Joseph G. Hattersley May 1999
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Federal regulations require chlorine treatment of the water supplied to urban/suburban America from surface sources such as lakes, reservoirs and rivers. That constitutes about 75 percent of water that Americans consume. (Water from underground sources generally is not chlorinated unless it is supplemented by surface water. My hometown, Lacey, Washington, and some surrounding communities that are supplied water by Lacey, are fortunate to be among that group; I'd like to see that continue.)
Chlorination is inferior water treatment on at least two counts.
[Karl Note: The paragraph above makes reference to the costs of treating water in Andover, MA. Note that this material was originally written by Joseph G. Hattersley, but then included on a web page by Karl Loren. Here is a note received on the above subject on November 1, 2001 from Jack Petkus. It is of interest that Mr. Petkus does not speak to the point of the harm done by chlorine in our drinking water.]
Dear Karl,
The Town of Andover ozone treatment cost is slightly less than $41 per MG of
water treated with ozone not $83 as stated in your article. The $83 may have
included capital costs but the plant has since been fully capitalized. We also
add chlorine to the finished water because ozone, while an excellent
disinfectant, leaves no residual so it can leave the distribution network at
risk. Hope this clarifies things for you and the readers of your site.
Jack Petkus, Andover, MA
From: Petkus, Jack [mailto:JPetkus@town.andover.ma.us]
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 5:51 AM
To: 'Karl Loren'
Subject: RE: Message to Karl Loren from the heart Disease Bypass Surgery Data Section
Dear Karl,Chlorine is still the best tool that we have for preventing bacterial growth in the distribution system - it works and it is reasonably inexpensive. If anyone has a fear of chlorine, there are a number of de-chlorination devices out there that are fairly cheap. The cheapest one of all is letting the water sit for a period of time and all of the chlorine will leave on its own! The following is an e-mail excerpt that I sent to one of your web site visitors:
Our Ozone system is not new as it was constructed in 1988. It is somewhat older technology as it uses dried air as a medium. The problem with dried air is that it contains nitrogen and the slightest amount of moisture reacts with the ozone to form nitric acid which raises all kinds of problems with the interior of the ozone reactor (the acid eats holes in the stainless steel reactor tubes (which are in a water jacket for cooling) and eventually rupture and flood the reactor. Since water and high voltage electricity do not mix very well the entire reactor shorts out and shuts down. The state of the art system uses pure oxygen (derived from liquid oxygen - LOX) as a medium so there is no nitrogen to create problems. We are looking to convert to this type system with a future plant expansion.Ozone treatment currently costs us slightly less than $41 per mg (operation and maintenance only as we assume the ozone facility has been completely capitalized). I am not sure where you got $83 per mg but that is quite high. With a pure LOX system we believe that we can cut that cost in half. We normally do not run ozone from December through March.
Karl Loren
CBS' "Sixty Minutes" show July 11, 1992, displayed two laboratory rats, both of them eating standard rat chow and drinking chlorinated water. One rat had clear arteries. The other was also drinking pasteurized, homogenized milk. When the animals were sacrificed and cut open, the arteries of its milk-drinking companions were clogged. A scientist in a white coat winked at the camera and said, "He [the rat he was holding] is the only one doing research on that." The researcher didn't say why, but the powerful dairy and chemical lobbies come to mind.
Dairy buckets and hoses, and rats' arteries resist the arterial-wall damage known as atherosclerosis. But what can chlorinated water and milk, particularly homogenized milk, do to the far more susceptible arteries of humans? The arteries of young chickens are about as susceptible to such damage as people's arteries. So as a first approximation, J.M. Price, MD gave cockerels (roosters less than a year old) only chlorinated water. They rapidly developed arterial plaques; and the stronger the concentration of chlorine, the faster and worse the damage. Other cockerels given unchlorinated water developed no such damage.2
The residents of the small town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, had no heart attacks despite a diet rich in saturated animal fats and milk--until they moved away from Roseto's mountain spring water and drank chlorinated water. After that, consuming the same diet, they had heart attacks.2 The Roseto example is dramatic enough, but the needed detailed comparisons and follow-up are not likely to be done.
