I haven’t published much since the November 2024 election, mostly because I don’t know what to write about. I feel like I’m at a loss and am grieving. Like all hope is lost.
I feel like the climate crisis fight is over.
I feel like there’s nothing more to say. Half of us voted against the climate crisis and environmental issues and endangered species. The half of us who care about our environment lost the election.
I have cried and I am sad. I want to hug a tree and save the polar bears and protect the sea turtles.
The Climate is not Political
I am angry. I hate politics and I hate money – though don’t misunderstand, I know we need politics in a democracy and we need money to survive. I just wish ethics ruled and money didn’t.
I can’t remain politically neutral anymore, mainly because the climate crisis and environmentalism have become left-aligned. These are NOT POLITICAL ISSUES though, and they never should have been. I am angry with those politicians who made it a political issue.
Humans will suffer with rising sea levels and the coral reefs will die out. Rainforests, which are like the Earth’s lungs, will perish. Human activity and climate change are killing off our species at an extremely high rate. And we’re next, as we endanger our own existence and that of our children.
These issues are actually SURVIVAL issues. We cannot survive without a specific climate, plant and animal biodiversity, or clean air, water, and soil.
Photo by Ivan Radic on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).
The Election
The election happened. Trump, the Republican right, and their allies won the presidency, the Senate, the House, and they have the Supreme Court too. They’ve been telling us what they want to do all along, even publishing their plans in a manifesto called Project 2025. They fully plan to trash any plans related to improving the environment or curbing the climate crisis. They’ve been clear about this.
“To say that you’re going to increase fossil fuel production and then to turn around and promise people clean air and clean water is clueless.” -Ben Jealous, Executive Director of the Sierra Club1
New Leaders
The people Trump is choosing for his cabinet are often unqualified and anti-environment. For example, Chris Wright, a fracking magnate, is the confirmed U.S. Energy Secretary. He makes a moral case for fossil fuels! He explained that “the world’s poorest people need oil, gas and coal to realize the benefits of modern life that Americans and others in rich nations take for granted. Only fossil fuels, he says, can bring prosperity to millions who still burn wood, dung or charcoal for basic needs like cooking food and heating homes.”2
Lee Zeldin is confirmed as the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he will dismantle environmental regulations and reduce the EPA itself, per Project 2025. Zeldin has little experience in environmentalism and has taken money from fossil fuel companies. Environmental regulations seem doomed. “He is expected to work to erase rules to fight climate change and chemical pollution, while shutting down programs designed to help poor and minority communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution.”3
There are dozens of federal agencies being shuttered or at risk of being closed. Federal employees have already been furloughed or laid off entirely. The Trump administration has warned more than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees that they could be fired at any time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) might be on the chopping block next.
The Climate Crisis is about to get a whole lot worse
Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash.
“We’re going to drill, baby, drill.” -Donald J. Trump4
Climate change is no hoax. A warmer climate is causing stronger storms and worse natural disasters. This is causing human suffering across the planet. As Lisa Friedman recently wrote in the New York Times, “On the heels of the hottest year in recorded history, one that brought the planet to a dangerous temperature threshold, President Trump effectively told the world on [January 20] that the United States is out of the climate fight.”5 Trump is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. He wants to curb the expansion of renewable energy efforts, expand oil drilling, and end federal regulation of dangerous emissions from fossil fuels.
This is after global temperatures reached record highs last year in 2024. We have surpassed the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels that scientists warned us against. They indicate that “every fraction of a degree of warming above that level brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.”6
“Mr. Trump ordered the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on global warming for a second time. He initiated plans to open vast areas of public land and federal waters, including fragile wilderness in Alaska, for oil drilling and mining. He ordered the elimination of government offices and programs aimed at protecting poor communities from pollution. And he said he would repeal regulations aimed at promoting electric vehicles and would halt approvals of new wind farms in federal waters.” –New York Times7
The glaciers are melting. Scientists studying the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica discovered that it is “melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse…Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.”8 Countries like Vanuatu have already experienced sea level rise and had to relocate an entire village because of it.
Worse, without United States leadership on the climate crisis, other countries are less likely to put forth efforts to curb the crisis.
Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash.
The Climate Crisis is Creating an Insurance Crisis
Parts of the Los Angeles area burned to the ground and the Trump administration and Congress can’t agree on distributing aid to the thousands who lost everything. In fact, they want to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Some of the people in California lost their homeowners insurance before the crisis! Increasingly, insurance is getting more difficult to obtain and more expensive. This is a direct result of climate change. “As climate-fueled disasters get worse, home insurance is becoming a money-losing business in more of the country. Without insurance, you can’t get a mortgage; without a mortgage, most Americans can’t buy a home.”9 Perhaps the elites want everyone to be renters, ensuring we remain dependent on them.
“Nationally, over the past decade, insurers paid out more in claims than they received in premiums, and, since 2018, more than 1.9 million home insurance contracts nationwide have been dropped.”10
Photo by Ross Stone on Unsplash.
Where do we go from here?
Everything might get worse before it gets better, especially for the environment. Changes to the Constitution could hurt our economy or even lead to war.
Are we transitioning to an oligarchy? Wealthy elites and billionaires are calling the shots. Forbes reported that at least 26 billionaires donated to Trump’s campaign. The main industries among these backers are casinos, finance, and oil and gas. What is their number one priority? Money. Not climate or trees or polar bears or humanitarian causes or philanthropy. One, in particular, wants to figure out how to live on Mars. Why don’t we just protect the beautiful planet and life we already have?
I wish he’d go to Mars. We don’t want him on Earth!
These billionaires support Trump due to money and greed, not because they believe he will do the right thing.
Because everyone knows Trump won’t do the right thing.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash.
I’m here to tell you that we should not despair. There are so many of us who feel powerless and alone. But we aren’t alone. We need to come together, unite, and stand up. We can’t give up, and we can’t keep quiet. We must object, call on our representatives, and protest.
What other choice do we have?
UPDATE February 10, 2025:
Trump is planning to sign an executive order to end a Biden administration plan that would have phased out plastic straws and switched to paper straws within the federal government. “Back to plastic,” he says, regarding the straws. As the New York Times explained, “The U.S. government is considered the world’s biggest buyer of consumer goods, and its planned shift away from plastic had been considered a significant milestone in a global effort to tackle a plastics pollution crisis.”11 Is this really what we need to spend our time on – reversing a plan to eliminate one single type of plastic? It must be important to the billionaire oil executives who support and donate to Trump, since plastic is made from fossil fuels.
Footnotes:
Article, “Trump’s questionable ‘clean water and clean air’ claims,” by David Gelles, Climate Forward newsletter, New York Times, October 29, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “Trump’s Choice to Run Energy Says Fossil Fuels Are Virtuous,” by Lisa Friedman, New York Times, December 12, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “Senate Confirms Lee Zeldin to Head E.P.A.,”by Coral Davenport, New York Times, January 29, 2025. ↩︎
Article, “Trump Signs Orders to Promote Fossil Fuels and End Climate Policies,” by Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer, Rebecca F. Elliott, and Eric Lipton, New York Times, January 20, 2025. ↩︎
Article, “3 of Trump’s most important executive orders on climate,” by Lisa Friedman, Climate Forward newsletter, New York Times, January 21, 2025. ↩︎
Article, “A Big Climate Goal Is Getting Farther Out of Reach,” by Brad Plumer and Mira Rojanasakul, New York Times, updated November 15, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “Trump Signs Orders to Promote Fossil Fuels and End Climate Policies,” by Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer, Rebecca F. Elliott, and Eric Lipton, New York Times, January 20, 2025. ↩︎
Article, “Scientists looked deep beneath the Doomsday Glacier. What they found spells potential disaster for the planet,” by Laura Paddison, cnn.com, September 20, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “A climate crisis at your doorstep,” by Christopher Flavelle, Climate Forward newsletter, New York Times, December 19, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “A climate crisis at your doorstep,” by Christopher Flavelle, Climate Forward newsletter, New York Times, December 19, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “‘BACK TO PLASTIC’: Trump Vows to Keep the Government on Plastic Straws,” by Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times, February 7, 2025. ↩︎
I don’t usually write about politics, and especially not elections. But this year is different.
The stakes are super high.
If Trump wins, his administration will enact an initiative called Project 2025. Written by the Heritage Foundation, is the far-right’s 900-page policy playbook (their words, not mine) for the next Republican president. If you’re not familiar, I encourage you to learn about it.1 It changes many things, from the basic structure of our government to demolishing the Department of Education, to mass deportations and the reduction of human rights. Many in the Republican Party take it very seriously.
Today I want to tell you how Project 2025 will harm us, the environment, and the climate crisis. It will halt all progress on the climate crisis and worsen, especially since the U.S. is one of the biggest contributors to climate change.
Simply put, Project 2025 “seeks to gut the country’s 250-year-old system of checks and balances in order to implement extreme policies that would increase global temperatures and undercut developing countries’ efforts to remain resilient in the face of climate impacts.”2
It saddens me to write this article and I’ve avoided it for a long time.
But with the election upon us and the polls so closely tied, I think people should know the risks.
“Simply put, Project 2025 would be game over for climate progress.” -Sierra Club3
Project 2025 Will Negatively Impact the Environment
We will become a nation of “Profit over Planet” if we elect Trump. Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.
“An analysis conducted by the United Kingdom-based Carbon Brief found that a Trump presidency would lead to 400 billion metric tons of additional emissions in the U.S. by 2030 — the emissions output of the European Union and Japan combined.” -Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections4
Project 2025 tells us exactly what the far-right intends to do. They’re not even trying to hide it – they’ve published it! You can download the book for free and read it yourself.
But protecting the environment, endangered species, and climate change are not part of their agenda. They intend to roll back many environment-related laws and policies. Here are the highlights of Project 2025’s goals regarding the environment, courtesy of the Sierra Club:
“Eliminating or rolling back safeguards that protect Americans’ access to clean air, clean drinking water, and protected public lands.
Handing our public lands over to oil and gas companies to drill whenever and wherever they want, including in some of our most precious and pristine public lands, while leaving us to deal with the pollution and toxic waste they leave behind.
Halting all government action to reach our climate goals, putting Americans and the U.S. economy at further risk of more extreme weather and a faster-warming planet.
