This article was co-published with Sierra.
Among all the contaminants in drinking water, nitrates are one of the most pervasive. They leach from chemical fertilizers and animal manure to pollute groundwater, rivers, and streams. Doctors have long known that, in infants, nitrates can lead to blue baby syndrome—a potentially fatal blood condition that starves the body of oxygen. But now scientists and health advocates are worried that nitrates could also cause cancer. They suggest it could be behind hundreds of cases in farming states across the U.S.
To address these concerns, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began a crucial and long-awaited assessment of the health risks of nitrates in 2017. Scientists and public health advocates hope the assessment will spur the EPA to tighten restrictions on nitrates in drinking water. Legal limits were set over thirty years ago, but scientists and advocates warn that the limits are outdated and don’t protect against cancer. They point to spiking cancer rates in farming states like Iowa and Minnesota, where nitrate contamination can reach sky-high levels. They also highlight studies that suggest the risk of dying is higher by 73 percent compared to water without nitrates, even when nitrates are at low levels in drinking water.
“Nitrate pollution from industrial-scale agricultural practices… poses an imminent and substantial endangerment to communities across the country,” wrote a coalition of environment and community advocates in a letter to the EPA in October 2024.
Other researchers are concerned that the existing standards don’t even protect infants from blue baby syndrome. David Belluck, a retired state toxicologist for Wisconsin and an expert on nitrate pollution in groundwater, writes that the EPA overlooked key information when calculating safe levels of nitrates. The missed data could dramatically lower the levels of nitrates considered safe, he wrote in a public comment submission to the EPA. Belluck called on the EPA to reconsider nitrates’ potential harm to infants.
But representatives from the food and agricultural industry are downplaying the health risks. They hired a consulting firm to produce a study that dismisses the need for tighter nitrate controls. In public comments to the EPA, they argue that stricter controls would be prohibitively expensive without providing any health benefits. They also assert that nitrates can be beneficial to health when present in food such as fruits and vegetables. However, independent scientists say these arguments overemphasize the benefits of nitrates in food and draw attention away from the risks of nitrates in drinking water. The researchers said the industry’s strategy is an attempt to muddy the debate and delay further controls.
Elizabeth Southerland, former director of the EPA’s Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, is troubled by industry’s tactics to derail the assessment and fight tighter controls. “The objective is to paralyze so that you cannot move forward until you have many more years of study,” she said. “This is always the industry playbook. There’s never enough data.”
Read the FULL STORY here: https://usrtk.org/factory-farming/nitrates-drinking-water-cancer/