Is There Gas in Your Glass?
by Brooke Coleman and Russell Long
Bluewater Network

Following Bluewater Network’s earlier exposé of motorboating and water pollution, we conducted further research. What we discovered about your drinking water will shock you.

Until recently, municipal water agencies maintained that the toxic emissions of two-stroke motors – which include carcinogens and reproductive toxins such as benzene, toluene and xylene – posed no safety risk to public reservoirs.

Water districts have been telling consumers that district intake valves are too deep to pick up the surface contaminants included in boat exhaust. New studies in California, however, have detected the fuel additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) in many reservoirs at all water levels.

When MTBE – a fuel additive derived from petro-waste and designed to increase the efficiency of engines – was approved for use as a fuel oxygenate in 1991, it was considered to be a relatively benign chemical. Myron Mehlman, an adjunct professor of public health at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and editor of Toxicology and Industrial Health, says his research indicates that “MTBE is a human carcinogen, causing the same cancers in laboratory animals as benzene and at the same dosage levels.” Ironically, the EPA and ARCO had touted MTBE as a chemical that could reduce fuel toxicity by displacing some of the benzene in gasoline.

It takes less than one-tenth of a gallon of MTBE – the contents of one soda can – to contaminate 13 million gallons of drinking water (the daily water consumed by a population of 90,000) to a level of 5 parts per billion (ppb). Bluewater Network (BWN) has calculated that recreational watercraft dump 8 million pounds of MTBE into US waterways every year.

“We’ve detected worrisome levels of MTBE in our water, even after treatment,” declared Tracy Hemmeter, senior water quality specialist for the Santa Clara Valley facility supplying drinking water for the city of San Jose. “As a result, we’ve temporarily banned the use of two-stroke craft on Calero Reservoir.” Lake Tahoe and San Pablo Reservoir near Oakland were closed to two-stroke craft after troubling levels of MTBE and other pollutants were detected in the water.

Since there is no national database on state boating regulations on reservoirs, BWN conducted its own investigation. Our researchers were shunted from official to official in every one of the 50 states. We found that even state boating law administrators didn’t have the answers. BWN eventually discovered that only five states – Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island and Vermont – completely prohibit motorized boating on reservoirs: The other 45 States allow it in most areas. Many states were unaware that two-stroke marine motors discharge 25 percent of their fuel, unburned, into their waters. Likewise, only a few states test for MTBE.

This summer, the California Department of Health – under pressure from water agencies who were finding high MTBE levels in their groundwater from leaking underground fuel tanks – quickly issued a proposed drinking water standard for MTBE of 5 parts per billion (ppb). (The standard for benzene is 1.0 ppb.) An extensive statewide testing program detected up to 75 ppb of MTBE in the surface waters of more than 26 lakes and reservoirs serving the drinking needs of Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles and other cities.

A 1997 California Water Agency study of 15 reservoirs permitting motorized boating found that 14 contained significant levels of MTBE, while another eight prohibiting boating had no significant contamination. Tests conducted that summer by the Oakland Water District confirmed that recreational boat motors were the source of MTBE pollution in city reservoirs.

A Good Idea at the Time?
Due to its alleged ability to reduce carbon monoxide, benzene and ozone levels in engine exhaust, MTBE’s introduction in 1992 was greeted with a great deal of fanfare by its manufacturer, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and several environmental organizations.

But as Julian Holmes, author of Dirty Air, Dirty Water, and longtime anti- MTBE activist, has observed, MTBE was “approved too quickly… well before the appropriate studies had been completed.” Even today, the EPA’s “Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List,” warns that the “health effects associated with breathing or otherwise consuming MTBE, in large or small quantities, are not known.” Meanwhile, MTBE production has become a $3 billion-per-year cash-cow for US refiners.

Nachman Brautbar, a clinical toxicologist and editor of The International Journal of Occupational Medicine, believes that the use of MTBE is negligent. “Numerous studies, including those by the oil companies themselves, show MTBE to be carcinogenic,” he said. Brautbar has treated hundreds of patients exposed to MTBE from air and drinking water. “The damage has been done,” he said, “but unlike smoking, these people didn’t even know they were being exposed.”

According to Dr. Peter Joseph, Professor of Radiologic Physics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, “MTBE in gasoline is creating major public health problems, including an explosion in asthma totally beyond anything experienced in human history.”

In Wilmington, North Carolina, a jury awarded residents of a trailer park $26 million for medical and compensatory damages after a Conoco plant leaked 300-400 gallons of MTBE-laced fuel into the local drinking water supply. Hundreds of residents were exposed. Medical examinations reported finding MTBE contamination and significant immune system suppression in all 178 of the residents tested.

Nonetheless, the Oxygenated Fuels Association, in collaboration with the oil industry, issued a statement citing ”extensive” documentation indicating any requirement below 70 ppb in drinking water is “misrepresentative of the true public health impact of MTBE.”

“Ludicrous,” said Mehlman. “MTBE poses a carcinogenic risk comparable to smoking cigarettes. But when humans are exposed to MTBE and other gasoline toxins simultaneously – at the gas pump and from contaminated drinking water – the carcinogenic effect may increase exponentially,” he said, adding that, under these conditions, the additive is carcinogenic at much lower levels.

While citizens continue to be exposed, administrators equivocate. When asked why, in the light of California’s experience, the EPA is not requiring all US water agencies to conduct emergency surface water testing for MTBE, EPA Administrator Browner’s staff wrote, “we will need additional time to conduct research.... the issues you raise also touch on various matters of Agency policy that must be explored.”

Missing the Boat
In the aftermath of widely publicized underground storage tank leaks, more than 20 states have, or plan to implement, groundwater testing for MTBE. Meanwhile, only 12 of the 45 states that permit boating on reservoirs test for MTBE in their surface waters.

“We’re waiting for the Source Water Protection Regulations from the EPA,” said Glen Sauns from New Mexico’s Surface Water Bureau. The EPA’s Office of Water says, “[We]... have not included MTBE among the contaminants for which determinations will be made by 2001.” Consumers can’t wait that long. By 2001, the Oxygenated Fuels Association expects to double its US production of MTBE.

“Not a shred of scientific evidence indicates MTBE positively effects the environment,” Mehlman marvels. “Why it was used in the first place totally escapes me.”

What You Can Do: Send a copy of this story to your water agency and demand MTBE testing. Call EPA Administrator Browner at (202) 260-4700 to demand MTBE tests for all US reservoirs.