Privatizing the National Weather Service and preventing it from forecasting extreme weather events and providing research on the advancing climate crisis.”5
In short, “The document calls for ‘unleashing all of America’s energy resources’ by eliminating federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, curtailing federal investments in renewable energy technologies, and easing environmental permitting restrictions and procedures for new fossil fuel projects such as power plants.”6
Project 2025 intends to let the oil and gas corporations take the lead, because of greed. The authors of Project 2025 erroneously wrote, “Environmental ideologues would ban the fuels that run almost all of the world’s cars, planes, factories, farms, and electricity grids.” This is nowhere close to the truth. No one wants to ban these fuels. We want to reduce our reliance on them. Project 2025 advises that “The next conservative President should go beyond merely defending America’s energy interests but go on offense, asserting them around the world. America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth.”7 But we know that there are many other sources of economic growth.
“[Project 2025] would effectively abandon America’s critical leadership role in addressing the climate crisis.” -Center for American Progress8
Moreover, Project 2025 recommends withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. Trump already withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement during his first term.
“If enacted, the policies proposed in Project 2025 would seriously jeopardize the world’s ability to avoid the worst impacts of climate change associated with breaching the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature rise limit set out in the Paris Agreement.” -Center for American Progress9
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.
Project 2025 intends to reduce the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They will mandate that states handle their own environmental issues. The playbook indicates that the federal EPA can provide some expertise, a few resources, and be supportive under the guise that the people living in states should make decisions about where they live. “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. This will require significant restructuring and streamlining of the agency.”10 However, the states have never had the resources to manage environmental problems, often created by wealthy corporations. This is why the EPA was established in the first place.
“The environmental oversight capacities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency would be curbed significantly or eliminated altogether, preventing these agencies from tracking methane emissions, managing environmental pollutants and chemicals, and conducting climate change research.” -Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections11
Furthermore, when regulating the dumping of chemicals or agricultural runoff into a river, a state downstream would have no authority over what an upstream state discharges. This could result in the upstream state inadvertently polluting the water for those downstream. State-level regulation alone is insufficient to protect people from environmental pollution and toxic chemicals.
What this is really about is profit from energy, whether dirty or clean. The government wants to profit, and ensure its corporate affiliates profit to the fullest extent from energy production. The language in Project 2025, such as that “bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes,” is just ridiculous.12
Project 2025 specifically calls out the Obama and Biden Administrations for pursuing renewable energy. Renewable anything, is a no-brainer. Of course we should be looking at renewable energy. But the authors use inflammatory language to describe their version of recent history: “The Biden Administration’s assault on the energy sector as the Administration uses its regulatory might to make coal, oil, and natural gas operations very expensive and increasingly inaccessible while forcing the economy to build out and rely on unreliable renewables. This approach has also been applied to pesticides and chemicals as the Biden Administration pushes the ‘greening’ of agriculture and manufacturing among other industrial activities.”13
There is no assault on the energy sector. Those administrations are trying to reduce our sole reliance on fossil fuels, not ban them. We lack the infrastructure needed to eliminate their total use anyway. And the ‘greening’ of pesticides and chemicals is weak among all administrations – we are exposed to toxic chemicals in everything. We certainly don’t need more chemical exposure!
The absurd language in Project 2025 persists: “Although the U.S. environmental story is very positive, there has been a return to fear-based rhetoric within the agency, especially as it pertains to the perceived threat of climate change. Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs.”14 Again, the science about the changing climate is clear and climate change is not a perception. There is a ninety-seven percent consensus among scientists across the world. And no side or administration is trying to scare Americans.
“In effect, the Biden EPA has once again presented a false choice to the American people: that they have to choose between a healthy environment and a strong, growing economy.”15 This is false. This is not anything close to what the Biden Administration, or any other administration, has ever indicated. Not once.
“[Project 2025] would also undermine the country’s extensive network of environmental and climate policies and alter the future of American fossil fuel production, climate action, and environmental justice.” -Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections11
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Photo courtesy of NOAA Photo Library on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) mission is “to better understand our natural world and help protect its precious resources extends beyond national borders to monitor global weather and climate, and work with partners around the world.” The organization states that “From daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product.”17 This is an important agency!
But Project 2025 does not agree: “The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”18
NOAA consists of six main offices:
The National Weather Service (NWS)
The National Ocean Service (NOS)
The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS)
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps
According to Project 2025: “Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”19
Climate change alarm industry? The only alarm is that the climate is changing. And we have to figure out how we humans can adapt and survive the changes. Or we won’t.
Political Appointees, Not Federal Employees
Photo by Jose M on Unsplash.
Further, Project 2025 intends to “Ensure Appointees Agree with Administration Aims. Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.”20 This refers to the fact that Project 2025 plans to change all federal workers to ‘political appointees’ that align with the conservative right only. They will not appoint anyone who does not align with their beliefs, regardless of education or expertise. This means that no one who believes in environmentalism or climate change will be working for the federal government. That is beyond disturbing.
The National Weather Service
Photo courtesy of NOAA Photo Library on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).
The National Weather Service (NWS) is super important. They provide the very data that provides us with weather predictions and tracks major storms, tornados, hurricanes, flooding, wind, etc. This organization is how we all get our weather data (weekly forecasts) and major announcements (i.e., hurricane warnings).
From Project 2025: “Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.”21 There is no debate; the science is clear. And, the NWS is not politically aligned.
So Project 2025 wants to change the NWS: “Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather.”22 The authors cited a study that Accuweather was the most accurate than competitors and implied they are better than NWS – but the National Weather Service was not one of the listed competitors. This is because Accuweather and other weather outlets get their data from the NWS.
The fact is that “NWS forecasts, warnings, and data and products form a national information database and infrastructure used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.”23 This is a free service the government provides. Every news and weather station gets their data from the National Weather Service and translates it to us.
If you’ve ever received a flood, tornado, or hurricane warning, that is the National Weather Service.
If you have a weather radio, that is the National Weather Service.
But Project 2025 wants the NWS to fully commercialize its forecasting operations. They believe private companies, like Accuweather, will pay for it. They want the government to sell this information. So it’s really about money and greed.
“[Project 2025] appears to leave the National Hurricane Center intact, saying the data it collects should be ‘presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.’ But the National Hurricane Center pulls much of its data from the National Weather Service, as do most other private weather service companies, and eliminating public weather data could devastate Americans’ access to accurate weather forecasts.” -Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections24
What’s worse, Project 2025 plans to eliminate the National Flood Insurance Program and have flood insurance sold by private insurers. “That notion skates right over the fact that the federal program was initially established because private insurers found that it was economically unfeasible to insure the nation’s flood-prone homes — long before climate change began wreaking havoc on the insurance market.”25 So if you live in a flood zone, you must vote against Trump and Project 2025. Or you’ll likely not be able to afford flood insurance or a new home.
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
View of a hurricane from the International Space Station. Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).
Project 2025 would seek to downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). OAR, also called NOAA Research, “enables better forecasts, earlier warnings for natural disasters, and a greater understanding of the Earth.”26 The Project 2025 authors wrote, “OAR provides theoretical science, as opposed to the applied science of the National Hurricane Center. OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism. The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded. OAR is a large network of research laboratories, an undersea research center, and several joint research institutes with universities. These operations should be reviewed with an aim of consolidation and reduction of bloat.” We must vote climate deniers out. It is not alarmism nor is it theoretical. We can see climate change every day with our own eyes.
30×30 and America the Beautiful
Photo by Adam Kool on Unsplash.
Under Executive Order 14008, President Biden issued a call to action to conserve, connect, and restore at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030 for the sake of our economy, our health, and our well-being. America the Beautiful is “a decade-long challenge to pursue a locally led and voluntary, nationwide effort to conserve, connect, and restore the lands, waters, and wildlife upon which we all depend,” with eight key principles that help the environment, people, and the economy.27
Project 2025 calls for withdrawing both initiatives. “The 30×30 Executive Order and the American the Beautiful Initiative are being used to advance an agenda to close vast areas of the ocean to commercial activities, including fishing, while rapidly advancing offshore wind energy development to the detriment of fisheries and other existing ocean-based industries.”28 These initiatives would provide for more Marine Protected Areas. We’ve overfished many parts of the ocean, and other activities such as deepsea mining and oil drilling have harmed marine life. If we kill off all of the fish, we aren’t going to have any left.
“Don’t boo. Vote.” -Barack Obama
Endangered Species Act(ESA)
The bald eagle, our national bird, was saved by the removal of DDT and the Endangered Species Act. Image by Dee from Pixabay.
The Trump Administration passed two regulations that limited the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The first one made it easier “to remove a species from the endangered list” and weakened protections for threatened species. Regulators were also “allowed to conduct economic assessments — for instance, estimating lost revenue from a prohibition on logging in a critical habitat — when deciding whether a species warrants protection.”29 It also made it more difficult for regulators to factor in climate change.
The second Trump Administration regulation limited the definition of ‘critical habitat’ for imperiled species and required regulators not to designate areas as critical habitat if there would be greater economic benefit from developing them.30 AP News wrote that this “forced the agency to disprove ‘speculative claims of economic harm made by industries such as mining, logging, and oil and gas’ as they sought to extract resources from public lands,” citing Earthjustice.org.31 The Biden Administration repealed both. Project 2025 calls to “rescind the Biden rules and reinstate the Trump rules regarding” the Endangered Species Act rules defining Critical Habitat and Critical Habitat Exclusions.32
But it gets worse.
Project 2025 also wants to:
Delist the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems.
Delist the gray wolf in the lower 48 states under the ESA.
Direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to end its abuse of Section 10(j) of the ESA by re-introducing so-called “experiment species” populations into areas that no longer qualify as habitat and lie outside the historic ranges of those species, which brings with it the full weight of the ESA in areas previously without federal government oversight.33 This means that the Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) may designate a listed species as experimental and release them in an area outside of its current range that is also geographically isolated from other populations of the species. “Treating the experimental population as threatened allows the FWS the discretion to devise management programs and special regulations for that population.”34 It is unclear what Project 2025 considers “abuse” of said section, but we can assume it will pose restrictions on the Fish & Wildlife Service’s protections.