What's going on here? Highly reactive chlorine is one of the industrial waste products profitably disposed of into us Americans like garbage cans, then on into the environment. Chlorine oxidizes lipid (fatty) contaminants in the water. It thus creates free radicals2 (highly reactive sub-atomic particles lacking an electron) and oxysterols (formed when lipid molecules combine with oxygen molecules).
We require moderate numbers of both free radicals and oxysterols. The immune system employs free radicals to kill cells that its cellular immune mechanism can't handle. A second mechanism using free radicals initiates programmed cell death known as apoptosis. And moderate quantities of oxysterols, like cholesterol itself, serve a protective function. But excess free radicals and excess oxysterols damage arteries and initiate cancer, among many other kinds of harm.
How well does the incidence of heart attacks match the areas where, and times when water is/was chlorinated? Chlorination spread throughout America in the second and third decades of this century, about 20 years before the mushrooming of heart attacks. Light chlorination, we will recall, yielded slow growth of plaques in Price's cockerels; and so chlorination of people's drinking water at the usual low concentration would have been expected to take at least 10-20 years to produce clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis. The timing fits, and the Roseto example fits.
A physician team led by William F. Enos autopsied three hundred GIs who had died in battle in the Korean War. These men, who had passed induction examination as healthy, averaged 22.1 years of age; the doctors wondered what they would find. To their shock and amazement, in seventy-seven percent of the 300 they found "gross evidence of arteriosclerosis in the coronary arteries." In several, one or more heart arteries were partly or completely occluded (blocked).
Although Dr. Enos didn't try to explain his grisly discovery, he assumed arterial clogging had developed gradually. Seeming to support that assumption, almost 20 years later advanced arterial damage was discovered in ninety-six percent of nearly 200 consecutive babies who had died in their first month outside the womb. Two of those babies' coronary arteries were blocked, causing infantile heart attacks.
But did arterial damage in fact develop slowly? The water American soldiers had to drink in Korea was so heavily chlorinated that many could hardly tolerate it. In Vietnam too, autopsies of American solders found heart-artery damage. Again, water supplied to them had been heavily chlorinated.2 Did much of these soldiers' arterial damage develop, not gradually but quickly as in Dr. Price's cockerels? The truth-slow or rapid development of clogging-may never be known.
Industrial chemist J.P. Bercz, PhD, showed in
1992 that chlorinated water alters and destroys unsaturated essential fatty
acids (EFAs), the building blocks of people's brains and central nervous
systems. The compound hypochlorite, created
when chlorine mixes with water, generates excess free radicals; these oxidize
EFAs, turning them rancid.
SIDEBAR: Most Western diets already contain very little of critically needed omega-3 EFAs. These are found in fish oil, better, in flaxseed oil; also in moderate quantity in first-virgin olive oil. These EFAs (except in olive oil) go rancid quickly. And so, to extend their products' shelf life food processors remove all health-promoting EFAs while destroying or discarding most needed micronutrients.
Processors substitute either saturated fats or, now,
partially hydrogenated trans, transformed fats. Found in all boxed and
packaged foods that have long lists of hard-to-pronounce chemical names on the
side, trans fatty acids consumed in large quantity can cause heart
attacks and many other degenerative diseases.
And chlorine reacts with organic compounds in water to produce trihalomethanes (THMs) such as carcinogenic (cancer originating) chloroform and carbon tetrachloride. It is the combination of chlorine and organic materials already in the water that produces cancer-causing byproducts. The more organic matter in the water, the greater is the accumulation of THMs.
In a study of more than 5,000 pregnant women in the Fontana, Walnut Creek and Santa Clara areas of California, researchers from the state health department found that women who drank more than five glasses a day of tap water that contained over 75 parts per billion of THMs had a 9.5 percent risk of spontaneous abortions, i.e. miscarriage. Women with lower exposure to the contaminants showed 5.7 percent risk. No comparison was given for women who ingested no THMs.
Taking a warm shower or lounging in a hot tub filled with chlorinated water, one inhales chloroform. And worse, warm water opens the pores, causing the skin to act like a sponge, and so one will absorb and inhale more chlorine in a 10-minute shower than by drinking eight glasses of the same water. This irritates the eyes, the sinuses, throat, skin and lungs, makes the hair and scalp dry, worsening dandruff. It can weaken immunity.
