Drinking Water A Conversation With Professor James Salzman THE HUMAN ELEMENT

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1 THE HUMAN ELEMENT Drinking Water A Conversation With Professor James Salzman Rarely do we reach to turn on our kitchen faucet (tap) wondering whether it will produce water. It s similarly rare to consider whether the water coming from the tap could harm us. And how many of us can trace back the path that water has taken to get to our home - beyond our local municipality to its true point of origin? When you think about it, there are a lot of circumstances where it s hard to connect the dots when it comes to drinking water. At Edstrom, questions like this are always on our minds, so we were particularly excited when we read the book Drinking Water: A History by Professor James Salzman. James Salzman is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law, with joint appointments at UCSB and UCLA. In Drinking Water, Professor Salzman presents readers with a multifaceted look at historic and contemporary topics surrounding an indispensable resource the water we drink. Throughout the book, Professor Salzman both informs readers and challenges them to carefully consider many issues surrounding our drinking water. Renowned for his scholarship on the topic, he has provided commentary for C-SPAN, NPR (National Public Radio) and Slate magazine, among others. We had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Salzman, who touched on topics from his book, including chlorination, the role of drinking water in the birth of epidemiology, the regulation of our drinking water, and the vulnerability of drinking water and its infrastructure. DRINKING WATER LEARNING FROM HISTORY There is a lot to be learned from the history of drinking water. The provision of safe drinking water is something that every society in human history has faced. Many of the questions raised by the engineers of ancient Babylonia still resonate today. It s understood that every sizable human settlement must ensure it has access to drinking water. To do so, it has to accomplish three things: it has to protect the water source, transport the water safely, and allow for

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3 EDSTROM PRODUCT NEWS Positive Results for Preparedness Study Proves Sipper Sack A Good Choice For Storing Water With intense weather events occurring at a greater frequency, we agree with the idea that having a contingency action plan for animals in the vivarium is a necessity. Customers have asked us whether the Edstrom Sipper Sack is a viable choice for disaster preparedness. As the ideal individual cage watering solution for mice and rats, the Sipper Sack clearly fits the bill. It provides a compact, portable unit whose small footprint allows it to be stationed nearly anywhere in the lab so sacks of water can be filled in advance of an impending storm. Simply fill the required number of sacks and then seal the port in the sacks with a removable plug until needed replacing the plug with a drinking valve at the time of use. In terms of mechanical operation, the Sipper Sack is an elegant answer to the question of being ready for an emergency. In addition to convenience and ease of operation however, another very important consideration is the maintenance of water quality over time while the water is being stored. Will the water quality in the Sipper Sack be affected by prolonged storage? To present our customers with an answer to this question, Edstrom has performed a test to see if the effect of the residual biocide chlorine would maintain its effectiveness in prohibiting biological growth in the Sipper Sack over an extended time frame. MATERIALS AND METHODS The test was performed on sterilized, clear Sipper Sack bags (Edstrom Part Number ). Chlorine levels were measured with a digital chlorine test kit (Edstrom Part Number ), utilizing free chlorine reagent packets (Edstrom Part Number ). Sixty-five (65) Sipper Sack bags were filled with water containing an initial chlorine level of 3.00 ppm (parts per million) using the Sipper Sack filler station (Edstrom Part Number ). After each Sipper Sack was filled, the injection port in the sack was sealed using an autoclaved Sipper Sack plug (Edstrom Part Number ). Each of the sealed Sipper Sacks was then placed in a sealed container (Edstrom Part Number ) with a dark liner bag to prohibit light penetration. Each day a single Sipper Sack was drawn from the container to measure the abatement of chlorine over the 65 days of the test period. A water sample was drawn from the final Sipper Sack on the last day and was subjected to a Biological Activity Reaction Test (BART). The sample was observed for 7 days. RESULTS The BART test procedure did not indicate the presence of bacteria. DISCUSSION Free chlorine was detected throughout the entire test period of 65 days. At the completion of the test, the concentrations of free chlorine detected were 0.04 ppm in the sealed Sipper Sack prior to BART testing. With the absence of bacterial growth demonstrated by this test, the study conditions suggest that the Sipper Sack is viable for disaster preparedness plans where individual cage watering needs to be stored over an extended period of time. To learn more about Sipper Sack, please go to our website or contact an Edstrom representative.

4 (Continued from Drinking Water: A History ) reproduce from bearers of the same disease. When the germ theory was accepted and chlorination was used more widely, what had been scourges of disease like cholera and typhoid, disappeared almost overnight. And the way in which the use of chlorinated drinking water spread was quite clever. Because water treatment was a local government decision, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in the US required that interstate common carriers such as buses, trains or ferries had to provide chlorinated drinking water to passengers. So the ICC said that if common carriers were transporting water, that water needed to be chlorinated. This is what drove the adoption of chlorination of drinking water in the US, and reduced the opportunities for waterborne diseases to spread. WHO S WATCHING OVER YOUR WATER? Many countries in the world have adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for safe drinking water*. In the United States, there are two government agencies tasked with keeping public drinking water safe The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).? So What s In Your Animal s Drinking Water? The EPA regulates the quality of the water coming from taps. This is done in accordance with the Safe Drinking Water Act of For tap water, there are over 100 substances like arsenic and lead that are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Act is a law that works in three steps. First, it determines which contaminants the law will regulate and which it will not based on risk assessment for public drinking water systems. It then assigns the contaminants posing the greatest risk Maximum Contaminant Level Goals (MCLGs), which is the highest allowable concentration of the contaminant that will allow for an adequate margin of safety. For many contaminants like carcinogens, that number is zero. If there is a reason that the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal cannot be reached, then the EPA determines the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) permitted, and scores that level as close to its goal level as possible. In the third step, the EPA performs a risk assessment and cost evaluation of what would be necessary to achieve any prescribed reduction in contamination required to meet the MCL. If the contaminants do not exceed the MCL, the water is considered safe to drink by the EPA. In contrast, bottled water in the US is considered a food product, and as such, falls under the jurisdiction of the FDA through the Food and Drug Act. It s ironic that many people drink bottled water because they perceive it to be healthier than tap water. The fact is, bottled water is actually less regulated than tap water. Of the many studies that have Like the municipal water that comes from your tap at home, municipal water entering your facility may contain unseen contaminants that could affect animal health and compromise research. It s critical to periodically test the water given to animals so purification or treatment measures can be taken if necessary. And for immunocompromised, transgenic, and other refined models, providing drinking water purified by reverse osmosis is highly recommended due to its ability to remove up to 99.99% of waterborne contaminants. Contact Edstrom for information related to water testing, purification and treatment for your vivarium.

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