Arsenic standard for drinking water too high, NRC says EPA's current standard of 50 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in drinking water is not stringent enough to achieve public health protection goals and should be lowered "as promptly as possible," according to findings released in March by the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC predicated its conclusion on a review of studies conducted in Taiwan, Chile, and Argentina, where populations were exposed to arsenic concentrations in drinking water of several hundred ppb. The report acknowledges that few studies have
addressed the degree of risk corresponding to the low levels of arsenic found in U.S. drinking water supplies. But the high exposure levels in other countries that have been associated with a host of clinical ailments, including skin, bladder, and lung cancer, provide ample justification for lowering the U.S. standard, the NRC found. EPA bases the current maximum contaminant level (MCL) for arsenic on a standard set by the Public Health Service back in 1943. Although EPA has since classified arsenic as a human car-
NSF exploring ways to increase its role in environmental research and encourage multidisciplinary science Efforts to create a so-called National Institute for the Environment under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (NSF) are gaining momentum under NSF's director Rita Colwell and bipartisan legislation being drafted in Congress. This month, NSF's Task Force on the Environment will present recommendations to the agency's National Science Board on future directions for environmental research, assessment, and education. "We've been taking a thorough look at what NSF is currently doing and soliciting information from a wide variety of sources—public hearing, town hall meeting, symposium, Web site—with the intent of comparing what we're currently doing with what we need to be doing," said Jane Lubchenco, chair of the task force. NSF has been seeking to bolster its role in environmental research since Colwell, who became the agency's director in July 1998, launched the "Biocomplexity in the Environment Initiative" last fall. "This new emphasis is an acknowledgment that many of the environmental issues facing the nation today need to be addressed with a better understanding of the complex interaction of biogeophysical systems and social systems," Lubchenco said. Meanwhile, Congressmen Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) and Neil Abercrombie (DHawaii) are sponsoring legislation based on H.R. 2914's Sound Science for the Environment Act, which was introduced in 1997 but did not make it out of committee. The bipartisan bill would create an environmental institute within the confines of NSF to improve federal environmental research and provide a sounder basis for environmental decision making, said Simi Batra, a legislative assistant in Saxton's office. The idea for such an institute stems from the fact that no single authoritative source of scientific information about the environment as a whole currently exists. Take Pfiesteria, for example. "There are so many aspects to Pfiesteria that the issue cuts across 10 different government agencies, and no one agency has the budget or mandate to look at it as a whole," Batra said. In addition, because so much federal agency research is directed at rulemaking, as much as 80% in EPA's case, little focus can be placed on the longterm, multidisciplinary science necessary to anticipate and address emerging environmental problems rather than merely reacting to short-term ones, said Peter Saundry, executive director of the Committee for the National Institute for the Environment (CNIE). CNIE is a nonprofit organization made up of more than 9000 supporters ranging from industrial groups to environmental organizations to academia. —KRIS CHRISTEN
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cinogen, the MCL survived a 1988 agency assessment of skin cancer risks. New data suggest, however, that the likelihood of developing cancer from drinking water containing the maximum allowable amount of arsenic greatly increases when lung and bladder cancers also are considered, according to the NRC. "EPA typically likes to set regulations at a level where there will be a lifetime risk of one cancer in 100,000 people," said Kenneth Cantor, an epidemiologist with the National Cancer Institute who was on the NRC study panel. But the current risk could actually be as high as one in 100 people when other cancers are considered, he said. Environmentalists have been clamoring for an MCL as low as 2 parts per billion (ppb). But a level lower than 20 to 25 ppb would not be practical because "the cost associated with that would just be too high, and the analytical techniques aren't that great" at lower levels, said Rebecca Calderon, chief of epidemiology at EPA's Human Studies Facility in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Cantor added that Americans are exposed to between 5 and 10 ppb per day of arsenic, just through their normal diets. Arsenic levels in all U.S. surface waters already are below the 50 ppb standard, and only a few groundwater sources exceed it, according to EPA. But the agency said it will lower the standard as a result of the NRC study. Under the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments, EPA must propose a new drinking water standard for arsenic by Jan. 1, 2000, and finalize the standard a year later. A lower standard will hit western states the hardest where arsenic concentrations in groundwater tend to be higher than in the east, said Alan Welch, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. The metallic element occurs naturally and can be released to groundwater through the weadiering of rocks and erosion. —KRIS CHRISTEN
