By Megan Ma
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Two years after the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission introduced chloramine as a disinfectant into the Hetch Hetchy water supply, area activists and a state Assemblyman are raising an alarm, contending that the substance may be harming water drinkers from San Francisco to Los Altos Hills.
Water officials disagree and doctors are unsure, but Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, is calling for the state to conduct more studies on chloramine.
Los Altos Hills water consumers are among about 10 million Bay Area residents whose tap water was dosed recently with chloramine. Los Altos’ water has had chloramine since 1983, but the provider, Santa Clara Valley Water District, significantly raised the chemical’s levels in July 2004. Water officials said chloramine at the current dosage is safe for humans and animals.
Many area residents strongly disagree. More than 300 people from all over the Bay Area have come together as Citizens Concerned About Chloramine, a Menlo Park-based group that is aggressively lobbying local and state officials to remove the disinfectant from the water until dermal and inhalant studies can be done. In the last two years, members said, they have experienced a range of health problems from skin rashes to intestinal pains akin to irritable bowel syndrome that they blame on chloramine.
Chloramine, a mixture of ammonia and chlorine, has been used as a primary disinfectant by some cities in the United States since 1900. The mixture, which has replaced traditional chlorine disinfectant, is used by 30 percent of the nation’s water treatment plants. Water boards switched to chloramine to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s mandate to reduce trihalomethanes, a byproduct of chlorine that is a possible carcinogen. Among several other EPA-approved methods to filter trihalomethanes from water, chloramination is the cheapest.
Health problems cited
Joe Yang, 23, of Los Altos Hills, is convinced that chloramination is dangerous and that he’s living proof of it. Yang’s debilitating health problems began in 2001 while he was a freshman at UC San Diego.
Born with eczema, Yang said his skin condition had been under control until that year, when his breakouts became oddly severe. Rashes covered his body, and the incessant itching left him stricken. He couldn’t study or maintain a social life, said his mother, Rolanda. At the same time, Yang said, he was besieged by food allergies from dorm food, which made college life even tougher.
By fall 2003, his eczema had become so severe that he had to quit school. Doctors recommended Yang change his diet and buy air filtration devices, suspecting that airborne allergens and certain foods were triggers.
But even at home, the painful rashes that kept him awake each night didn’t go away. It wasn’t until Yang stumbled on an article in March 2004 that he began to suspect the culprit. He discovered that chloramine had been added to the water supply just one month earlier. San Diego had also been using it for more than 20 years.
It irked him, he said, that he could find no health studies concluding the chemical was safe for humans.
No scientific studies have linked chloramines to such dermal, respiratory and digestive problems Yang and other people have complained about.
“It’s unethical that the water boards can put this in our water without studying it,” said Yang, who has been suffering from severe eczema for years.
Link is tenuous
Yang’s physician, Dr. Massoud Mahmoudi, an assistant allergy professor at UC San Francisco who has a private practice in Los Altos, is hesitant to draw a connection. People who are predisposed to allergies might have a stronger reaction to chloramine, he said, but so far, the link is tenuous.
On Feb. 3, 2004, Denise Johnson-Kula took a shower in her Menlo Park apartment. As soon as the water came rushing out, she began coughing, wheezing and experiencing what she called “severe asthma symptoms” even though she’d never been diagnosed with asthma. She nearly passed out and, for days afterward, had trouble breathing.
A scaly rash, akin to eczema, covered her body for the next few weeks and worsened with each shower. She became nauseous and even bled shortly after drinking the water. She tried boiling the water, but the steam seemed to aggravate her breathing difficulties. She later discovered that just one day before her frightening ordeal, the San Francisco utilities commission had added chloramine to its water supply.
Dr. Robert Bocian of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation prescribed allergy medications that were ineffective, Johnson-Kula said. Shortly thereafter, Bocian wrote a public letter calling for officials to remove chloramine from her water, saying it was a “medical necessity” for his patient’s health.
When Johnson-Kula avoided contact with the water altogether, her symptoms disappeared. But her doctors had no immediate answers.