Abolish the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and obtain necessary scientific research about species of concern from universities via competitive requests for proposals.35Currently, the “USGS is the biological research arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior, providing unbiased science to support the conservation of public lands and their resources.”36 We don’t need to take the lowest bid on any scientific research, which is the purpose of requests for proposals.
Direct the Fish & Wildlife Service to design and implement an Endangered Species Act program that ensures independent decision-making by ending reliance on so-called species specialists who have obvious self-interest, ideological bias, and land-use agendas. Of course, scientists who study specific species have a vested interest in them and their survival. We wouldn’t want someone without interest to make these decisions.
Modify Regulations Implementing the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. These acts are currently being abused at a cost to fisheries and Native American subsistence activities around the U.S.37 It is not clear what abuses Project 2025 is referring to here. The Marine Mammal Protection Act is a vital law protecting species we are at risk of losing forever.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act(MBTA)
Photo by REGINE THOLEN on Unsplash.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), passed in 1918, prohibits the killing, capturing, selling, trading, and transporting of protected migratory bird species, eggs, and nests without prior authorization by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). “For decades the FWS, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, interpreted the rule to prohibit ‘incidental take’—the unintentional but predictable killing of birds, often at industrial sites. The FWS typically enforced only egregious cases of incidental take, such as when it levied a $100 million fine against BP for the deaths of an estimated one million birds in its 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. But the threat of prosecution gave the government leverage to urge companies to adopt often simple and inexpensive practices to prevent avian deaths, such as covering oil pits and spacing power lines far enough apart to avoid electrocuting raptors.”38 This act protected birds for over one hundred years.
However, in January 2021, the Trump administration implemented a rule permitting companies and individuals to kill migratory birds, provided it was unintentional. Then the Biden administration repealed this rule in September 2021, restoring protections for the birds. Project 2025 plans to reinstate the Trump-era regulations regarding the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).39
Please Vote Accordingly
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.
The risks are far above and beyond what I’ve covered here. Project 2025 is a blueprint for completely restructuring the government at almost every level, every department, and every sector. It’s a gut job affecting far more than climate change and the environment. I encourage you to read it for yourself.
I felt it important to highlight some of the proposed changes in Project 2025. Especially with the election less than two weeks away. People deserve to know the devastating effects it could have on our lives, endangered species, and the environment. I’ve only covered a few of the environmental topics in this article. But the more I read of the 900-page document, the worse it gets.
Thank you for reading – please share and subscribe. Most importantly, go vote!
Additional Resources:
Article, “What Project 2025 Would Do to the Environment – and How We Will Respond,” earthjustice.org, August 30, 2024.
Article, “Conservation Groups Say Project 2025 Would Gut Wildlife and Public Land Protections,” sierraclub.org, August 20, 2024.
Blog, “New Modeling Shows How Bad Project 2025 Would Be Compared to a Clean Energy Future,” evergreenaction.com, August 15, 2024.
Footnotes:
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023. Even if you only read the Foreword of this manifesto, you will find the entire basis of the conservative right’s agenda. ↩︎
Article, “Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Global Climate Action,” Center for American Progress, August 19, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “What is Project 2025 and why would it be devastating for the environment?” Sierra Club, accessed October 16, 2016. ↩︎
Article, “What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US,” by Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections, July 29, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “What is Project 2025 and why would it be devastating for the environment?” Sierra Club, accessed October 16, 2016. ↩︎
Article, “What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US,” by Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections, July 29, 2024. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Foreword. The rhetoric gets even worse, asserting that the left would stop relying on human intelligence, which is insulting: “Abandoning confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future would raise impediments to the most meaningful human activities. They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.” ↩︎
Article, “Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Global Climate Action,” Center for American Progress, August 19, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Global Climate Action,” Center for American Progress, August 19, 2024. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 13, “Environmental Protection Agency.” ↩︎
Article, “What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US,” by Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections, July 29, 2024. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Foreword. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 13, “Environmental Protection Agency.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 13, “Environmental Protection Agency.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 13, “Environmental Protection Agency.” ↩︎
Article, “What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US,” by Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections, July 29, 2024. ↩︎
Page, “About our agency,” noaa.gov, updated May 2, 2024. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Page, “About the NWS: Forecasts and Service,” weather.gov, accessed October 20, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US,” by Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections, July 29, 2024. ↩︎
Article, “What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US,” by Zoya Teirstein, Yale Climate Connections, July 29, 2024. ↩︎
Page, “About NOAA Research,” noaa.gov, accessed October 22, 2024. ↩︎
Page, “America the Beautiful,” Department of the Interior, accessed October 21, 2024. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Article, “U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act,” by Lisa Friedman, New York Times, August 12, 2019. ↩︎
Press Release, “Trump Administration Finalizes Another Rule To Gut Endangered Species Act,” EarthJustice.org, December 17, 2020. ↩︎
Article, “Biden administration reverses Trump endangered species rule,” by John Flesher, AP News, July 21, 2022. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 16, “Department of the Interior.” ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 16, “Department of the Interior.” ↩︎
Fact Sheet, “What is a 10(j) Rule?,” US Fish & Wildlife Service, October 2018. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 16, “Department of the Interior.” ↩︎
Page, “Biology,” usgs.gov, accessed October 22, 2024. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 21, “Department of Commerce.” ↩︎
Article, “Trump to Birds: Drop Dead,” by Andy McGlashen, audubon.org, January 5, 2021. ↩︎
Book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation, 2023, Chapter 16, “Department of the Interior.” ↩︎
Almost every time I see a Proposition 65 warning label on a product I’m considering purchasing, I don’t buy it. My spouse often asks, “Is it really a big deal?” I say, yes, it means the product has chemicals known in the State of California to cause cancer.
If they cause cancer in California, they cause cancer everywhere.
We’ve had friends over the years who had lived in California. When we asked about Proposition 65, they shrugged and indicated that California’s just ‘overly cautious.’ I quietly disagreed. I didn’t know enough to debate the matter. So I decided I’d learn about it.
Courtesy of Google Maps.
“California tends to be the pioneer of protecting consumers from harmful chemicals in everyday products.” – Darin Olein, Fatal Conveniences1
Cancer on the Rise
As I was writing this article, a new study came out indicating that Generation X and Millennials have a higher risk of getting certain types of cancer when compared to earlier generations. “Researchers from the American Cancer Society (ACS) studied 34 of the most common cancers. They found that cancer incidence rates continued to rise in progressively younger generations in 17 of the cancers, including breast, pancreatic, and gastric cancers.”2
While that study does not point to a cause, Generation X and Millenials have been exposed to far more chemicals than previous generations. We know many chemicals are linked to cancer,3 so overexposure to those chemicals is an obvious explanation.
Read on to learn how Proposition 65 warnings can help us.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.
What is Proposition 65?
It is a right-to-know law. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), which administers the Proposition 65 program, defines it as such: “Proposition 65, officially known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986…requires businesses to provide warnings to Californians about significant exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” These warnings can be in products, homes, workplaces, or the environment. It also protects the state’s drinking water sources from being contaminated with these chemicals.4
“A Proposition 65 warning is telling you that using a product or entering a location can expose you to a significant amount of a chemical that causes cancer, harmful effects on a developing baby, or other harmful effects on reproductive health.”5
What else does the legislation do?
Proposition 65 requires California to publish a list of these chemicals which must be updated annually. It includes over 1000 chemicals.6
For this list, California recognizes the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organization), the U.S. National Toxicology Program, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as authorities on carcinogens. The State of California can also make its own determinations about specific substances. As the American Cancer Society notes, “This means that not every chemical on the list has been proven to the worldwide scientific community to actually cause cancer in people.”7
But, if certain chemicals are suspected of causing cancer in California, that’s good enough for me to avoid them.
The List
More than one thousand chemicals make a very long list. The Proposition 65 website has a page called “Fact Sheets” that lists chemical groups, rather than individual chemicals, making the risks easier to read and understand. However, it is not nearly as comprehensive so I recommend viewing both. I’ve linked them under Additional Resources below.
The list includes toxic substances such as lead, asbestos, and hexavalent chromium; industrial solvents; and toxins like carbon monoxide and tobacco smoke. It even includes BPA (Bisphenol A), a toxic substance used in plastic and metal can linings; as well as Styrene, used in many polystyrene take-out containers we incorrectly but commonly call Styrofoam.
Photo by Vitalis Arnoldus on Flickr, Creative commons license (CC BY 2.0).
Proposition 65 Labels
Product labels can be unclear as they only indicate if a product contains chemicals that may cause cancer or reproductive problems. They are required to list one specific chemical in the warning. However, they are not required to list every chemical, their amounts, or how a person may be exposed to them.
“By law, a warning must be given for listed chemicals unless exposure is low enough to pose no significant risk of cancer or is significantly below levels observed to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.”8
Products Sold in Other States
Products sold outside of California are not required to have a warning label even if they contain those toxic chemicals. “Some companies that sell products all over the United States only label those sent to California, even though all their products contain the same compounds.”9 Online sellers to all states must include warnings on their products, such as those listed on Walmart, Amazon, Lowe’s, and others.
Changes Brought by Proposition 65
Many sources don’t find the Proposition 65 warnings helpful, including Wirecutter, the consumer product review arm of The New York Times. I’ve often found their reviews and recommendations helpful because they independently test and review many products. But even they say Proposition 65 isn’t a big deal to worry about because the labels don’t indicate the amount or methods of exposure. However, they do acknowledge that the law has brought change to a variety of consumer products. “Prop 65 has resulted in changes in product formulation to remove or reduce potentially harmful chemicals, including in things like Wite-out and herbicides. Awareness raised by Prop 65 led Coke to change its use of 4-MEI, a potential carcinogen found in some caramel coloring.”10
The law has successfully raised awareness. Here are some of other the changes it has helped with:
“Proposition 65 has helped reduce or eliminate the use of lead in a wide variety of products, including hair dye, toothpaste, ceramic ware, foil caps on wine bottles, children’s jewelry, and even some types of cookies and candy. Levels…with acrylamide levels in major brands of potato chips and french fries. Proposition 65 has also led to the removal of several chemicals harmful to the developing baby during pregnancy from many nail care products, and has encouraged manufacturers of paint strippers to develop alternatives that do not contain methylene chloride or NMP.”11
Controversy
Others argue that Proposition 65 is overly cautious, while others believe it is too broad and meaningless. In fact, on a lot of forums, many people completely disregard the warnings. Some say they are on ‘everything in California;’ others indicate that they just don’t think it’s a big deal. One person wrote, “California puts that on literally everything, they’re idiots.” On another forum where someone asked why a golf towel has a Proposition 65 warning, another responded: “We live in an age where it wouldn’t be out of place to put a warning sign on a water bottle saying ‘could cause drowning.’ Don’t think anything of it.”12
But do think something of it. That golf towel likely has formaldehyde or PFAS in it, which are toxic. Why are harmful chemicals allowed in our products? The reason is that the amount in each item is often limited, making small amounts in products seem acceptable.
