By David Fleet
Editor
Brandon Twp.-At a cost of $135,000 the Brandon School Board Ok’d Sunshine Water Systems of Linden to provide and install a filtration systems on school drinking water supplies. The system filters out arsenic at the point of entry’with large tanks filtering water near the point at which pipes enter a structure’s walls.
Currently, the federal Safe Drinking Water Act requires a maximum of 50 parts per billion (ppb) arsenic. As of Jan. 23, 2006, a plan must be in place to provide drinking water with no more than 10 ppb arsenic, say school officials.
Changes instituted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are being passed along to each state. States, in turn, are setting standards of compliance for community water systems, as well as for schools and businesses.
School officials say that five of six buildings exceed the arsenic limits as the deadline approaches. Only Belle Ann Elementary is under the arsenic limit.
‘There is no time limit to have arsenic under the new requirements,? said Tom Miller, Brandon schools superintendent. We test the water in the schools on a regular basis for lead, arsenic, copper and other foreign compounds. Some reports were higher than others’the high school was at 108 ppb other reports were as low as eight ppb.?
The project should be completed by the end of February said Miller.
Sunshine Water Systems has been family owned since 1949 and has installed about 30 systems locally including Davison, Goodrich, Kearsley, and Swartz Creek school districts.
The National Academy of Sciences report, ‘Arsenic in Drinking Water: 2001 Update? links long-term exposure to high levels of arsenic in drinking water to some types of cancer, as well as medical conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, based primarily on data collected from Taiwan, Chile, and Argentina.
‘To my knowledge all the data the EPA used was from other countries,? says Amy Perbeck, a toxicologist for the Michigan DEQ Water Bureau in Lansing, Mich., who’s not yet aware of any documented cases of chronic arsenic poisoning in the U.S.
According to the EPA, requirements for lower arsenic levels is estimated to ‘provide additional protection for 13 million Americans? against health problems.