A biochemist by training, Johnson-Kula said that although her symptoms were “pretty dramatic and clear-cut,” other people continue to suffer silently.
“A lot of people are suffering out there, but don’t even know what’s in their water,” she said. “They have sores and allergies. Doctors can’t diagnose the condition, because they don’t know what to look for.”
After exhaustive research, Johnson-Kula, president of the Menlo Park activist group, said she is certain that chloramine is to blame. And she’s not alone.
Spike in dosage levels
Even though Los Altos has had chloraminated water for 23 years, Johnson-Kula said, the spike in dosage levels since 2004 is potentially more dangerous. So far, there are at least two Los Altos residents who have reported reactions to the water since chloramine doses rose.
The N.J. Department of Health and Senior Services maintains in its “Chloramine Fact Sheet” that increased doses of chloramine, as with any chemical, may increase the chance of illness. The dosage was significantly increased in Los Altos water in 2003 to meet new EPA standards.
Johnson-Kula must shower once a week at a hotel or at a friend’s home in Morgan Hill, one of the few area cities that doesn’t treat its water with chloramines. Like Yang, she only uses bottled spring water for her daily needs.
Recently, research scientists contracted by EPA published results of a study in the Environmental Science and Technology Magazine that has garnered attention. Water chloramination produces increased doses of disinfection byproducts with more potent toxicities than those currently regulated, the study found.
Susan Richardson, a chemist at EPA’s Ecosystems Research Division lab in Athens, Ga., and head of the 2002 survey said she was “very surprised” at the finding.
But Ron Richardson, district manager for Cal Water Service Co., an investor-owned company in Los Altos, said chloramine-treated water is safe by all accounts.
“Every substance is toxic, it’s just dependent on the dose,” Richardson said. “The levels of chloramine are approved by the EPA and state Department of Health Services.” However, he said that no studies have been done to verify chloramine safety.
Chloramine kills fish
One thing that is known about chloramine is that it is deadly for fish, amphibians and reptiles.
Many people know that untreated tap water can kill their fish. But residents who didn’t hear that the San Francisco utilities group switched to chloramine in 2004 got an unpleasant surprise.
Sunnyvale resident Marty McGrath thought he had taken precautions to keep chloramine out of his backyard pond. He didn’t hear about his city water being dosed with chloramines. But when his fish died after he had changed the pond water, he knew that something was wrong. The second time his fish died, water peppering out of sprinkler head had inadvertently sprayed into the pond.
“I think it’s pretty scary that it kills fish,” McGrath said. “Even a small amount of chloramine can kill them. It’s no wonder people are having problems.”
Kristen Van Dam, restoration and outreach coordinator at the Urban Creeks Council in Berkeley, witnessed a major water main break on June 1, 2005, that sent 100,000 gallons of water into three major creeks, including Strawberry and Cordonices creeks. Thirty Sacramento suckerfish were killed, Van Dam said. Marin County has also reported water main breaks that have killed several dozen fish.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves Alameda and Contra Costa counties, has not studied the contaminated fish, which are in storage at a lab at UC Berkeley. Neither the city nor state water boards responded quickly to the problem, Van Dam said.
“I’ll just say there was no impetus to test the fish,” Van
Dam said.
What’s next?
Johnson-Kula and her fellow activists have consulted dozens of lawyers and raised money to get the word out about chloramine. A class-action lawsuit may be launched against local water boards, she said. City governments and water boards must be held liable, she said, for imposing the chemical on the public.
The group’s efforts have caught the attention of Ruskin, chairman of the Assembly’s environmental safety committee. On Feb. 23, he introduced AB2402 that would require additional research on chemical disinfectants added to the state’s water.
Despite the growing grassroots effort, Johnson-Kula said, the most effective strategy would be to pressure lawmakers to make a change.
“This thing will snowball as more people find out about the harm it can do,” she said. “This is a legitimate attempt to get the word out. This is not hysteria.”
For more information, visit www.chloramine.org.