But here’s the thing.
If these chemicals were just in our couches or clothes or shampoo, it would be limited exposure. But they are in EVERYTHING. These chemicals are in our food, make-up, skin care products, shampoo, soap, clothing, furniture, carpeting, vinyl flooring, mattresses, bedding, drinking water, household cleaning products, cookware, vehicles, pharmaceuticals, hair dye, take-out containers, drapery, building materials including windows and blinds, plastic food containers and packaging, camping tents, shower curtains, electrical items…etc. We are surrounded by these toxins in our homes, in our showers, in the workplace, and in our schools. If we encountered a single chemical occasionally, it likely would not pose a significant threat.
But we are constantly bombarded with these chemicals in every facet of our lives.We are inundated with these chemicals and cumulatively, it harms us. This raises our chances for reproductive and developmental problems, cancer, and other health issues such as rashes, headaches, and allergies. This is likely why cancer is on the rise.
Image by Евгения from Pixabay.
Protecting Our Health
We are poisoning ourselves with these toxins. As consumers, we must avoid them whenever possible to protect our health. Let’s refuse to purchase items that contain these harmful chemicals. This collective action will drive companies to make necessary changes.
I hope this information helped! Please check out my next article about products with Proposition 65 warnings. Thank you for reading, please share and subscribe.
Additional Resources:
List, “Proposition 65 List of Carcinogens or Reproductive Toxicants,” Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), State of California, December 29, 2023.
Now that you’ve read What’s in Your Water? Part 1 and Part 2, Water Filtration Systems, and my list of Common Water Contaminants, you have probably assessed what is in your water and chosen a water filter system. But you may be wondering, what laws protect our drinking water?
How did all of those chemicals get into our water?
In an effort to improve human life, the corporations and industries of the post-World War II era invented, produced, and disposed of hundreds of chemicals. As Elizabeth Royte, the author of Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs, and the Battle Over America’s Drinking Water, wrote: “[Contaminants] come from industry (plasticizers, solvents, propellants), agriculture (fertilizer and pesticide ingredients), from development (runoff polluted by auto emissions and lawn chemicals, and effluent from sewage treatment plants), and from water treatment itself.”9
Obviously, long-term studies into how chemicals affect the body weren’t available then. Later, corporations and government representatives discouraged those sorts of studies because they considered them bad for business. Further, government regulations for many things are usually woefully behind, because they often require proof, not just evidence, before legislators will pass any laws. Proof means that a study is required, which adds years or even decades before any action is taken.
In the capitalist society of the United States, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty.
Stopping the improper disposal of chemicals or pollutants costs industries and corporations money. And outlawing the use of specific chemicals and pollutants can cause those businesses to lose millions of dollars. So instead, they spend millions on preventing government regulations.
All at the cost of our health, our families, and our lives.
“It was, after all, the chemical age in the decades following World War II. About all that was known about the thousands of new products brought to the market by new compounds and processes was that they greatly improved the quality of life for millions of people. As for the waste that these advancements produced, an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality prevailed across America.” -Mike Magner, author and journalist11
Photo by Kelly on Pexels.
A Brief History of Regulation
The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948
This was the first major federal water pollution law in the United States. Legislators had made numerous attempts to pass legislation in the first half of the 20th century but without success. In the years after World War II, industrial and urban growth was polluting rivers and lakes, so Congress passed this act. “Unfortunately, the act was not well designed and achieved little.”13 At the time, “water pollution was viewed as primarily a state and local problem, hence, there were no federally required goals, objectives, limits, or even guidelines.”14
According to a Public Health Report from 1962, the 1948 act was meant to be temporary and experimental, but extendable and revisable “on the basis of experience.”15 And it was extended and revised several times throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but the pace of progress was slow. Frustration, “along with increased public interest in environmental protection set the stage for the 1972 amendments.”16
Image of blueish gasoline ‘goo’ in a Michigan state conservation area. Photo by Hayley Murray on Unsplash.
The Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972
This was created to protect large bodies of water (streams, rivers, lakes) from sewage, biological waste, radiological waste, industrial waste, and agricultural waste.17 Until the 1970s, there were no state or federal regulations for chemical contaminants. Though initially vetoed by President Nixon because he felt it was too costly, Congress totally rewrote the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and passed the Clean Water Act of 1972. It created the structure for regulating pollutant discharges and established drinking water qualities.18 It “required all municipal and industrial wastewater to be treated before being discharged into waterways, increased federal assistance for municipal treatment plant construction, strengthened and streamlined enforcement, and expanded the federal role” within water pollution issues.19 The act’s major goals were zero discharge of pollutants by 1985 and water quality that was both ‘fishable’ and ‘swimmable’ by mid-1983. While those dates were not met, the goals remain the same.20
But the act did not address runoff of stormwater or snowmelt from agricultural lands, forests, construction sites, and urban areas. This is “despite estimates that it represents more than 50% of the nation’s remaining water pollution problems.” As water travels across land, it picks up pollutants, sediments, toxic materials, and other waste that can pollute the water. In 1987, new amendments to the Clean Water Act addressed these issues. They also set up financial assistance to help states implement programs to control such pollution.21
Another exception that allows companies to legally dump their waste into waterways is an NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit. While the permit limits what a company can discharge and requires monitoring and reporting, it does allow them to dump some pollutants “through a ‘point source’…[which] includes pipes, ditches, channels, containers, and concentrated animal feeding operations.”22
Safe Drinking Water Act, 1974
Congress passed this act in 1974 since the Clean Water Act does not directly address groundwater contamination. It authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set national health-based standards for contaminants in drinking water. It delegates the responsibilities of monitoring and reporting to the states. The EPA started developing limits for microbiological contaminants, ten inorganic chemicals, six organic pesticides, turbidity (or murkiness), and radiological contamination. Those safe drinking water standards went into effect in mid-1977, and required community and public water utilities to test their water on a routine basis. It also required utilities to notify consumers if there were problems with health standards or sampling requirements.23 Congress amended the act in 1986 and 1996.
The Safe Drinking Water Act allows states to set standards at or above the EPA’s standards. Each state must collect data from local water utilities and share it with the EPA, but the EPA does not get directly involved except in rare cases. “If a local water provider violates the Safe Drinking Water Act, or regulations under it, and has to be disciplined, it is the state’s responsibility to do it. In practice, state government officials are often reluctant to get into a dispute with a local water utility, and this has been an impediment to enforcement.”24
“It would make sense, after all, that if a contaminant were found in the water – and it was a potential threat to public health – that a law named the Safe Drinking Water Act would provide the EPA with the means to protect the public, and that the EPA would do so as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.” -Seth M. Siegel, Troubled Water25
Image by Jolande from Pixabay.
Chemicals & Contaminants in Water
“Drinking water in the U.S. is a victim not only of all of the many chemical compounds that find their way into drinking water as a contaminant, but also of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that protects us inadequately.” -Seth M. Siegel,Troubled Water26
While it sounds like we have the right legislation, agencies, and testing in place, it actually isn’t enough. There are hundreds of chemicals on the market that the government has never assessed for human health effects. Those types of studies take years and a lot of money. Public utilities typically test only for the contaminants that the law requires. Why isn’t the EPA or the government doing more? Elizabeth Royte explained:
“It’s expensive to identify and detect these contaminants, to determine their health effects, and then to treat the water. Any changes are likely to require massive capital projects with long lead times – exactly the sort of projects that drinking-water plant managers, concerned with meeting current state standards, are unlikely to propose to their boss, who’s usually an elected official. Moreover, any ultimate improvements in drinking water are unlikely to be noticed by the folks who will end up paying for it. All in all, not a formula for improvement.”27
Unfortunately, in the U.S., chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. Regulation requires hard scientific proof to set an enforceable regulation. “If the [Environmental Protection Agency] establishes a regulation for a contaminant, then public water systems need to comply with it. But if the EPA decides not to regulate a contaminant, then it may issue a health advisory, which is a non-enforceable federal limit that serves as technical guidance for federal, state, and local officials.”28 But the water treatment facilities are not required to follow health advisories.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) started investigating tap water in the early 2000s. In 42 states, they found 255 contaminants and chemicals, and 141 of those had no government standards or regulations. Some of those chemicals were used in water treatment. The medical community has now linked these unregulated contaminants to many illnesses and diseases including cancer, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, and immune system damage. Those in vulnerable stages of life (fetal, infant, immune-deficient, elderly) have a higher risk of chemical effects.29
Monitoring Our Water
In 2013, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) designed a tap water database to analyze more than 31 million state water records, information obtained from water utilities’ own testing. EWG maintains and regularly updates this database and it is accessible to everyone with internet access.30
The EWG acknowledges that “the EPA and states do have some standards in place to protect drinking water supplies, but these limits on specific pollutants are often too weak to make the water safe to drink.” But even when the standards are sufficient, they are often unable to enforce those limits. Or, the water utilities do not have the funding to upgrade their systems. The EPA hasn’t set a new legal limit for a drinking water pollutant since 2000. “For some other chemicals, the EPA’s maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs – the upper limit on a pollutant legally allowed in drinking water – haven’t been updated in 50 years.”31
“Progress on regulating pollutants has stalled instead of keeping up with current science.” -Environmental Working Group (EWG)32
Photo by sergio souza on Pexels.
“Legal doesn’t necessarily mean safe.”
