Knowing about contaminants can be key

As administrator of office of drinking water and environmental health, Jack Daniel works to help people understand water contaminants.

Maximum contaminant levels are determined under the Nebraska Safe Drinking Water Act. Here are some types of contaminants that water is tested for:

* Bacteria - Coliform and E-coli fall in this category.

* Inorganic chemicals - Such chemicals include arsenic, lead and nitrates.

Nitrates, a fertilizer, seep into the ground - and infants under 6 months old, expectant or breastfeeding moms can be considered at risk.

This is where the term, blue baby, comes from. A baby's intestinal tract isn't mature enough to deal with the nitrates which interfere with the exchange of oxygen from the lungs into the blood.

“And the baby turns blue from oxygen starvation,” Daniel said.

The high level standard is 10 parts per million for children and over 20 parts per million for adults. If it reaches this level, the public water supply system must find a solution by treating the water, hooking onto a source in another town or drilling a different well.

The agency works to encourage people with private wells to test at least once a year for nitrates, he said.

* Synthetic organic chemicals - These chemicals include pesticides such as atrazine, glyphosate, endrin and diquat, Daniel said.

For instance, the water can contain no more than 3 parts per billion of atrazine.

* Volatile organic chemicals - Perhaps the most common is benzene, a product of gasoline, Daniel said. And there's carbon tetra chloride, was used as a grain fumigant by the federal government. There are total trihalomethanes, byproducts of chlorination.

“Water has carbon. When you add chlorine, it will combine with the carbon compounds naturally found in water and they form these chemicals we call total trihalomethanes. They are associated with cancer,” Daniel said.

* Radionuclides - Uranium and radium are two of the main contaminants tested for. Most drinking water sources have very low levels of radioactive contaminants, most of which are naturally occurring, the Environmental Protection Agency Web site stated. Most radioactive contaminants are at levels that are low enough to not be considered a public health concern.

In terms of contaminants, there are two types - acute and chronic.

“Acute is where a single ingestion can make you sick - or even can be lethal. That's where the bacteria and nitrates comes in,” Daniel said. “The rest are on the chronic side, where it's an ingestion over time. Most of those have a cancer relationship. Some attack a specific organ. For instance, uranium attacks the kidney.”