A silent murderer is lurking in tens of millions of cranes throughout the country, with families in agricultural areas of the country with the greatest risk.
A mixture of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and livestock manure loves in the groundwater, causing nitrates to create – connections that are naturally found in the environment that can be harmful in large quantities – which methemoglobinemia can cause, a potentially deadly condition.
Long-term exposure to this chemical in Water-Even under the maximum safety limit of the EPA of 10 mg/L-IS linked to thyroid, kidney, ovary, bladder and colon cancers, DNA damage, unfavorable pregnancy results and rising colon cancer percentages in young people.
New research by the De Moines University College of Health Sciences zero on the effects that the exposure of a pregnant woman has to the chemical on her unborn baby.
Nitrate levels as low as only one percent of the EPA safety limit increased the risks of premature birth and a low birth weight, disorders that are linked to a higher risk of chronic diseases, learning diseases and struggles in mental health care in the future of the baby.
Dr. Jason Semprini, the author of the study, said that nitrate exposure during pregnancy caused about 15 percent as much damage as smoking during pregnancy.
“I don’t want to reduce the importance of efforts to prevent smoking during pregnancy,” he said. “But I have to ask, do we give nitrates 15 percent of the attention we give to smoking?”
An estimated 60 million Americans rely on tap water that, without the knowledge, drove on from nitrates. They live in the tendency in states and rural areas where agriculture is central to the economy, such as Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Centraal -California, Texas and Oklahoma.
The map shows predicted nitrate concentrations in deeper aquifers of drinking water, with nitrate levels above the safety limit of 10 mg/l, mainly in the high plains, northwest and intense agricultural areas. Hawaii is not included because the islands have unique volcanic aquifers
Dr. Semprini added: “Our work contributes to the proof base that the current regulatory threshold (more than 10 mg/l) can be insufficient for protecting the water-based nitrate during the first trimester of pregnancy.”
His research was published in the magazine Plos -water.
Nitrate pollution also influences larger cities. A analysis Due to the working group of the environment, the problem emphasized in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Miami and the suburbs of New York City.
Drinking water in 43 states had nitrate levels of 3 mg/l or higher in important water systems, while 39 states had at least one large system with levels on or above 5 mg/l, according to the latest report of the group.
Although still under the maximum safety limit of the EPA, the experts claim on public health that the standards should be stricter.
When the safety limit was first determined in the 1950s, scientists discovered that levels could cause blue babysyndrome as low as 11 mg/l.
Blue Babysyndrome, clinically known as Methemoglobinemia, is a rare but serious condition in which the blood of a baby cannot wear enough oxygen, which leads to a bluish skin discoloration, especially around the lips, fingers and toes.
The most famous cause is nitrate pollution in drinking water, which is sometimes mixed with the formula.
It is very rare, with less than 100 cases reported in the US, but it is more common in parts of the world where good water is not tested.
According to the former toxicologist of the state of Wisconsin, Dave Belluck, the standard was set at 10, to the edge of safety.
“It’s related to a cliff,” he said. ‘If you are on the edge of the cliff, you are safe. You take a step, and it is just like the runaway. ‘
But Belluck delved deeper into the study that informed the safety instructions and discovered that some infants in the study became sick at nitrate levels almost 30 times lower, only 0.4 mg/l.
He now believes that the standards of the EPA should be stricter, with the argument that science clearly shows that nitrates are more harmful than before.
Other studies on the subject have come to comparable conclusions. Researchers from Nova Scotia, Canada, followed Major birth defects Included in the area between 1998 and 2006 and discovered that they were twice as likely in areas where drinking water nitrate levels were between 1 and 5.56 mg/l.
Exposure over time to nitrates can also increase the risk of a person on different cancers and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified the connections as ‘probably carcinogen for people’.
Long-term exposure to nitrate in water-even under the 10 mg/l limit of EPA is linked to thyroid, kidney, ovary, bladder and colorectal cancers
A 2008 study From women in the Wisconsin countryside discovered that women who drank water with 10 mg/l or more almost three times as much chance of getting a deadly cancer that influences the first part of the colon.
Even the nitrate levels between one and 5.9 mg/l increased the risk of cancer by 1.4 times.
In the meantime, scientists in Spain and Italy identified a connection between nitrates in drinking water and colorectal cancer.
When analyzing nearly 5,400 participants, the research showed that people who consumed more than 10 mg of nitrate per day from water – about the same as drinking two liters of water with 5 mg/l nitrate – a 49 percent higher risk From colorectal cancer compared to those who drank half that quantity.
In Iowa, researchers discovered connections between exposure to nitrate and thyroid cancer in older women. Researchers followed nearly 22,000 women and discovered that those who have confronted water with nitrate levels above 5 mg/l for at least five years with a 2.6 times higher Risk of thyroid cancer.
And a long -term study of more than 28,000 postmenopausal women in 2015 it turned out that people with the highest nitrate levels in their public water supply (2.98 mg/l or higher) had the risk of Developing ovarian cancer Compared to those with the lowest levels.
Private Well users also saw a moderately increased risk – 1.5 times – as a result of agricultural discharge that polluted groundwater. In total, researchers found 315 cases of ovarian cancer for 24 years of follow-up.
Nitrate is very soluble in water, making it difficult and expensive to eliminate. Individual houses or municipal water supply systems can be equipped with inverted osmosis and ion exchange filters to remove toxins from their drinking water. Yet those expensive and out of reach for many are.
In addition to the result from the run-off of agriculture, leaking septic systems can issue untreated waste water-containing nitrates. Landfills, factories and food processing plants can also lit nitrates over time.
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