Most of the water utilities in the U.S. pass federal and state regulations. There are hundreds of chemicals the EPA hasn’t yet assessed, so there is nothing preventing those from entering our water supply. But “even for chemicals that are regulated, the legal limit is often hundreds of times higher than the health standards recommended by scientists and public health agencies. Too often, legal limits are based more on what can be achieved in terms of treatment costs, and less on public health.” 33
Some “suggest the sky’s the limit when it comes to unregulated contaminants – industry pumps out new ones faster than regulating agencies can test them.” -Elizabeth Royte34
Since ‘legal’ sometimes means unregulated (therefore, allowed), we should consider the amounts of unregulated contaminants that end up in our water systems. The chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and hormones we excrete, pour, or flush, combine with the pesticides, drugs, and hormones from agricultural production that flow into rivers and groundwater. Hormones, especially, do not break down easily. Many species, including humans, experience adverse reactions to endocrine disruptors, such as estrogen and synthetic hormones.
Tap Water is an Example of Climate Injustice
Marginalized, low-income, and rural communities often have the least access to safe drinking water. Rural communities drink water from wells that were polluted by industrial agriculture. Underserved urban communities that have contaminated water are not receiving the resources and funding they need to fix the problems, such as the replacement of pipes and outdated equipment. Instead, governments often shift responsibility to citizens, encouraging them to buy bottled water (which is often just tap water and does have contaminants) or water filtration systems, which those citizens cannot necessarily afford. Nor should they have to shoulder the cost.
“EWG’s research finds that people living in such areas might have a greater collective risk of cancer from the contaminants in their drinking water supplies than people in other parts of the country…particularly those with higher Black or Latino populations.” – Environmental Working Group (EWG)35
Even in the most egregious cases, such as in the lead poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s water supply (where the majority of Flint’s citizens are black and 45% live in poverty), the state government provided Flint residents with bottled water. However, citizens were responsible for going to the distribution centers to pick up water and haul it home. This was not possible for elderly or disabled people, so either neighbors or small state-funded programs assisted them.
“The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, a state-established body, concluded that the poor governmental response to the Flint crisis was a ‘result of systemic racism.'” -Natural Resources Defense Council36
Also, consider the long-term costs of health care for those with lead poisoning or any other health problems caused by contaminated water. Some, including children, will have life-long health problems from it. Will those with health problems be able to work full-time and afford healthcare? The suffering, both financial and physical, can last a lifetime.
“Disadvantaged communities that have shouldered an unfair burden of some of the most-polluted drinking water in the country must finally get the help they need, and only a major federal funding boost can achieve community-level improvements.” -Environmental Working Group37
Who is to blame?
“As we hurtle into the future, all of our drinking-water choices seem to be problematic. If only we’d taken better care of our resources yesterday, we wouldn’t be in this mess today. And while my first instinct is to blame the government for letting agriculture, industry, and developers off the hook, I have to admit it’s all of us; it’s the way we’ve come to live. We want convenience, cheap food, a drug for every mood, bigger homes, and faster gadgets.” -Elizabeth Royte38
There is no one entity to place singular blame on for the pollution in our water. We all contributed in some way – consumers, corporations, local, state, and federal governments, lobbyists, politicians, and lawmakers. In the same way, there is no one entity that can fix it all, either. We all have to change our practices and demand that corporations and industries do as well. Because everything we do takes a toll on our water. We can’t wait around for the politicians and lawmakers and corporations to do something. We can’t wait around for the science to catch up, either. As Erin Brockovich noted, “Academic scientists do not have clout with the regulators who ultimately must determine the kinds of studies that can help oversee these chemicals and their impact on human health.”39 So we, as consumers, must demand it.
For example, how has it become regular, legal practice to dump sewage into rivers and oceans? While that’s an article for another day, here are some examples from my city:
Permanent sign along the Tennessee River from Tennessee American Water’s treatment plant indicating a point of sewage wastewater discharges. Photo by Marie Cullis.
Sign along Tennessee River, “Sanitary Sewer Overflow” area, from Tennessee American Water’s water treatment facility. Photo by Marie Cullis.
“So there is shit in the water; I’d have to make peace with that.” -Elizabeth Royte40
Updates to Existing Laws
Though environmental issues have always been somewhat partisan, the divisions have increased in recent years. The George W. Bush administration scaled back enforcement of the Clean Water Act. “The EPA, on Bush’s watch, declined to set and enforce limits for dozens of industrial contaminants…In 2006, Bush rolled back the Toxics Release Inventory,” which meant that industries reported less frequently on the contaminants they released into the environment.41
“Polluted tap water is not and should not be a partisan issue; it affects everyone.” -Environmental Working Group42
Waters of the United States
In 2015, under President Barack Obama’s administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced the Clean Water Rule (also called Waters of the United States). Its goal was to address “the 117 million people getting drinking water from waterways not explicitly protected by the Clean Water Act.”43 It increased the number of protected waterways and limited the dumping of pollutants (including fertilizers, pesticides, and industrial chemicals) into those waters.44
President Trump tried to reverse this with the Navigable Waters Protection Rule in 2020. But the EPA halted its implementation in late 2021.45,46
“There is a threat affecting millions of Americans – drinking contaminated water in this country – and it is business as usual.” -Erin Brockovich47
What’s Next?
Recall that the last time the Environmental Protection Agency set a new legal limit for a drinking water pollutant was in 2000. They have not yet addressed regulating PFAS, hexavalent chromium, and 160 other contaminants. Other contaminant levels, though studied, have not had their limits in drinking water updated in 50 years.48 The EPA planned to release a proposal designating PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law in June 2022. But they missed that deadline and it is not clear when they will finalize the proposal.49 Author Seth M. Siegel believes there “should be a significant overhaul of the Safe Drinking Water Act…In particular, the EPA…should be obliged to more aggressively identify drinking water contaminants.”50
We’ve got to do better. Please learn, read, and educate! Go vote for representatives that actually care about our health and safety! Call your water board or utility and ask for information! Thank you for reading, please share and subscribe!
Additional Resources:
Publication, “Understanding the Safe Drinking Water Act ,” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), June 2004.
Factsheet, “U.S. Wastewater Treatment Factsheet,” Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, 2021. Pub. No. CSS04-14.
Press Release, “Protecting America’s Drinking Water: Our Responsibilities Under the Safe Drinking Water Act,” by James L. Agee, EPA Journal, March 1975.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of my What’s In Your Water? articles, I explained the problem with contaminants in tap water. I’ve also published a list of Common Water Contaminants. Next, I published an article on tap water vs. bottled water, highlighting that tap water is still the better option, despite contamination.
In today’s article, I’ll explore different types of water filters. It isn’t as simple as just buying a water filter pitcher and calling it done; each type of filter, even within individual brands, only reduces or removes certain contaminants.
Remember, check the Environmental Working Group’s tap water database first to find out what’s in your water. I’ve included that link and additional links under Additional Resources below to help you figure out the best water filtration system for your family and situation.
Water Filtration Types
These are the main types of home water filtration systems:
Activated carbon
Ion exchange
Reverse osmosis
Ultraviolet (UV) Technologies
Distillation
Most companies use a combination of those to reduce or remove specified contaminants.
Activated Carbon Filters
In general, these are the least expensive types of filters to buy. There are two main types: carbon block and granulated activated carbon. Carbon block is better in that it is more effective, but both types’ effectiveness depends on how quickly water flows through the filter.16 The filters on these do need to be changed according to the manufacturer’s recommendations as bacteria grows on carbon filters after a certain amount of time.
Activated carbon chemically bonds with contaminants as water flows through the filter, thereby removing it from the water we drink. However, their performance widely varies. Some remove chlorine and improve the taste of water, and others reduce – though not remove – contaminants, such as asbestos, lead, mercury, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). “However, activated carbon does not remove common inorganic pollutants such as arsenic, fluoride, hexavalent chromium, nitrate and perchlorate,” which are very toxic and potentially carcinogenic.17
Ion Exchange
Ion exchange is often used to soften water by reducing calcium, magnesium, barium, and radium, which can build up in plumbing and fixtures. But other contaminants remain in the water. Also, water softeners replace calcium and magnesium with sodium, so people with certain health conditions and/or who want to maintain a low-sodium diet should avoid drinking it. It should not be used for watering plants or gardens, either.18
Reverse Osmosis
Reverse osmosis is the most effective at removing contaminants. These systems usually include one or more activated carbon and sediment filters, and reduce or remove large numbers of contaminants. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) outlined how it works: “The initial activated carbon treatment captures and removes chlorine, trihalomethanes and VOCs. Next, during the reverse osmosis filtration, tap water passes through a semipermeable membrane that blocks any particles larger than water molecules. As a result, reverse osmosis systems effectively remove many contaminants, such as arsenic, fluoride, hexavalent chromium, nitrates and perchlorate.” But these systems waste a lot of water, using five times more water than they make useable. The unused or rejected water is flushed down the drain.19
Another downside to reverse osmosis treatment is that it removes minerals that are essential for health, such as iron, calcium, and magnesium. Some manufacturers recommend the addition of mineral drops for remineralization.
Ultraviolet (UV) Technologies
Ultraviolet treatment is good for killing chlorine-resistant microorganisms, as it destroys 99% of viruses and bacteria in water without chemicals. However, UV is only able to eliminate microorganisms in water. It does not remove any other contaminants from water such as heavy metals, salts, chlorine, or man-made substances like petroleum products and pharmaceuticals. I have not reviewed any UV systems since they are limited in their treatment of water.
Distillation
Old-fashioned distillation vaporizes water and then condenses the steam back into water. “The process removes minerals, many bacteria and viruses, and some chemicals that have a higher boiling point than water. But it does not remove chlorine, trihalomethanes or VOCs from water.”20 I have not reviewed any distillation systems since they are limited in their treatment of water.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
Water Filter Testing & Certification
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) advises that filters of the same type “can vary in their capacity to reduce the levels of specific contaminants. To ensure that a filter can significantly lower a particular contaminant, check that it has been certified to do so by an independent third-party certification company.” Though there may not be a third-party certification for every specific contaminant, the type of filter should still at least reduce the levels.21
The Water Quality Association (WQA) offers certification regarding filters for specific contaminant removal. The NSF International also tests and certifies products. I’ve put a link to both of their sites under Additional Resources below, but I’m not convinced that those are the be-all and end-all. This is because the WQA and the NSF only follow the standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While I strongly support the EPA, they are woefully behind in regulating chemicals, especially in regard to water contamination. Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land and Bottlemania, quoted Brita’s research-and-development group manager at the time her book was published in 2008: “We can’t claim to take it out if we don’t test for it, and we don’t test for it if the EPA doesn’t have a standard.”22
Some companies use different and perhaps more thorough testing methods. Those companies should provide details about their testing methods right on their website. You can also contact the company and ask questions. If they can’t or won’t answer your questions, then they are not a reputable company and you shouldn’t purchase anything from them.
