Taylor, the owner of the Treasured TalesPaperback Trade bookstore on Main Street in Dallastown, has beendrinking the southern York County borough's tap water for 45 years.
"I think we have good-tasting water," Taylor said. "I wouldn'thesitate to drink it."
Taylor and several other residents and business owners inDallastown, which is six miles south of York and has a populationof 4,100, were unaware that for decades the borough's drinkingwater has contained chloramine.
They also were unaware that the chemical, a blend of chlorine andammonia, lies at the center of a controversy that has pittedactivists in several states against federal and state regulatorsand water companies that maintain the chemical is time-tested andsafe. The activists associate a range of health problems with thedisinfectant.
That controversy has most recently rippled to the West Shore, wherePennsylvania American Water Co. announced last summer that itplanned to add chloramine to the water supply to meet new federaldrinking water standards.
After a public outcry and legal challenges that are pending, thecompany has delayed its plans until early 2009.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires water companiesto reduce potentially cancer-causing byproducts formed whenchlorine reacts with naturally occurring organic matter in water.The new rule has sent companies looking for alternatives tochlorine, and one of the cheapest is chloramine.
Chloramine, which produces lower levels of certain byproducts thanchlorine, has been used as a disinfectant to kill disease-carryingmicro-organisms in drinking water in the United States since 1917.Nearly one third of water systems in the country, serving more than68 million people, use chloramine, including 73 systems inPennsylvania with more than 4 million customers, according to thePennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
The agency says that drinking water with chloramine levels thatmeet federal standards carries little to no risk.
But residents groups in Vermont and San Francisco have Web sitesthat warn of skin rashes, open sores, diarrhea and asthmalikesymptoms that they say coincided with the introduction ofchloramine in their water.
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