County Waterworks Districts and Vacaville. The cities that tested above the state's legal limit run from Sacramento to Los Angeles through California's Central Valley.Īmong the water districts that tested below the legal limit, but above the public health goal are Hollister, L.A. In the EWG report, Los Banos water samples registered the highest level of chromium 6, at 31.5 ppb, followed by Kerman City at 19.2 ppb and Patterson City at 18 ppb. To reach 1 ppb, the cost would have been 11 times higher. To set the legal limit only half as high, at 5 ppb, would have tripled the cost. State officials found that getting chromium 6 levels below 10 ppb added significantly to the cost of compliance. The state's legal limit represents a cancer risk of 500 people per-one-million, for people who drink the water daily for 70 years. It was the first drinking water standard for chromium 6 in the nation. Public health officials set the legally enforceable level 500 times higher than the public health goal, at 10 parts per billion. When the California Department of Public Health set a legally enforceable level in 2014, it took into account factors such as how costly it would be for water districts to monitor and clean up the chemical. State law requires the legal limit be set "as close as is technically and economically feasible" to the public health goal. 02 ppb, the risk of developing cancer for people who drink the water daily for 70 years is no more than a one-in-a-million. A part per billion is about a drop of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.Ī public health goal must represent a negligible health risk. Toxicologists at the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set the public health goal for chromium intake at. 'Does the state want us to drink distilled water? Cause that’s basically what they’re trying to get us to do, it’s absurd.’ Ken Moore, Kerman City’s Public Works Director In fact, California is the only state that does.Īnd California has two standards: a legally enforceable limit on chromium 6 in drinking water, and a much lower public health goal. Outside of the workplace, the main way people might be exposed to chromium 6 is through drinking water.Īnd although the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulates chromium 6 in work environments, the EPA doesn't regulate chromium 6 in drinking water. The chemical occurs naturally in the environment from the erosion of natural chromium deposits but it's also manufactured and used in stainless steel production, metal finishing, chrome plating, leather tanning, and to prevent corrosion in electrical plant cooling towers, as was the case in Hinkley. "We’re not trying to say the chromium 6 situation is as bad as the Flint situation but we’re saying if you start to look at it more closely you can find some really disturbing things." "It was eye opening," says Bill Walker, co-author of the Environmental Working Group report. An interactive map developed from the data shows chromium 6 levels in California and throughout the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency collected from water utilities across the country between 20. The report is from the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog agency based in Washington, D.C. The non-profit analyzed data the U.S. The report also found the vast majority of samples from water districts serving roughly 8.5 million Californians across the state had hexavalent chromium at levels below the legal limit, but above the public health goal set by state scientists.
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