Environmental Working Group’s water filter recommendations
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) provides a handy chart identifying the type of filter required for the removal of specific contaminants. You can find this by entering your zip code on EWG’s tap water database page, then selecting your water utility, and scrolling toward the bottom of the page. You will find a chart similar to this:
Click on the chart to enlarge it.
Unfortunately, none of the types of filters above remove everything.
Water Filter Brands
There are different types of water filtration systems, including countertop water pitchers, under-sink filtration systems, and whole home filtration systems. I mainly focus on countertop water pitchers and a few under-sink filtration systems, as whole-home systems are costly, require commitment, and warrant an entirely separate article.
Let’s go through some of the specific brands of water filter systems. Please note: This is not a comprehensive list of all available water filtration systems, as there are just far too many types to review. These are the main ones I have encountered. I do not get paid or earn money as an affiliate for any product in this article.
Brita
First, let me acknowledge that I have used Brita water pitchers for almost 20 years. But I have lost trust in this company and some of the things I discovered about Brita were unsettling.
For example, I learned that Brita is owned by Clorox, a company whose vested interest is in some of the very chemicals that clean and disinfect our homes. Clorox is also used globally to disinfect water. But the chemicals in Clorox’s products contaminate our water systems with toxins that cause or contribute to many diseases. This company has a conflict of interest! They are seemingly making a profit from the pollution, though they are certainly not the only company engaging in such practices.
Brita’s Filters
Brita makes several types of filters that each filter different contaminants. They use activated carbon, ion-exchange beads, and other proprietary methods. The ion-exchange beads may be made of plastic resin, which is derived from oil. Brita filter systems do not treat bacteria or microbes. Unfortunately, none of their filters reduce or remove everything. And none remove hexavalent chromium or PFAS.
While I found Brita’s website somewhat confusing regarding their water filter systems, they do provide a breakdown of what each of their systems filters in the chart below.25 Following is an outline of the details of each filter type.
Click on the chart to enlarge it.
Brita’s Pitcher – Longlast Filters (also called Elite filters):
These use “proprietary active filtering agents” (meaning they are not required to share how they work) to reduce the contaminants lead, asbestos, mercury, cadmium, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, atrazine, benzene, endrin, ethylbenzene, carbon tetrachloride,dichlorobenzene, simazine, and tetrachloroethylene.26
Brita’s Pitcher – Standard Filters:
These combine activated carbon granules and ion exchange. Activated carbon granules absorb some contaminants and reduce mercury, chlorine taste, and odor. These filters also use Ion Exchange Resin to capture copper, zinc, and cadmium. Since I have used the standard filters for so many years, I was surprised to learn that the standard filters do not remove lead. We had our water tested for lead a couple of years ago (and it was not detected), but how many people have access to lead testing?
Brita’s Pitcher – Stream filters:
These seem less common but they filter only the taste and odor of chlorine, some particulates, and tricholorobenzene.
Brita’s Bottle filters:
I was initially really excited about these because they are so convenient – the bottle and filter are all in one. But these reduce the least amount of contaminants, only the taste and odor of chlorine and some particulates. These just aren’t worth the money.
Brita’s Faucet filters:
These remove the most contaminants, as they use a carbon block and reduce lead, chlorine, asbestos, benzene, tricholorobenzene, particulates, and “select pharmaceuticals, pesticides/herbicides, TTHMs and atrazine.”27 Additionally, they remove alachlor, carbofuran, chlordane, carbon tetrachloride, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, endrin, chlorobenzene, dichlorobenzene, ethylbenzene, lindane, methoxychlor, simazine, styrene, tetrachloroethylene, toluene, toxaphene, trichloroethylene, and a list of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).29
PUR
PUR’s filter systems seem quite similar to Brita’s, as their regular filters reduce roughly the same contaminants. PUR filters use multiple layers of filtration and contain both a proprietary blend of activated carbon and ion exchange materials. Contaminants, such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals, are adsorbed by carbon; heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, are adsorbed by ion exchange materials. PUR claims that they were the first to obtain NSF certification for emerging contaminants, meaning chemicals suspected to cause health or environmental problems that are not yet or have only recently been regulated.32
Also like Brita, PUR’s faucet system reduces far more contaminants than their regular pitchers, especially in the categories of industrial pollutants, herbicides and pesticides, and pharmaceuticals. Here are the ingredients that their faucet filters remove, that their basic filter pitchers do not: chlorobenzene, carbon tetrachloride, DEET, o-dichlorobenzene, styrene, trichloroethylene, TCEP, TCPP, asbestos, volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), 2,4-D, alachlor, atrazine, carbofuran, chlordane, endrin, lindane, metolachlor, simazine, toxaphene, bisphenol A (BPA), and total trihalomethanes (TTHMs).33
While PUR’s faucet filters reduce a lot of contaminants, note that they do not address contaminants such as hexavalent chromium or PFAS.
3M
3M sells under-sink water filters and whole home water filtration systems. But this is another example of a company that I just don’t trust. They are selling us a product that removes contaminants they allowed to contaminate our water, essentially profiting from the pollution they helped create.
Further, 3M (in addition to DuPont) spent decades producing PFOA, PFAS, PFCs, etc., and improperly disposing of them. These carcinogenic chemicals are now in our soil and water supply across the United States. “3M makes water filters that reduce ‘chlorine taste and odor, trihalomethane (THM), lead, sediment, cysts, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium (hex), chromium (tri), copper, fluoride, radium, selenium, turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), mercury, asbestos, chloramine, MTBE and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).’ No PFCs are mentioned,” despite 3M being one of the major producers and polluters. 34 In fact, when I searched “3m pollution” on Google, I got more than 9 million results. Buyer beware.
Invigorated Water
This brand’s focus is alkaline water. Their filters remove some contaminants such as chlorine, fluoride, and heavy metals using a multi-stage filtration system. They have two Micro-Nets that catch potentially dangerous particles while allowing beneficial minerals through. Next, Zeolite – a variety of minerals that contain alkali and alkaline-earth metals – reduces fluoride, and removes heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, arsenic, zinc, and copper. Coconut shell-activated carbon removes pollutants and chemicals. Last, a ceramic ball and stone blend increases alkalinity.
However, their website claims that their filters “remove chemicals, toxins, chlorine, fluoride, heavy metals,” but it does not elaborate on specific chemicals and toxins. So I emailed the company to find out more information. Though they made me answer specific questions about my article before they would answer my questions, the company was very responsive. In the end, their filters remove heavy metals (aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, chromium-3, iron, lead, and selenium), and reduce chlorine, nitrate, fluoride, and sulfate. However, their filters do not remove chemicals or volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as PFAS or hexavalent chromium.
Advocates of alkaline water claim that it improves health and provides better-tasting water. But when I researched alkaline water benefits, I discovered that these claims are controversial. Most of the major online medical websites indicate that there are few studies supporting alkaline water’s health benefits. If you’re interested in alkaline water benefits, I recommend further research.
Enviro Products Alkaline Water Pitcher
This is also an alkaline home water system, one I discovered at Whole Foods. Their Alkaline pitcher, the one shown at left, filters chlorine only. The Alkaline Plus pitcher filters chlorine and removes lead. But their 10 Stage Plus Countertop Filter System uses multiple filtration types to filter out many contaminants, including a micron pad, activated carbon, and ion exchange. This system removes chlorine, total trihalomethanes, arsenic, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, and “many other organic pollutants.” I wanted to know what “other organic pollutants” include, so I emailed the company to ask. Unfortunately, they never responded to me.
Lifestraw
Lifestraw’s purpose began with supporting underrepresented communities globally and fighting water-borne diseases. In 1999, they developed a plastic pipe filter to strain out Guinea worm larva and grew from there. Today, Lifestraw is a Climate Neutral Certified B Corp. They believe “everyone deserves equitable access to safe drinking water” and claim that “for every product sold, a child in need receives access to safe water for an entire year.”35
Today they offer different home systems based on the type of use, including home use, travel, outdoor, emergency, etc. Or, you can shop by water contaminant concern, such as bacteria, viruses, chemicals, lead, etc. This is really useful for someone aiming to solve a specific problem. Lifestraw seems transparent and publishes details on every product and what it specifically reduces or removes. If you are traveling globally, this seems like the type of product you’d need.
Lifestraw’s home pitcher is glass, which is quite different from most other home systems that use plastic. The filters use a combination of processes, including a membrane microfilter, activated carbon, and an ion-exchange filter. Together, this removes the majority of bacteria, parasites, and microplastics; and reduces heavy metals including lead, chlorine, herbicides, pesticides, some pharmaceuticals, and PFAS!
Click on the chart to enlarge it.
Unfortunately, for me, it does not reduce or remove hexavalent chromium (chromium-6).
ZeroWater
ZeroWater uses a five-stage Ion Exchange filtration to remove 99.6% of detectable dissolved solids. They claim that their filters produce water that is a similar purity level to the water from a reverse osmosis system.37 They remove antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium-3, chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium), copper, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, selenium, silver, thallium, zinc, asbestos, chlorine, cyanide, fluoride, nitrate, nitrite, and PFAS.38The main page of this company’s website claims to be the only filter NSF Certified filter to reduce PFAS. This seems like a good option.
Berkey
Berkey Filter systems combine three types of water filtration. They use ion exchange, starting “with water going through the filter elements, which are made up of more than six different media types and billions of micropores (aka tiny holes). These holes are so small that harmful materials are unable to pass through. Next, the adsorption process keeps out harmful chemicals that are smaller than the pores. After that, harmful metals are attracted to the media using ion exchange. All of this is slowed using a gravity flow process,”39 which allows water to flow through the filter so slowly that contaminants aren’t able to get through. They do not use chemicals, such as iodine or chlorinating tablets, to purify the water. From their website: “We do not have to use chemicals in our unique ionic adsorption process mated with simple microfiltration. In short, these two methods create a pore structure so minute that contaminants are removed from the water because they simply cannot pass through the charged filtering media.”4041 But water does retain important minerals that our bodies need.
