Watermark > Spring 2002 > Features: New Arsenic Limit of 10 Parts Per Billion Now Law in USA
Features
- Drinking Water Protection: Where are we at?—Rick Corbett, BCWWA President
- Fire Hydrants: Life Safety and Life Threatening?—Doug Dolan, Cross Connection Control Chair
- Dewaterability of Thermophilically Digested Biosolids—Jim Zhou, Don Mavinic, and Harlan Kelly
- Full Cost Pricing, Accounting for Water and Sewage Services Contained in New Safe Water Legislation Introduced in Ontario
- New Arsenic Limit of 10 Parts Per Billion Now Law in USA
- Protection of Drinking Water ‘to increase’—Scott Simpson
- Tenth Anniversary of The Rice Cake Race
New Arsenic Limit of 10 Parts Per Billion Now Law in USA
It is finally official. President Bush signed into law on November 30th, 2001 a measure that makes the new standard for arsenic in drinking water 10 ppb (the old standard was 50 ppb). The 10 ppb brings the US in line with the European standard. While 10 ppb is higher than the level being sought by the Natural Resource Defense Council (3 ppb), this new standard could threaten some batches of fluoride used for fluoridation, because the AWWA (American Water Works Association) requires that nothing be added to water which brings the final concentration to greater than ONE TENTH of the EPA standard, which would be 1 ppb. Testing by the National Sanitation Foundation indicates that levels have gone up to 1.6 ppb.
The Bush Administration justified the new limit as its commitment to protecting the environment and the health of Americans and that the new arsenic limit would improve the safety of drinking water and better protect against the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The EPA said nearly 97 percent of US water systems affected by the rule are small systems and the agency plans to provide $20 million over the next two years for the research and development of cost-effective technologies. The agency said it will also provide technical assistance and training to operators, which will reduce their compliance costs.
