California’s $37.5 billion farming industry has led the nation in food production for more than 50 years. The state has known for decades that nitrate contamination has been a cost of that productivity. But now, state officials know the primary sources of contamination, just how extensive it is and who’s shouldering the burden.

Nitrates jeopardize the drinking water of 254,000 people out of the 2.6 million who rely on ground water in the Central Valley’s Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley, according to a University of California, Davis study commissioned by the state Legislature and released in March. Agriculture accounts for 96 percent of that contamination.

The number of people exposed will likely grow. It can take decades for nitrates to travel from the soil surface to ground water.

“We know we can’t stop all sources tomorrow and that there will be a time lag until we get the situation under control,” said Thomas Harter, a ground water hydrologist who led the UC Davis study. “We will definitely see an increase in nitrate contamination over the next 10 or 20 years.”

Hidden Hazards
Jessica Sanchez fills a glass from the tap and holds it up to the light. The water appears cloudy, almost opaque, as particles swirl around. After a few minutes, the particles settle, and the water looks normal.

That’s precisely the trouble, water activists say. You can’t see or taste nitrates. “If you have sulfur or manganese in your water, it looks brown and gross and you quit drinking it before it poisons you,” said Jennifer Clary, a policy analyst with Clean Water Action. “But with nitrates, you don’t.”

Nitrates become toxic when bacteria in saliva and the gut convert them to nitrites, which in turn convert hemoglobin into methemoglobin, which can’t deliver oxygen to tissues. Babies are vulnerable in part because their immature stomachs harbor abundant nitrite-producing bacteria.

Affected infants have trouble breathing and develop cyanosis, a blue-gray or purple tint to their skin, giving methemoglobinemia its common name, blue baby syndrome. Left untreated, babies develop brain damage, and eventually suffocate. Studies have linked high nitrate exposures in adults with miscarriage, digestive disorders, thyroid damage and cancer.

Health experts worry that people don’t know about the risks and that doctors may not consider nitrate exposure in their diagnoses.

Dr. Mark Miller used to treat patients in Chico, in the northern Central Valley, where some wells had nitrate levels 10 to 15 times higher than the federal standard. “But there was no awareness among clinicians and no effort from public health authorities to check wells and inform people about this hazard,” said Miller, director of the state’s Children’s Environmental Health Program and head of the University of California, San Francisco Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit.

Doctors might see a newborn that was failing to thrive or had cyanosis and not even think to ask about nitrates, Miller said.

The majority of the at-risk residents get their water from public systems, many of which rely on a single well. East Orosi has two public wells and both regularly have unsafe nitrate levels. Managers of the town’s volunteer water board – the East Orosi Community Services District – did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Sanchez went to Orosi High School, where administrators posted signs warning students not to drink the water. School officials dug a new well, only to find nitrates there, too.

For years, Dias, Sanchez’s mother, had to buy bottled water for her kids to take to school, on top of the water she bought for her home.

9 Comments

1. 1. vapur 03:03 PM 6/12/12

   A couple issues here:
   
   1) The government's own research states that Cannabidiol was able to repair damaged brain cells in foetuses whose oxygen supply was cut off. Basically, "blue baby syndrome" can be treated by using Cannabis tincture.
   
   2) Tap water contains fluoride, as well as other toxic metals introduced to water when a municipality uses cheaper industrial-grade silicofluoride instead of pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride. Remember, they're only putting fluoride in water to "help" the poor (by medicating everyone).
   
   
   Sources:
   1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18679164
   2) http://www.fluoride-history.de/chemicals.htm

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2. 2. mggordon 07:50 PM 6/12/12

   "Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Don't Drink the Water"
   
   Well, he's right about it -- drinking water is fatal; everyone who has ever drunk water is either already dead or going to die.
   
   NOT drinking water brings about the same outcome rather more quickly.
   
   So I think I'll drink some water. Right now!
   
   "environmental justice problem"
   
   Say what? There's that phrase again! Probably has meaning only in California.
   
   Anyway, I use a distiller -- I don't know and don't really care what is in my tap water.

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3. 3. mggordon 07:59 PM 6/12/12

   Five pages of hand wringing but no solutions suggested. Science is supposed to be able to solve problems, not merely describe them which is a thing anyone can do.
   
   However, we're talking about California, which is not only out of money, but increasingly in debt. So the usual socialist solutions are not likely going to work and capitalism makes no pretense of even trying to solve social problems; that's not the purpose of its existence.
   
