If you are going to buy a house...part 2-water company water

So I am NOT an expert in home construction, electrical, plumbing (but I know some things), spetic (again, I know some things), lawn care (I know more here) and market value, but I am one of the experts in the water supply (and maybe the one with the most experience).
I have been in the employ of the Health Department for 29+ years, I have worked with water quality since 1975. I have seen a lot, analyzed a lot and talked to people even more knowledgeable than I over the years. I have kept a good rapport with well persons, home owners, the State of Connecticut experts and environmental groups. I am on a do not talk list with many people who sell treatment devices and have been involved in environmental investigations since 1975.
So much for my credentials.
The water being supplied by the water companies in the area, is generally good. Having said that, there are several things that you should know.
1) They are regulated by rules created by the USEPA (an agency that I usually have problems with, but in this case, the rules they have a quite thorough), some times made more stringent by the State of Connecticut Department of Health and required to report often to the State.
The water is taken from one of 2 reservoirs and one large well. They gross filter it (to get out leaves and fish, flocculate it ( to bring out natural organics), Chlorinate it and then sand bed filter it. I believe thay put it through a carbon filter also. The water is prety good, with no heavy metals or nasty organics and no bacteria or viruses.
The water is aggressive even tho there is an additive in the water to make it less so. The blue staining coming out of the faucets is copper because of this.
Chlorine and fluoride are also added. The chlorine to kill any bacteria, the fluoride to help our teeth.
In Stamford, there are no lead pipes, so lead is only a problem within the house plumbing.
They also deal with water main breaks and that will create discolored water (iron, manganese and dirt at non harmful levels. They generally over chlorinate the water when this happens, so the chance of having bacteria issues is non-existent.
Because chlorine is not a pleasant taste, you could carbon filter it or let it sit overnight in the fridge, but that is the only treatment I could think that you would need. A particle filter would deal with the water main break issues.
That is water company water and that is what most homes have,. the next post will deal with wells.

If you are going to buy a house...part 1-licenses

As a person working in the environmental side of a Health Depart6ment Lab, I have run into a lot of things that make me want to shout. There is a LOT of confusion out there, some I think is perpetuated by the government, or is assisted by scam artists and people wanting a quick buck. I will say there are people involved who do not have any consequences for handing the misinformation out. I will say that money is a BIG factor and fear is a great method of getting some.
So what am I going to talk about today? Certifications and licenses.
The real Estate business is full of licenses, meaning, they can not do something illegal with out consequences. That is a good thing, but they don't know everything and can not be expected to know everything. This means other people get involved.
So if you follow the link to construction, you find the normal categories and then there is Special trades contractor. This is where many of the people who assist including home inspectors, who are a 'Jack of all trades' type inspector. You will note that there are some really specified inspectors, who would be excellent if a problem was thought to be found by a home inspector. I do not think a home inspector is an end and I really do not believe that have any chance of knowing or seeing everything, but they might find some glaring things. I find that a person with an Environmental Professional license has a bit more experience and knowledge than a simple Home inspector.
For the people who are looking at a home with a well and that well is treated, I really want to point out that there are no licenses required for water treatment systems on private homes water supplies and there are many regulations, laws and plain common sense issues that are ignored in this area. I find this lack reprehensible and dangerous. Many scam artist sneak in and scare people. Please Note that well drillers are are licensed and many of them do provide treatment and so there is recourse. There is a professional society, but I could find no links to describe its purpose other than a group of people who install water treatment devices.
So this will be an issue for another post.

So you want to by a House?...Part 6 - Radon

This is one of the craziest things with the USEPA I have ever dealt with and I as I said before, I could be wrong, but I think something stinks with this one (no radon has no odor). For many years the USEPA has been looking for a way to explain non-cigarette related lung cancers, they did this epidemiological study on lung cancer among uranium miners in Grand Junction, Colorado. They did this because there were a significant number of non- smokers in the mine (Native American, primarily). So in 1989 they began trying to establish regulation regarding radon and they have an established limit for radon in air of 4 picocurries per liter of air. What they finally did a couple of years ago was to pass the data off to the National Science Foundation who suggested that there could be a link to lung cancer, but that the main issue was still smoking. I have a hard copy of that review, I can not find it on the web any more since the USEPA has gone on their radon campaign. The USEPA passed the buck to the states and said you have to regulate water and gave them money to do so. There is a general guidance document that says 5,000 picocuries per liter of water is a recommended limit for private consumption and 300 in a municiple water supply. Up to last year, the state of Connecticut website had all the conflicting info concerning the issue. That has been removed since the USEPA money came down. One of the most interesting piece of epidimelogical work that I have seen was something done by the state of Washington which should and inverse relationship with the number of lung cancers and radon levels in water. The biggest issue I have is that the incidence of non-smoking lung cancers has not been related to actual radon exposure levels. As an environmental investigator, I find ths completely distasteful and wrong. Now it has started a whole new buisness of radon mitigation, but it has also put home buyers and homeowners in a difficult situation. If it is shown not to be a real issue, then homeowners will have pent useless money and new homebuyers can not take the chance that it will not be an issue for the future. Truth my not prevail in this case, but the recommendation that everyone get the level of radon in the air check is sound because it will allow a true epidemilogical study on tradons part in lung cancer.
Now radon is an item that does impart radioactive particles (Radon 222 releases alpha particles and Radon 224 releases beta) and so the chance that this is a carcigan exists, but the pulling scotch tape realeases X-rays and that is more significant.
So I say I could be wrong...
First the epidemiglogical study needs to be done and that will tell us everything. Next I have been wrong about things before. When?
Well when we had a very proactive Health director concerning lead, lead standards and abatement and he wanted to drop or level of lead in dry paint from the national level of 0.5% to 0.06%. I actually fought him on it because there was no evidence to support it. We then had a single case where the level of chewed paint was between those two numbers and the child's lead leval was significant. Now I realized that that was an acute situation and may not have had a lasting effect on the lead level in the child, but it did not matter, the level was high , even for a short time and I became an ardent supporter of that more stringent level.
So until the data supports the conclusions that have been drawn, I remain very skeptical.

