Back in 1983, a state panel advised that pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant be warned to “avoid all sources of water known to be contaminated with DBCP at any level.”
The panel — the Subcommittee on Health Effects — had been established by the state to evaluate existing and potential health effects of exposure to the pineapple pesticide dibromochloropropane in Hawai`i drinking water supplies. In addition, the committee was to recommend maximum contaminant levels for drinking water.
On July 29, 1983, the committee made its report to then Director of Health Charles Clark. Known health effects, such as sterility and “testicular dysfunction” in exposed pesticide applicators, were listed. The committee then reported, “Available data suggests that DBCP may also possibly be a teratogenic agent (may produce birth defects), although such effects have not been studied to date.”
The committee went on to recommend that the state establish the maximum contaminant level of DBCP in drinking water at 20 parts per billion, which was at the time the lowest amount of DBCP that could be “reliably measured” by the state Department of Health. (Since then, the maximum contaminant level has been set at 40 parts per trillion.)
The letter continues, “Exposure to DBCP in drinking water (and by other routes) should be reduced to the lowest practicable levels. Since teratogenic effects of DBCP in humans have not been studied, it is prudent to advise that pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant avoid all sources of water known to be contaminated with DBCP at any level.”
Among those signing the letter was Bruce Anderson, then environmental epidemiologist for the DOH and now in charge of the department’s environmental programs.
DBCP’s effects are now understood only slightly better than they were a decade ago. It is known to be a probable cancer-causing agent in humans. It has harmful effects on the male reproductive system. It can cause genetic damage, including the breaking of chromosomes and a higher incidence of double Y chromosomes in sperm cells.
Today, water from wells contaminated with DBCP are filtered before entering public drinking water systems. This is supposed to ensure that levels of DBCP in tap water are lower than 20 parts per trillion, which is the limit at which tests used by the Department of Health can detect the presence of the chemical. (In other words, water contaminated at 19 parts per trillion would not test positive for DBCP.)
Yet another serious contaminant in Kunia Wells II is TCP, or trichloropropane, which was identified as a possible cancer-causing agent in 1991.
In “Our Stolen Future,” Theo Colburn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers write that society’s “preoccupation with cancer has blinded us to evidence signaling other dangers. It has thwarted investigation of other risks that may prove equally important not only to health of individuals but also to the well being of society.”
The lack of research done on the relationship between pesticides and birth defects also endangers the public via the maximum contaminant levels placed on pesticides. “For noncancer hazards such as reproductive and developmental damage, the agency (EPA) assumes that a chemical may pose no hazard in low concentrations beneath some threshold level,” the authors write. “But when it is a question of cancer, the EPA turns to a linear model, which assumes that no level is safe. Even the tiniest dose of a chemical is presumed capable of causing cancer.”
The book’s chapter “Beyond Cancer” notes that the public’s health and well being can suffer even when the adverse health effects of hormone-mimicking chemicals (such as DBCP) fall short of catastrophic disease or defect: “Hormone-disrupting chemicals can diminish individuals without making them sick. For this reason, there is an urgent need to look for ‘impaired function’ as well as disorders that fit the classic notions of disease. For example, having a poor short term memory or difficulty paying attention because of exposure to PCBs is very different from having a brain tumor. The former are deficits, not diseases, but they can nevertheless have serious consequences over a lifetime and for a society.”
Volume 8, Number 7 January 1998
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