   In the end, people make choices and experience the consequences. Illegal immigrants, for instance, face terrible consequences to remain in Mexico or merely bad consequences in the San Juaquin valley of California. If that was your choice, what would I do? I'd take "bad" over "terrible" and I might not complain too much about "bad" unless I thought I could persuade you to give me what you have -- then *I* would have good and *you* would have bad.

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4. 4. mggordon 08:05 PM 6/12/12

   I should point out the obvious -- socialism presumes that *everyone* can have good water, no matter how many people are using it and how few people are working to make it happen.
   
   Let me assure readers that such a thing cannot be; it is actually possible to divvy up the water uniformly, but such a thing will never happen simply because it's stupid and anti-Darwinian. Human ingenuity, intelligence, and industry evolved *because* it gave advantage over those almost-humans that did not evolve. It may well be that 12,000 years ago Neanderthals were leftwing socialists and equalized among themselves, thereby making every last one of them uncompetitive with Cromagnon.
   
   Suppose California promised every citizen 50 gallons of pure water, as good as distilled, every day, for free. What would happen? You'd have quite an inmigration from Arizona and a stampede, bigger than already is, from Mexico. Sooner or later that house of cards must collapse.
   
   That's why the writer complains for 5 pages without a solution. He hasn't got one.
   
   But I *do*: SOLAR STILLS. More in my next message so it stands out a bit.

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5. 5. mggordon 08:10 PM 6/12/12

   SOLAR STILLS. The idea is simple and even Boy Scouts make them. Many possible designs exist. California's central valleys are desert and get plenty of sunshine. Groundwater is somewhat abundant but as has been reported, is also loaded with fertilizer and some other things.
   
   Example:
   
   http://sdoople.info/12818-how-does-a-solar-still-work.html

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6. 6. mggordon 08:16 PM 6/12/12

   Oops, good idea, bad source!
   
   http://sdoople.info/12818-how-does-a-solar-still-work.html
   
   "As the water is boiled, the PH level drops dramatically, causing flat-tasting water. With a solar still, the water is purified naturally, allowing the PH levels to stay balanced."
   
   Water is pH7, by definition, neutral. It makes no difference how you purify the water. Pure distilled water always tastes exactly the same, which is to say no taste at all, because it is H20 and absolutely nothing else.
   
   Valley water tends to be alkaline and tastes terrible at least to me.
   
   Mountain water tends to be slightly acidic, well oxygenated and tastes great. But that acid leaches out the limestone, a carbonate rock, and that buffers it and turns it basic (alkaline) by the time it reaches the valley floor.
   
   "Balanced" has no meaning in pH. It's a stupid thing to say that immediately reveals an unscientific approach.
   

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7. 7. SasaMarinic 03:09 AM 6/13/12

   The water is a bigger issue than the energy and global warming. We need to address this matter urgently.

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8. 8. anumakonda 01:46 PM 6/14/12

   Impure water is the cause for many diseases.
   
   Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms that most commonly are transmitted in contaminated fresh water. Infection commonly results during bathing, washing, drinking, in the preparation of food, or the consumption of food thus infected. Various forms of waterborne diarrheal disease probably are the most prominent examples, and affect mainly children in developing countries; according to the World Health Organization, such disease account for an estimated 4.1% of the total DALY global burden of disease, and cause about 1.8 million human deaths annually. The World Health Organization estimates that 88% of that burden is attributable to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
   Microorganisms causing diseases that characteristically are waterborne, prominently include protozoa and bacteria, many of which are intestinal parasites, or invade the tissues or circulatory system through walls of the digestive tract. Various other waterborne diseases are caused by viruses. Yet other important classes of water-borne diseases are caused by metazoan parasites. Typical examples include certain Nematoda, that is to say "roundworms". As an example of water-borne Nematode infections, one important waterborne nematodal disease is Dracunculiasis. It is acquired by swallowing water in which certain copepoda occur that act as vectors for the Nematoda. Anyone swallowing a copepod that happens to be infected with Nematode larvae in the genus Dracunculus, becomes liable to infection. The larvae cause guinea worm disease.
   Water is the Elixer of life – Leonardo Da Vinci.
   Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
   E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
   

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9. 9. mggordon 12:53 AM 6/15/12

   Eventually the global average death rate will match the average birth rate. It cannot be avoided.

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