A window from the shower room open to the outdoors removes chloroform from the shower room air. But to prevent absorption of chlorine through the skin, a shower-head that removes chlorine from shower water is a must. The ShowerWiseTM filter and showerhead can be ordered for $69, plus two filters $129--from What Doctors Don't Tell You, 1-800-851-7100 or fax 410-223-2619.
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SIDEBAR: Chlorine in swimming pools reacts with organic matter such as sweat, urine, blood, feces, mucus and skin cells to form chloramines. Chloroform risk can be 70 to 240 times higher in the air over indoor pools than over outdoor pools. If the pool smells very much of chlorine, don't go into it.
Canadian researchers found that after swimming for an hour in a chlorinated pool, chloroform concentrations in the swimmers' blood ranged from 100 to 1,093 parts per billion (ppb). Researchers even recorded increases in chloroform concentration in bathers' lungs of about 2.7 ppb after a 10-minute shower in chlorinated water. For many people the intake through those routes is much greater than in water taken orally.
Studies in Belgium have related development of deadly malignant melanoma to consumption of chlorinated water. Franz H. Rampen, et al., of the Netherlands, state that the worldwide pollution of rivers and oceans and the chlorination of swimming pool water have led to an increase in melanoma. That disease is not associated with exposure to ultraviolet light. People who work indoors all the time, exposed to fluorescent lights, have the highest incidence of melanoma.
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Long-term risks of consuming chlorinated water include excessive free radical formation, which accelerates aging, increases vulnerability to genetic mutation and cancer development, causes difficulty metabolizing cholesterol, and promotes hardening of arteries.
Excess free radicals created by chlorinated water also create dangerous toxins in the body. These have been directly linked to liver malfunction, weakening of the immune system and pre-arteriosclerotic changes in arteries (which, as we saw, struck Dr. Price's cockerels and may have happened to American soldiers in Korea and Vietnam). Excess free radicals have been linked also to alterations of cellular DNA, the stuff of inheritance.
Chlorine also destroys antioxidant vitamin E, which is needed to counteract excess oxysterols/free radicals for cardiac and anti-cancer protection.2
Other harm from chlorination. A study in the late 1970s found that chlorinated water appears to increase the risk of gastrointestinal cancer over a person's lifetime by 50 to 100 percent. This study analyzed thousands of cancer deaths in North Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin and Louisiana. Risk of such cancers results from use of water containing chlorine at or below the E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency) standard and "is going to make the E.P.A. standard look ridiculous," stated Dr. Robert Harris, lead scientist in the study.
Later, a meta-analysis found chlorinated water is associated each year in America with about 4,200 cases of bladder cancer and 6,500 cases of rectal cancer. Chlorine is estimated to account for 9 percent of bladder cancer cases and 18% of rectal cancers. Those cancers develop because the bladder and rectum store waste products for periods of time. (Keeping the bowels moving regularly will minimize such risk.) Chlorinated water is also associated with higher total risk of combined cancers. Chlorine in treated water can cause allergic symptoms ranging from skin rash to intestinal symptoms to arthritis, headaches, and on and on.
Why does chlorine in water cause these problems? It destroys protective acidophilus, which nourishes and cooperates with the immunity-strengthening "friendly" organisms lining the colon. And, as mentioned earlier, chlorine combines with organic impurities in the water to make trihalomethanes (THMs), or chloramines. The more organic matter, the more THMs; and like excess oxysterols they are carcinogens.
Recent research has found a new hazard in chlorinated water: a byproduct called MX. A research team from the National Public Health Institute in Finland discovered that, by causing genetic mutations, MX initiates cancer in laboratory animals. And DCA (dichloro acedic acid) in chlorinated water alters cholesterol metabolism, changing HDL ("good") to LDL ("bad") cholesterol--and causes liver cancer in laboratory animals.
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SIDEBAR: Dr. David Williams warns of potentially disastrous water pollution at the start of year 2000. American deaths and illnesses caused by drinking water are already over one million a year (some estimate seven times that many) and increasing exponentially. Such deaths are estimated at 9,000 every year, illnesses in the millions; and both bunch up during temporary breakdowns of water-system regulation.
The computers that control thousands of water systems are not being prepared. And so, when double zero is entered for the year 2000, computers could go berserk and cause multiple malfunctions countrywide. He warns this could cause a major disaster.
