Though the studies are peer reviewed and comprehensive, using decades of data on nitrate exposure and cancer outcomes for thousands of people, researchers caution that more assessments will be needed before they can make definitive claims about the health risk at lower levels of nitrate in drinking water. The EPA, for its part, has initiated its own health assessment of nitrate, the results of which will inform any agency attempt to strengthen the drinking water standard. The research calls into question the current EPA nitrate standard of 10 parts per million, and indicates a higher risk of bladder, ovarian, and colorectal cancer from nitrate levels half the legal limit. Building a treatment facility can cost a mid-sized city $10 million to $15 million.Įven as farmers and lawmakers struggle to stanch the flow of the plant nutrient into waterbodies, studies in the United States and Denmark suggest that they ought to do more in order to protect public health. Des Moines Water Works, which serves Iowa’s capital city, spent 9 percent of its operating budget in 2015 on nitrate removal, a year in which concentrations in its source water spiked. Cleaning up the mess is causing municipal budgets to balloon.Ī study published in May by the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a public policy group, found that removing nitrate has raised the cost of water treatment in the last decade. Environmental Protection Agency’s nitrate limit may need to be lowered because it does not account for potential long-term health damage, including the risk of cancer, that harms people into their adult years.Ī perennial environmental menace - as a trigger for the annual Gulf of Mexico dead zone and the degradation of Long Island’s estuaries - nitrate pollution in groundwater and rivers is growing worse, especially in farm regions, where crop fertilizer and manure are primary sources of the chemical. Scientists are accumulating evidence that the U.S. But recent research suggests that the standard, decided in 1991, is out of date.
drinking water standard for nitrate was set decades ago at a level to prevent infant deaths. States in the Midwest have some of the highest nitrate concentrations in groundwater because of farm fertilizers and manure. Sunrise casts a glow over Illinois farmland.