The proponents of Boulder Ballot Question 2B claim they only want to rid the cityıs water of added lead and arsenic. As their chirpy campaign slogan proclaims, “Yes 2B lead and arsenic free.”
If only they were so simple and sincere.
The 2B slogan implies that the “clean drinking water initiative” will rid city water of arsenic and lead. But 2B would do no such thing. It would remove infinitesimal — truly negligible — amounts of the heavy metals. It would do nothing about background arsenic and lead — comparatively gargantuan amounts that dwarf that which is added.
These are facts 2B’s proponents try to obscure:
Arsenic has been detected only once in Boulder’s water supply since 2004; on that one occasion, arsenic in Barker Reservoir was detected at 1 part per billion. In that single instance — a peak — arsenic in only one of Boulder’s water sources reached only 10 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Maximum Contaminant Level for arsenic.
Even at its highest recorded level of contamination, that trivial amount of arsenic, 1 ppb, is 10 times greater than the amount of arsenic added by fluoridation (the real target of 2B). Fluoridation, in other words, adds only 1 per 10 billion parts. That is 100 times lower than the EPA’s MCL, which is designed to protect public health.
Lead, meanwhile, has not been detected in Boulder’s source water. Lead is, however, found in Boulder tap water. But that contamination doesn’t come from fluoridation. Last year in Boulder, corrosion of old pipes in Boulder caused an average lead level of 2.8 ppb. That’s less than 20 percent of the EPA Action Level of 15 ppb.
Again, the average level of lead leaching from household pipes, 2.8 ppb, dwarfs the lead introduced by the city. Fluoridation adds lead totaling 3 parts per trillion — yes, trillion. In other words, the average Boulder tap has 933 times more lead than that which is introduced through fluoridation.
The risk of these trivial amounts of added arsenic and lead is incalculable. Proponents of 2B produce no credible scientific evidence — none — indicating a health risk from 0.1 ppb of arsenic and 0.003 ppb of lead.
They do, however, tout a 2001 report from the National Academies’ National Research Council. That research concludes that people who consume water containing 3 ppb of arsenic over a lifetime have a 1 in 1,000 increased risk of cancer. Using a linear extrapolation — not based on any empirical evidence — 2B’s proponents argue that 3 percent of the 3 ppb level also poses a cancer risk.
Such is the unscientific claptrap behind the effort to frighten Boulder voters about lead and arsenic. When confronted with the utter dearth of actual evidence to support their scare tactics, 2B’s supporters claim that any added arsenic and lead, no matter how insignificant, poses a health risk.
Their argument is simply not credible. It is a transparent ploy.
Randall Weiner, director of the misleadingly named Clean Water Advocates of Boulder, insists that 2B is “not about fluoride.” But both his CWA cohorts and even he himself admit that he opposes fluoridation. And by the group’s own admission, many of its members oppose water fluoridation.
If 2B were to pass, Boulder could fluoridate its water if and only if fluoridation added no lead or arsenic. Such “pharmaceutical-grade” fluoride for city water supplies is not available.
And even if it were available, 2B would require that fluoride in city water be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Never mind that the FDA doesn’t regulate public drinking water. The EPA does.
Under 2B, then, fluoridating city water would require an act of Congress (authorizing FDA approval of fluoridated water supplies), and FDA approval of a staggering range of “dosages” of tap-water fluoride, based on individual daily water consumption.
CWA asks Boulder voters to nullify fluoridation, one of the 10 great public-health successes of the last century, based on the group’s fallacious, groundless and unscientific claims. Issue 2B is an insult to the voters’ intelligence. They should respond with an overwhelming “no.”
The preceding was originally published as an editorial in the Boulder Sunday Camera on October 8, 2006
This message is from the Vote No on 2B Committee,
supported by the many very concerned health professionals serving the people of Boulder.