Berkey filters remove the following (I’ve bolded the toxins in my water highlighted in What’s In Your Water? Part 1); bacteria; microorganisms (like e.Coli); viruses; trihalomethanes including chloroform; chloramines; chlorine; chloride; haloacetic acids; heavy metals including lead; vanadium; chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium); manganese; and pharmaceuticals including acetaminophen; caffeine; carbamazepine; ciprofloxacin HCl; erythromycin USP; sulfamethoxazole; trimethoprim; BPA (bisphenol A); diclofenac sodium; 4-para-nonylphenol; 4-tert-octylphenol; primidone; progesterone; gemfibrozil; ibuprofen; naproxen sodium; triclosan.
They also remove (or reduce below detectable limits) so many pesticides (including glyphosate) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that I am unable to list them here (link in footnotes). They also remove or reduce arsenic; fluorine; nitrites; PCBs; phthalates; PFAS and PFCs; petroleum products; selenium; thallium; most radioactive substances including radium and strontium; rust; silt; and sediment.424547
The only contaminants Berkey does not remove are nitrates and fluoride, though they offer an additional filter for the fluoride.48 The filters last a long time, through about 6,000 gallons of water, which is potentially several years of use. While Berkey advertises that the cost comes out to just 2 cents per gallon, the initial cost is high – in the $300-$400 range – and one of the most expensive set-ups in this review, but perhaps water free of toxins and carcinogens comes at a cost.
Charcoal sticks
Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash.
Many zero wasters claim that charcoal sticks will purify drinking water, without the plastic waste that comes from all water filtration systems. Here’s how it works: “Binchotan charcoal is activated through extremely high burning temperatures, along with a rapid cooling process. Once the charcoal has been activated, the increased surface area can bind easily and is extremely porous, thus making it extremely useful at absorbing impurities and contaminants.”50 It can absorb metals found in tap water such as lead, mercury, copper, and aluminum.51
From what I can tell, charcoal sticks may remove most contaminants that activated carbon filters remove. But they will not help with volatile organic compounds, chemicals, or pharmaceuticals.
However, they are very affordable and extremely low waste. After 3-4 months of use in water, you can repurpose them. Use the sticks as an air freshener for your refrigerator, or crush them and put them in your garden soil. To ensure quality, I recommend using a well-known brand over an off-brand.
Bluevua
This company makes a multi-filter and reverse osmosis countertop system and an under sink reverse osmosis filtration system. The countertop model reminds me of a standard coffee maker. It has 4 stages of purification. The under sink version has 6 stages and requires installation, but the company provides instructions.
Reverse osmosis removes many contaminants! But remember, reverse osmosis typically wastes a lot of water. However, this company claims that its system only wastes water at a 1:1 ratio. They declare this to be 300% more efficient than comparable systems. The system also adds back in minerals that reverse osmosis typically removes. This product sounds great! The filtered water goes back into the fill tank.52 One thing that is not clear to me is what to do with the wastewater. The instructions indicate that the wastewater is contaminated and the company recommends “following the instruction of discarding [the] water,” only I did not see instructions on discarding the water either on the website or in the manual.
Note: There are quite a few companies making reverse osmosis systems. I researched just one for this article. AquaTru has been making reverse osmosis systems for a long time, but reviews imply that their systems have issues. Brita Pro has a whole home reverse osmosis system but appears to be only available through an authorized partner company.
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash.
Conclusion
I realize this is a lot of information, and it’s hard to know where to go from here. There are also many more filtration systems available than I’m able to cover here. So let me reemphasize: first, find out what’s in your water, and what contaminants you are most concerned about. I’m most worried about hexavalent chromium (chromium-6), PFAS, VOCs, and pharmaceuticals. It looks like my family will have to purchase a Berkey or ZeroWater system, as they remove the most contaminants. However, they are quite expensive.
My goal is to stop using Brita, simply because it doesn’t filter out much. As soon as I purchase a new system, I’ll update this article and let you know which one we chose. I’ll also write a review on it! Please comment below on what you’re using to filter your water, as well as your experiences with water filtration! Thanks for reading, please share and subscribe!
UPDATE, March 15, 2023:We purchased a Berkey system when they had a sale in Fall 2022, and have since been using it for most anything we ingest – drinking, cooking, the dog’s water, etc. I find the taste to be free of that chemical taste and smell (though now I can smell those odors stronger when I drink water in other places, like at work). I would like to have the water tested and have a before-and-after comparison someday when funds allow. In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions about the Berkey system!
Additional Resources:
Database, “EWG’s Tap Water Database,” Environmental Working Group.
Page, “Find WQA-Certified Water Treatment Products,” Water Quality Association.
Website, “Certified Products and Systems,” NSF International.
Page, “A Guide to Drinking Water Treatment Technologies for Household Use,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” cdc.gov, reviewed August 4, 2020.
Video, “Best Water Filter Buying Guide | How to Choose a Water Filter,” Water Filter Guru’s YouTube, May 26, 2024.
Video, “Water Filter Companies are LYING to You,” Water Filter Guru’s YouTube, September 8, 2024. This video will help you understand misleading sales tactics so that you can avoid buying the wrong system for your situation.
I have mostly stayed away from writing about political issues on my website since I feel that political disagreement takes away from trying to achieve the greater good. But I feel that I can no longer avoid certain issues, especially since pollution and climate change should not be political issues. These are human issues.
In more than one way recently, the Supreme Court has gotten it wrong.
The Case
The Supreme Court recently ruled in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to issue broad, aggressive regulations on climate-warming pollution from power plants that might force many of those plants to close or rebuild. It potentially restricts other agencies from passing regulations to protect both the environment and public health.19
“The case was unusual because it focused on a program that wasn’t even in force: the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era federal regulation adopted under the Clean Air Act of 1970, which sought to govern greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.” The Clean Power Plan would have required utilities to move away from coal and toward renewable energy.
After a series of lawsuits from Republican states and the coal industry, the Supreme Court blocked the program in 2016 and it never took effect. “The Biden administration tried to have the case dismissed, arguing that there were no E.P.A. regulations in place for the court to consider. That didn’t work and, in the end, the court favored the plaintiffs…who argued that only Congress should have the power to set rules that significantly affect the American economy.”20
“It was the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.” -Manuela Andreoni, New York Times21
Photo by Alexei Scutari on Unsplash.
Greenhouse gases
The greenhouse effect is what it sounds like, in that if you have a covered garden, you are purposely trapping the heat inside. The Earth’s atmosphere does the same thing, as natural greenhouse gases trap heat and keep our habitat warm. However, human activities are responsible for unnatural increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 170 years. This increases the temperature across the planet, hence causing what we call global warming. “The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.” Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas, accounting for nearly 80% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. “The main human activity that emits CO2 is the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil) for energy and transportation.”34
Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The electricity sector is the second-largest source of greenhouse emissions in the United States (after transportation). This accounts for 25% of the U.S.’s emissions. “Approximately 60% of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, mostly coal and natural gas.”35
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific authority on global warming, explains that exceeding a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase would cause climate change’s worst impacts. This means more intense droughts, extreme heat, massive flooding, and the worsening of food shortages, wildfires, and even poverty. It also means the decline of all species. That includes a mass die-off of the world’s coral reefs which actually help regulate the oceans and climate.
Because since the Industrial Revolution, the Earth has already heated 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).
“The failure of the United States — the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history — to meet its climate targets would very likely mean the world will not be able to keep global warming at about 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, the likelihood of catastrophic heat waves, drought, flooding and widespread extinctions increases significantly.”36
Photo by Tobias Rademacher on Unsplash.
Running Out of Time!
We are running out of time to stall massive problems. Once global warming reaches a certain point, it will create a spiral effect. Several articles mentioned how the Supreme Court’s decision will limit “Biden’s plan” or “Biden’s goal” to reduce carbon emissions. But these are not Biden’s goals, nor are they simply goals. Reducing carbon emissions is a requirement! It is a necessary move that the entire globe – every developed nation – must make in order to save the people. We will not survive massive global changes, and we know this. If we want to live and see our grandchildren survive, we must change our ways.
Because we needed to start making these changes 50 years ago.
Reducing carbon emissions should be everyone’s goal, whether they like it or not.
It is not a Republican or Democratic issue.
It’s a human issue.
But the Supreme Court has punted clean air regulations to Congress, and we know that governing body consistently cannot get anything done. Our bipartisan Congress argues and filibusters and achieves nothing.
There are many pitfalls when it comes to finding safe, chemical-free drinking water. Like a lot of people, when I was younger I drank my fair share of bottled water, thinking it was cleaner, healthier than soda, and readily available. I even reused the same plastic bottles over and over to try and minimize my use of plastic. In the mid-2000s I became aware of the dangers of chemicals leaching into water from single-use plastic bottles. So I immediately made the switch to tap water and never looked back.
For my home tap water, I’ve almost always used Brita water pitchers for drinking water. I thought I was filtering out whatever harmful chemicals and potential toxins that the water company didn’t filter out, hence making my water even safer to drink.
Only now am I finding out how wrong I was!
A Broken Brita pitcher
My broken Brita pitcher.
After beginning my journey toward plastic-free living, I had to address the plasticity of my Brita pitcher and its filters. At the time, I decided that using a home water filtration system was best since I didn’t want to buy bottled water, especially in plastic bottles. Also, I discovered that you can recycle Brita’s plastic filters, pitchers, and even the filter wrappers through a free TerraCycle program.20 I save all the waste and ship it off about once per year.
Our Brita water pitcher cracked at the handle about 3 years ago, probably because the company makes them out of cheap plastic (though Brita does not disclose what type of plastic is used in their pitchers, only that they are ‘BPA-Free’). We did not drop it or bang it on the sink or anything, we simply filled it and poured it. We kept using it because I refused to purchase another plastic pitcher, ‘recyclable’ or not. But now the handle has completely broken off.
Shopping Leads to Discoveries
On a recent shopping trip, I decided to replace my broken water pitcher. In the process, I discovered that there is more than one type of filter for Brita, and they offer different levels of filtration. It turns out that the different levels filter different contaminants. This immediately gave me pause. Was my family, drinking city-treated tap water while trying to avoid plastic, still exposed to toxins and chemicals in our water?
