While floating into the room in her signature whitish sari, amma appears.
She therefore leads me into the suite’s living room and takes a seat in a plush armchair facing me.
While getting to spend a lot time with Amma in a private setting, while everyone else is quietly off to the side, two staff members are assigned to video our interview, and Surely it’s evident that, for them, it’s a rare experience. Actually a water sample taken from Wilson’s kitchen and analyzed by Aqua Environmental Laboratory in Newtown contained 021 arsenic milligrams per liter, that is twice the recommended health limit. Wilson so sent samples of her family’s hair out for analysis her five year old daughter’s hair tested positive for high arsenic levels, she said. DeFalco, president of the North Stamford Concerned Citizens for the Environment nonprofit, was an early advocate for municipal and state intervention in 2009 after the carcinogenic pesticides chlordane and dieldrin were discovered in North Stamford drinking wells. Stamford’s public testing program, that has tested more than 1000 of the city’s estimated 5000 private drinking wells over the last year, has helped local and state officials learn more about pesticide contamination and inspired other testing across Connecticut. Oftentimes CAT scans, skin biopsies, ultrasounds and even a brain scan, they decided to test their well water, just after shelling out thousands of dollars on blood tests.
Weston mothers suffered similar symptoms.
She decided to test her well water after other Weston mothers reported similar hair loss.
Penna, a mother of three young children whose home was built in the 1960s, moved to Weston eight years ago. Generally, her oncethick hair has since fallen out in clumps she did fill a plastic sandwich bag with brownish strands collected from the drain after one shower. Although, it’s not known how prevalent arsenic is in residential well water, there’re an estimated 400000 private wells in Connecticut serving approximately 526700 people. Even if the heavy metal was linked to serious health problems, the state has not investigated the scope or severity of arsenic contamination. Health officials believe arsenic enters private well water from the surrounding bedrock. State Geologist Margaret Thomas said naturallyoccurring arsenic is found in rocks that contain iron sulfites, that are prevalent in New England.
Besides, the state requires tests of private drinking water only once when the well is installed and arsenic isn’t on the list of contaminants laboratories are mandated to test for under the state Public Health Code. Code requires new wells to be tested for tal coliform, nitrate, nitrite, sodium, chloride, iron, manganese, hardness, turbidity, pH, sulfate, apparent color and odor. Weston residents rushed to test their own well water after hearing of Penna and Wilson’s findings, and 104 homeowners have reported their results to the ‘WestportWeston’ Health Department, Director Mark Cooper said. About 30 the wells percent tested positive for arsenic in levels above the acceptable health limit. Besides, it turned out arsenic, in levels more than twice the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended health limit of 01 milligrams per liter, had been flowing from the two women’s taps and they’re not alone. By the way, the state has done little research on the source or location of well water contaminants similar to arsenic, and requires the testing of private drinking water only once when a brand new well is installed. Then the Connecticut Department of Public Health has received numerous reports in recent years of pesticide and heavy metal contamination in residential drinking water across the state. There’s a whole list of other contaminants Penna has yet to check her well for.
In the meantime, Penna said she plans to test her water quarterly. Her sister, who lives in Newtown, has already tested her home’s water and discovered her radon levels are 18000 picocuries per liter more than three times the ‘staterecommended’ limit of 5000 picocuries per liter. Even though it will be possible to do a geographic analysis on the basis of geologic mapping, the state has not studied the location or extent of ‘arsenic containing’ bedrock, Thomas said. Arsenic was also historically used as a pesticide, mainly in apple orchards. Ed Meyer, ‘D Guilford’, said he would support expanding the list of contaminants that laboratories are required to test for when new wells are installed. General Assembly’s Environmental Committee chairman said he is open to exploring the real issue. Now pay attention please. Mandating more frequent testing of private drinking water my be an ugher bill to pass. State Sen. Then again, the state public health department recommends homeowners with high levels of arsenic in their well water stop drinking from the tap until they’ve installed remediation systems on their homes.
Homeowners should consult a water service professional to determine which method would work best for their house, Toal said, metal oxide filters or reverse osmosis procedures are typically used to treat arsenic contamination.
The Weston Field Club, about four miles away, recently tested positive for elevated arsenic levels, said General Manager Jeff Champion.
Penna and Wilson live in quite similar wooded neighborhood of rural Weston, where a lot of the town’s 10000 residents use private well water. She eventually visited a Westport natural pathologist, who sent a sample of her hair to a Georgia laboratory for analysis. With her hair sample testing positive for 16 micrograms per gram well above the recommended limit of 15 micrograms per gram, the results revealed high arsenic levels.
Homeowners won’t know to test their wells for arsenic if public health officials don’t alert them, Penna and Wilson said.
When it issued a news release recommending all homeowners test their well water nearly any five years for arsenic and uranium, the department didn’t even recommend statewide arsenic testing until last week.
Did you know that the state DPH does not require private well owners to test their water for arsenic and identical known toxins, just like pesticides, copper and radon. Stamford’s health department detected arsenic in 24 of 227 well water tests performed since The state DPH has also found the heavy metal in drinking wells across Connecticut, most recently in Pomfret and Somers, said state epidemiologist Brian Toal. Arsenic contamination ain’t confined to Weston’s borders.
Wanted to know if the metal was present in her body after years of drinking her well water, penna installed a water filtration system. She consulted a couple of doctors and xicologists but had a hard time finding someone who could test her for arsenic poisoning. I’m sure that the water sampled from Penna’s kitchen sink and analyzed by Aqua Environmental contained arsenic in amounts equal to 022 milligrams per liter, more than twice the acceptable health limit. Another raw water test performed a month later by ‘Stratford based’ Complete Environmental Testing Inc. Conforming to the publication, another great way to investigate arsenic exposure is to test drinking water. In consonance with the American Medical Association, a fact sheet published on the state health department’s website said urine and hair arsenic tests are difficult to interpret and, are unreliable. Furthermore, earlier this year the public health department updated its fact sheet, Arsenic in Private Drinking Water Wells, that it sent to local health officials and posted online.
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