Sewage in the Environment! Bad or Good?

As I appear to get sharper and more on top of things, there are more things to talk about in the environment. The Greenwich sewage spill. Greenwich has a lot of problems with their infrastructure regarding the the sewer lines. They don't have some one like Stamford does in the person of Jennette Brown who is obsessed (in a very positive way) with treating sewage. Their problems (along with the towns upstream) have kept Byram Beach on a very precarious "open" status. But do I think this is necessarily bad, No! Truth is for many years, there was no swimming in the winter because the treatment plant just let the sewage flow out untreated into the Sound. Now I know everyone is going "yuck" right now, but it actually provided for the nutrient base for an incredible fishing hatchery in the sound and while this was going on, there was no hypoxia! The balancing act of nature absorbed all those nutrients and produced, surprise, fish! Now I will admit, according to the theory that I proposed a few posts ago, it also created the ground work for the problems we now have. anaerobic bacteria working full tine to produce the toxic H2S. So in light of my previous post concerning the late rain, there might be an added benefit from this sewer break and fisher people might have a positive surprise this coming spring. Of course I do not recommend releasing untreated sewage into the sound due to the disease issues, but there are ways to deal with the diseases before the stuff whits the fan, so to speak.

Rain and its effects

I actually loved the rain we got last night for many, many reasons.
1- this rain usually happened in the early fall, not the late and that means we might get a break for the winter.
2- there were still lots of leaves going into the gutters and storm drains.

why am I happy about this? To me it means lots of carbon and nitrogen going into the sound when it is cold, so the dissemination of food to the criters down in Long Island Sound will be a slow process and that is usually the best kind. There is one possible issue, something I discussed in the Eureka moment a few months back. The stuff won't be used for foo, instead the chemical decomposition will occur making it not food, but a poison, H2S. So am I write? If my Eureka moment is true , the Sound will be very dead this spring. I am waiting....

So I get to watch a discovery channel program yesterday and it completely verified everything Art Glowka and I have been saying in a round about way...The Long Island Sound part of the USEPA is killing the Long Island Sound by trying to clean it up.
The story was the testing of a theory, bringing up bottom nutrients from the ocean floor and suspending them in the area photosynthesis occurs. The purpose was to test a method of disposing of carbon, reducing the effects of CO2. The experiment worked for 18 hours before unraveling and failing, but in 18 hours it increased the level of plankton and therefore plankton eaters (IE. fish) by a huge proportion.
So by an inverse collalary, the more you stop nutrients from going into a body of water, the less plankton and plankton eater you will have. Meaning you will have less fish. And that really is what has happened in the Long Island Sound. Take notice USEPA, you have been 'busted' by the discovery channel!

A 'eureka' moment

I of course, have an interest in Long Island Sound. When I first came here I was told by my best friend of the fishing will he was growing up and as he was raising his son. There was a little when I first came in 1977, but it quickly dwindled, so only truely dedicated fishermen went out fishing to catch things. Art Glowka was one and he noticed a significant change and pondered it. Meantime, the USEPA was out doing their thing and not looking at what affects they might be having. Municipalities like New York went with it cause they could get federal money to up grade sewage treatment plants and that might help their beaches.

So what was the eureka moment?

We were talking about the measured fact that nitrogens have remained constant for the past 60 years.
That the measured hypoxia has been growing since 1977.
Chlorophyll levels (the measure of algae) have been decreaseing for a significant time.
The fish started decreasing and changing in 1977.
Changing means differnet kinds of fish, decreasing means of the kinds that were most prevelant in the past.
The size of the plankton has been shown to be different, smaller than before and that means different fish will eat them.

Art and i started talking about the water column and hydrogen sulfide in the muck at the bottom.

I thought about it long after he left and I don't have a full picture, but it has to do with the fact that the deutritis was no longer being added as a cover to the old anerobic (without oxygen) muck, protecting it from the hydrogen sulfide being produced.

We have ample evidence that this exists and when conditions are wrong, it gets stirred up and is the best explaination of why the lobsters died off.

Did we create this toxic mess? Yes, from years of treatment plant discharge!
Is limiting nitrogen going to do anything to change things? No, not a bit!
Do I have a solution? A temporary one and that is to let the clean deutritis that we currectly pay to get rid of in some land fill go back into the Sound, but I do not think that is the only aswer and people smarter than I will figure something out!
So this is my usual boring environmental post!
We also talked about the carbon or deutritis that both rotting leaves and sewage tretment plants would add to the waters of the sound

MERSA

A little bug that strikes fear in hospitals cause it is so pervasive and can cause trouble in patients who are undergoing severe physical stress.
Funny back in the late winter I ran a few tests, looking at traditional remidies for bacteria problems in the throat. MERSA lives there some times.
I took a sample of MERSA plated it on blood agar plates and then added the following, Salt water, Listerine, garlic, vitamin C, hot pepper extract and vinegar. I also ran a negative control ( my mouth) . MERSA was delayed, but still grew in the Listerine after 24 hours. There was no slow down of grow in any of the others,,,except the vinegar, where there was no growth at all and the negative control.
So vinegar appears to be a very potent ally in the fight against really resistant bacteria.

So here is my boring health post