NDMA PRODUCED BY WATER TREATMENT

Just up the road (NW) from Elmira is the town of Walkerton. In 2002 due to a combination of bad timing, bad maintenance, sloppy government oversight as well as local incompetence related to the bad maintenance; several people died and 2000 became sick. Some of these 2000 to this day have ongoing health problems because of E-coli bacteria. Chlorine has long been the weapon (chemical) of choice to kill bacteria and has been very sucessful in so doing. There are issues however with chlorine namely it combines with other chemicals in the water to produce toxins referred to as THM's (Trihalomethanes) as well as Haloacetic Acids. If the water being treated only had bacteria in it this problem wouldn't exist. It's various industrial chemicals, even at low concentrations which combine with the chlorine. Now there is a substitute for chlorine which is chloramine that also sucessfully kills bacteria. Imagine my surprise to learn that chloramine in water can with a little help from industry turn around and produce NDMA (N-Nitrosodimethylamine), the chemical that shut down the Elmira wellfields in 1989.

There are numerous scholarly reports on line which describe the preceeding phenomenon including "Emerging Contaminants: potentially hazardous physical, chemical, or biological agents posing new concern" by Jessica Bawden, University of Arizona. Also there is "Ecological method development for detecting N-Nitrosodimethylamine in water using HPLC-PDAD" by JoLisa McDay , Eastern Michigan University. E-coli can kill very quickly whereas cancer from THM's & NDMA takes decades. We shouldn't have to choose our poison and removal of industrial chemicals obviously should not be at the end of the pipe (ie. municipal water treatment plants).

A little side note here. NDMA can also be produced in Sewage Treatment Plants. This also puts a whole new spin on the first Environmental Appeal Board (EAB) hearing (1991) in Elmira regarding Uniroyal Chemical. It focused on NDMA influent from Uniroyal and then the effluent from the STP. Clearly Uniroyal were correct in saying that all the NDMA leaving the STP was not theirs.