Additionally, there were many brands of water filtration systems, all offering promises of “cleaner” and “safer” drinking water. I soon felt overwhelmed and undereducated about water filtration, so I left the store without purchasing one. I planned to research water filtration systems, purchase one, and share my research with you.
But it’s much more complicated than I thought. And I discovered that our water situation is much worse than I ever knew.
“Since the Industrial Revolution, factories and manufacturers have used freshwater sources as a convenient spot to dump their waste. Add on top of that waste from agriculture, wastewater treatment plants, and stormwater runoff, and you can see why we’ve got so many substances floating around in our water systems.” -Erin Brockovich21
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay
What’s In Your Water?
When I searched online for a comprehensive comparison of home water filtration systems, I kept seeing the same advice over and over again: Find out what’s in your water. Then select a water filtration system based on that. I found my way to the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG’s) Tap Water database, the most ambitious collection of data regarding tap water pollutants. “The database collects mandatory annual test reports from 2014 to 2019, produced by almost 50,000 water utilities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”22 The data is comprised of water quality analysis from more than 31 million state water records.
“For too many Americans, turning on their faucets for a glass of water is like pouring a cocktail of chemicals. Lead, arsenic, the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS and many other substances are often found in drinking water at potentially unsafe levels, particularly in low-income and underserved communities…[our database] reveals that when some Americans drink a glass of tap water, they’re also potentially getting a dose of industrial or agricultural contaminants linked to cancer, brain and nervous system damage, fertility problems, hormone disruption and other health harms.”-Environmental Working Group23
My Water
On EWG’s tap water database, I entered my zip code and found my water provider.53 What I discovered was so alarming that I almost cried!
Above are just the contaminants that exceed EWG’s guidelines. My family’s tap water has 13 times the recommended limit on hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen made famous by the Erin Brockovich cases against PG&E since the 1990s. However, though I’d maybe heard of some of the other contaminants, I was not familiar with their toxicity or threats to human health.
“The [Environmental Protection Agency] standards were negotiated based on the technical feasibility and cost of water treatment and did not consider the long-term toxicity of these contaminants.” -Environmental Working Group54
Hexavalent Chromium
Chromium is an odorless, tasteless, metallic element that occurs naturally. Hexavalent chromium compounds are a group of chemicals with properties like corrosion resistance, durability, and hardness. These compounds have been used in the manufacture of pigments, metal finishing and chrome plating, stainless steel production, leather tanning, and wood preservatives. They have also been used in textile-dyeing processes, printing inks, drilling muds, fireworks, water treatment, and chemical synthesis.55 It may even be present at low levels in cement, which is used in concrete, mortar, stucco, and grouts.56
Also known as Chromium-VI, it was commonly used as a coolant and anti-corrosive at natural gas plants and electrical power stations. If not handled or discharged properly, it can seep into the groundwater and poison those who use the water, as was the case in the Erin Brockovich lawsuits. It can be ingested, inhaled, and absorbed through the skin.
It is a known carcinogen, causing stomach cancer, lung cancer, nasal and sinus cancers, kidney and liver damage, malignant tumors, nasal and skin irritation and ulceration, dermatitis, eye irritation and damage.57 It also causes all manner of reproduction problems to both males and females. Worse, it can cause developmental problems in fetuses. Other reported effects include mouth ulcers, diarrhea, abdominal pain, indigestion, vomiting, leukocytosis, presence of immature neutrophils, metabolic acidosis, acute tubular necrosis, kidney failure, and death.
“The EPA’s national survey of chromium-6 concentrations in drinking water revealed that the contaminant was found in more than three-fourths of water systems sampled, which supply water to more than two-thirds of the American population,” or approximately 232 million Americans.58
EPA has a drinking water standard of 100 parts per billion (ppb) for total chromium. This includes all forms of chromium, including trivalent (non-toxic) and hexavalent chromium.59 Based on a 2008 study by the National Toxicology Program, the California Office of Health Hazard Assessment set a public health goal in 2011 for chromium-6 in drinking water of 0.02 parts per billion. However, “the safety review of the chemical by the Environmental Protection Agency has been stalled by pressure from the industries responsible for chromium-6 contamination.”60 In other words, hexavalent chromium is allowed to be in our tap water in great quantities.
“It’s been common knowledge in the scientific community for years that people who inhale hexavalent chromium can contract lung cancer. Is it really so surprising that swallowing it also leads to cancer?” -Erin Brockovich61
Image by Bruno Henrique from Pixabay
Total Trihalomethanes
Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) refer to a group of harmful contaminants known collectively as disinfection byproducts. They are found in chemically treated water, which includes municipal tap water. These are formed when chlorine or other disinfectants used to treat drinking water react with plant and animal waste in drinking water supplies. But drinking water must be treated to prevent microbial diseases and pathogens. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) asserts that though necessary, “every measure must also be taken to decrease the amount of disinfection byproducts in finished drinking water served at the tap.”62
Four trihalomethanes include chloroform, bromoform, bromodichloromethane, and dibromochloromethane. The EPA’s legal limit for these in tap water is 80.0 ppb. But the healthy limit recommendation is 0.15 ppb, proposed by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and adopted by EWG. Disinfection byproducts increase the risk of bladder cancer, pregnancy problems (including miscarriage), cardiovascular defects, neural tube defects, change to fetal development, and low birth weight. The EPA classified bromodichloromethane and bromoform as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”63 People are exposed to these by using water with these contaminants, whether it is drinking, eating food prepared with it, and bathing or swimming.
Bromodichloromethane is found in 48 states and is in the water of approximately 237 million Americans.64
“The federally regulated disinfection byproducts are just a small subset of a larger group of toxic contaminants that form during water disinfection. Hundreds of other disinfection byproducts form in drinking water and may harm human health.”- Environmental Working Group65
Image by Jason Gillman from Pixabay
Haloacetic Acids
This is another group of contaminants known as disinfection byproducts. The EPA’s legal limits for these are 60 ppb. But the healthy limit recommendation is 0.10 ppb, proposed by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and adopted by EWG. In 2018, the National Toxicology Program classified six haloacetic acids as likely carcinogens.66 “Haloacetic acids are harmful during pregnancy and may increase the risk of cancer. [They] are genotoxic, which means that they induce mutations and DNA damage.”67
Haloacetic acids are found in tap water in all 50 states and affect the water of approximately 260 million Americans.
Nitrate
Nitrate, one of the most common contaminants in drinking water, gets into water from fertilizer runoff, manure from animal feeding operations, and wastewater treatment plant discharge. “Tap water in agricultural areas frequently has the highest nitrate concentrations. Private drinking water wells in the vicinity of animal farms and intensively fertilized fields, or in locations where septic tanks are commonly used, can also have unsafe levels of nitrate,” even excessive levels.68
The legal limit of 10 mg/L (milligrams per liter, equivalent to parts per million), for nitrate, was set in 1992. “This standard was based on a 1962 U.S. Public Health Service recommendation to prevent acute cases of methemoglobinemia, known as blue baby syndrome, which can occur when an infant’s excessive ingestion of nitrate leads to oxygen deprivation in the blood.” The EWG recommended level of nitrate in drinking water is 0.14 mg/L, which is 70 times less than the federal limit.69 Nitrate is found in the water of 49 states and affects approximately 237 million people.70
Besides the effect on babies, nitrate is associated with thyroid disease, cancers, increased heart rate, nausea, headaches, and abdominal cramps.71 Worse, nitrate converts into other compounds in the digestive system, and they damage DNA and cause cancer in multiple species.72
“Nitrate pollution of U.S. drinking water may be responsible for up to 12,594 cases of cancer a year.”73
Radium
Radium is a radioactive element that can occur naturally in groundwater. But coal, oil, and gas extraction activities such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and mining can elevate concentrations in groundwater. Radium causes bone cancer; tumors in bone, lungs, and other organs; leukemia; and skin and blood damage. More than a dozen different radioactive elements are detected in U.S. tap water, including beryllium, radon, strontium, tritium, and uranium. But radium is the most common. These affect the water of approximately 165 million Americans. In addition to causing cancers, these may damage the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems. Worse, radiation can harm fetal growth, cause birth defects, and damage brain development.74
Radium in water is measured in picocuries per liter (pCi/L), which is a measure of radioactivity in water. The current EPA legal limit, not updated since 1976, is 5 pCi/L but the EWG’s recommended limit is 0.05 pCi/L. It is found in the water systems of 49 states and affects approximately 148 million people.75
Other Contaminants in My Water
There were 6 other contaminants detected but under the recommended limits of the Environmental Working Group (EWG). These included chlorate, chloroform, total chromium, manganese, strontium, and vanadium.
Image by 165106 from Pixabay
Now What?
I was most shocked because, in my area, the water utility we are on is considered one of the best around. It is in compliance with legally mandated federal health-based drinking water standards. So what happened?
As it turns out, almost everyone’s water is contaminated.
But how did the water in the United States get so tainted with chemicals and toxins? More importantly, what can I do about it? Can I filter these toxins out? In my next articles, I’ll explore the different water filtration systems. In the meantime, please investigate the contaminants in your own water at EWG’s Tap Water Database. I’ve also compiled a list of Common Water Contaminants. Please watch for Part 2 as well. Thank you for reading, please share and subscribe!
Additional Resources:
Article, “Erin Brockovich: the real story of the town three decades later,” by Marc Dorian, Tim Gorin, Haley Yamada, and Allie Yang, ABC News, June 10, 2021.
Article, “Drinking Water Nitrate and Human Health: An Updated Review,” by Ward, Mary H et al. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 15, No.7, July 23, 2018
This brand’s focus is alkaline water. Their filters remove some contaminants such as chlorine, fluoride, and heavy metals using a multi-stage filtration system. They have two 
ZeroWater uses a five-stage Ion Exchange filtration to remove 99.6% of detectable dissolved solids. They claim that their filters produce water that is a similar purity level to the water from a reverse osmosis system.
This company makes a multi-filter and reverse osmosis countertop system and an under sink reverse osmosis filtration system. The countertop model reminds me of a standard coffee maker. It has 4 stages of purification. The under sink version has 6 stages and requires installation, but the company provides instructions.