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Is there a better substitute for chlorine in water treatment: Yes. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) destroys infectious organisms and impurities in water 4,000 times better than chlorine. Ozone (O3) treatment, mentioned on page 1, is equally effective. Eleven hundred cities, worldwide, treat their drinking water with ozone; many have done so since as early as 1901. (Los Angeles treats its drinking water with H2O2, then adds chlorine. Some chlorine may be added after ozonation, to prevent re-infestation; only about one-third as much is needed.)
To generate ozone, dry air or oxygen is passed through a high-voltage electrical field. Ozone drinking-water treatment in Andover, Massachusetts successfully controlled the effects of algae blooms and eliminated water quality problems. Potential THM formation was reduced by an average of 75 percent.
But H2O2 and O3 are relatively cheap; moreover, the only byproducts are pure oxygen and hydrogen, so no one can make a big immediate profit on them. (Hydrogen is a potential major energy source for electricity generation and for zero-emission vehicles, and so it could be important in future years.) France and Germany, wiser and less controlled by the chemical industry, chlorinate water only in emergencies.
The chemical companies pulled off a huge coup
when they bamboozled America and Canada into chlorination.
They make big profits disposing of excess chlorine into our drinking water;
otherwise, they would have to pay to destroy it. So now we know why American
water isn't treated with safe, cheaper, more effective ozone. And now we know
why Dr. Price's revealing studies with cockerels were never followed up.
SIDEBAR: Swimming in chlorinated water. Drinking and swimming in chlorinated water can cause malignant melanoma. Sodium hypochlorite, used in chlorination of water for swimming pools, is mutagenic in the Ames test and other mutagenicity tests. Redheads and blonds are disproportionately melanoma-prone; their skin contains a relative excess of pheomelanins compared to darker people.
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Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) tests have shown that "in the water we drink, over 2,100 organic and inorganic chemicals [including pesticides, heavy metals, radon, radioactive particles] and parasitic organisms including cryptosporidium have been identified; 156 of them are pure carcinogens. (In 1993, cryptosporidium killed more than 100 and infected over 400,000.) Of those, 26 are tumor promoting [they can make an existing tumor grow]. Exposure to cryptosporidium in people with lowered gastrointestinal immune function could lead to chronic GI infection. Other examples include recurring cases of Legionnaire's disease, a pneumonia caused by Legionella pneumophila, which may lurk in hot water supplies.
A public notice recently issued in Washington, D.C. warned that a high level of bacteria in the [chlorinated, fluoridated city system] water made it unsafe for dialysis patients, AIDS patients, organ transplant patients, the elderly and infants. Water contamination is the worst in small communities that can't afford proper treatment; the EPA has not released this information.
And hearings before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight discussed Pfiesteria outbreaks among people drinking chlorinated water. The organism, which kills fish, sickens some people; they get sick from drinking the water, not from eating infected seafood. The EPA's Robert Perciasepe said, in written testimony, that "Any new public health policy on this issue needs to consider reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in our waters." A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would require managers of municipal water systems to tell customers what contaminants have been found in local drinking water. But with present crude test methods (see page 7), that would offer little help.
Sherry Rogers, MD, pioneer in and authority on environmental medicine (EM), raises the number of chemicals in drinking water to 5,000. And 85 percent of American aquifers supplying wells below 8,000 feet altitude are contaminated with heavy metals; a recent federal report says the water you drink may have been recycled from sewage waste back to drinking water five times. As the late Kevin Treacy, MD of Australia said, "If municipal water were introduced now, it would not be allowed."
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SIDEBAR: Plants do not thrive as well on chlorinated as on unchlorinated water; wild animals do not develop atherosclerosis until they drink chlorinated water in American zoos. Although their food, selected by people, isn't the same as what they caught, plucked or dug up in the wilds, evidence suggests chlorinated water, together with its thousands of other chemicals, is the worst culprit in their arterial clogging.
Scientists in Minnesota grew embryos from healthy frogs in plain tap water. Some of the frogs had no legs or six legsor an eye in the middle of the throat. Earlier, deformed frogs were found in the U.S., Canada and Japan. And we are drinking that stuff!
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The EPA called 129 of the contaminants found in water supplies "dangerous" singly, let alone in combination. Pesticides and other toxic wastes run off farmlands and pastures or are dumped by factories, pollute rivers and seep into underground aquifers. Aptly called "biocides" by Russell Jaffe, MD, PhD, pesticides are designed to end life; few have been shown to be safe. The EPA depends on producers of pesticides to test their safety: the wolf guards the hen house. It should be no surprise that the tests take a long time, and many have been fraudulent.
Further, one poison is tested at a time; synergistic effects of combinations, potentially far worse, are ignored. Besides, many of the so-called "inert" substances in pesticide combinations are more toxic than the "active;" one of the "inerts" is DDT, prohibited for American farm use since 1973.
Are these contaminants dangerous in such minute quantities? Yes! In a laboratory, healthy living cells weakened, malfunctioned and some died within seconds or minutes when exposed to toxins commonly detected in American drinking water such as mercury, nickel, cadmium and lead at the extremely low concentration of only one part per billion (ppb).
Isn't all that bad enough without the deliberate addition of the further toxicity of chlorine?
Protection of water: Government laboratories test only for bacterial content and a few of the major inorganic toxins such as lead and arsenic. So, to get a complete water test one must consult a private laboratory.
Many recommend expensive reverse-osmosis water treatment. A high-quality reverse-osmosis water purifier that removes 87 to 93 percent of fluoride, as well as comparable percentages of other toxins, is known as The Duchess. It can be purchased at retail for $650, or for $370 from the Natural Medicine Institute, 19125 SE Stark Street, Portland, OR 97233; (503) 491-1067.
Dr. Julian Whitaker uses and recommends the Ultra-Sun water filter, which can be installed under the sink or on the countertop. The system combines solid carbon block filters with ultraviolet (UV) light chambers. The carbon block filters remove lead, chemical and organic pollutants, chlorination byproducts, and improve taste, and the UV light kills microbes. It avoids reverse osmosis, which discards valuable minerals from the water such as calcium, magnesium and trace minerals. The filter can be purchased from Phillips Products and Services at 800-705-5559, ext. K11019. The cost: $295.
Consumer Reports, in July 1997, rated the simpler PUR filter, which easily attaches to a kitchen faucet, very high; and it is relatively inexpensive. We bought ours at Fred Meyer. (I have no financial relationship with any distributor.)
ADDENDUM: Low-level radiation is healthful, not harmful as is generally assumed. Low-Dose Irradiation and Biological Defense Mechanisms. By T Sugahara, L. Sagan, T. Aoyama. NY: Excerpta Medica, 1992. ISBN# 0-444-89409-8.
Higher levels of radon radiation in homes yield lower lung cancer and also less of other cancers, better immune systems and longer life. There is a correlation between lung cancer and radon exposure; but the correlation is negative. And "p" is well under .00l. That means, the probability the result could have happened by chance is less than one in one thousand. All this was learned from study of 1,720 U.S. counties that include 90 percent of US population.
The EPA policy of requiring reduction of radon in homes derives from the "linear hypothesis." Extremely high radiation yields extreme damage, and less-high radiation, less severe damage. So they extend the line straight to the origin and assume that even low radiation causes some damage. But no one has ever studied the effects on animals, or people, of deliberate exposure to low-level radiation. Millions of people visit "radon spas" in Germany and Russia every year, and 75 percent benefit.
EPA wants the nation to spend perhaps $300 billion to lower radon exposure. But the effect of all that spending will be to make people have more cancer, more illness, and die sooner. "At least 20,000 people are dying of lung cancer each year in the U.S. who could have been saved by raising the radon concentration of the air in their homes."
Note: I have no financial relationship to any supplier.
Joseph G. Hattersley
Olympia, WA
(360) 491-1164
REFERENCES:
Above document Copyright (c) 1999, Joseph Hattersley. All Rights Reserved.
The above document written by Joseph Hattersley was posted on this site at his request and with his permission.
No warranty is provided for the information contained in this document. Use at your own risk!
Always check with your doctor before starting any medical or nutritional program.
This web site was created by David Hattersley of Hatsoft Incorporated.
Joseph Hattersley can be reached by email at: hattersleyjoseph@hotmail.com
The table of contents for Joseph Hattersley's work is located here.
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