DEWITT — Bath time at the Wilcox house is a complicated ritual.
Kacie Wilcox opens the tap and lets the water circle down the drain. She turns the fan on high. She tries not to think about what she smells or what it means.
"It smells like a new shower curtain, like a plastic smell," she said. "It used to burn when you smelled it, like Vicks VapoRub."
She lets the water run for five minutes before plugging the drain and filling the tub where her children bathe.
That's how long it takes to flush the home's water free of potentially hazardous chemicals, according to the results of a series of tests conducted since 2017.
Water in the Wilcox family home has been found to contain various volatile organic compounds, chemicals found in fuels and consumer products that are easily released into the air and generally considered unsafe for human exposure.
The amounts in her water are safe, according to state and federal regulations, though she remains troubled because of a nagging odor and suspicion the safety tests are not rigorous enough.
Water quality experts who have reviewed Wilcox's test results say the chemicals likely are not coming from the Lansing Board of Water & Light municipal water system, since they don't appear after the taps run for a few minutes and haven't been found in the larger system. That leads her to believe the problem is inside the house.
Wilcox suspects the smell is coming from the flexible plastic pipes that were installed when the home was built in 2017.
The pipes, known as PEX, are inexpensive alternatives to copper and PVC pipes and have been used for decades, according to a 2006 design guide written by the NAHB Research Center, now known as Home Innovation Research Labs, for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
But a team of researchers who study in-home water quality say PEX pipes are not always safe. They conducted studies that show the pipes sometimes leach chemicals into water and can cause it to smell, and questioned whether quality testing for these plumbing products is thorough enough to keep homeowners safe.
"It's super stressful," Wilcox said. "It has been a long road doing this and I'm ready to be done. I worry about the health of my kids. Are they going to get cancer three years down the road? Ten years down the road?"
Water considered safe, but Wilcox concerned tests indicate problem
Wilcox first noticed a problem when the family's home in the Wildflower Meadows subdivision still was under construction. Contractors had just finished the plumbing. She noticed a strange odor the first time she could run the water.
"I turned it on and I turned it off and was like 'Oh my god, what is that smell?'" she said. "It totally vaped up in my face, burned my nose."
Wilcox said she asked contractors about the smell and was reassured the PEX pipes installed throughout the home are widely used and considered safe.
But the smell lingered, as did her worries. As a health care worker, Wilcox was concerned the odor could signal something was unsafe. She requested tests from the BWL and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, now the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, in early 2018.
The results, provided by Wilcox to the State Journal, found the presence of four chemicals that concerned her: acetone, Methyl Tert-Butyl Ether, t-1,4-Dichloro-2-butene and Toluene. The chemicals vanished after the water ran for a few minutes.
One of the chemicals that has been detected in Wilcox's water, t-1,4-Dichloro-2-butene, could cause cancer, according to the National Institutes of Health. Exposure to the others may affect the nervous system, nose, throat and eye irritation, nausea or headaches.
Shortly after her initial water test, BWL crews ran water through the pipes for 48 hours to flush chemicals through the pipes, Water Quality Administrator Angie Goodman said. She said the chemicals are not detected in BWL's water, and the utility went "above and beyond" to help.
"There's not a lot we can do when we identify it's not a BWL problem," said BWL spokesperson Amy Adamy.
The weekend-long flush worked, at least for a time. A test conducted about three months later showed the chemicals were undetected, Goodman said. A test conducted by the pipe manufacturer also said the water was safe, although Wilcox considered the testing methods dubious.
But some chemicals have reappeared, according to October 2019 and February 2020 test results provided by Wilcox. More chemicals were detected at low levels.
Still, Wilcox's water is considered safe.
That's the key takeaway from those repeated tests, including one performed by the manufacturer of the pipes, said Duff Schroeder, vice president of Schroeder Homes, the company that built the Wildflower Meadows subdivision where Wilcox lives.
"Their water has been tested numerous times by different agencies," Schroeder said. "It comes from the Board of Water and Light. We don’t supply water. They've tested it, and every test shows that there's nothing wrong with the water, that it meets all standards."
That's true. State and federal drinking water standards don't cover many of the chemicals that trouble Wilcox, so there is no standard for what is considered safe or unsafe.
Only toluene has an established safety threshold, EGLE spokesperson Scott Dean said, and the amount that appeared in Wilcox' water was low, well within the safe zone.
"EGLE staff agree with Mrs. Wilcox that the odor she is smelling is potentially due to the PEX plumbing in her home, because the municipal source water does not contain VOCs" Dean wrote in an email.
But sometimes a single test isn't enough, said Andrew Whelton, associate professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University.
He said drinking water standards are imperfect and tests don't always look for the synthetic chemicals that leach from plastic.
"Just because you do water testing and you don't find what you're looking for doesn't mean the water's safe," he said. "You might not have been looking for what you needed to be looking for, or for the chemicals that are present there is little data available so you don't know if it's safe or unsafe."
Water quality expert questions safety of plumbing materials
Whelton was not surprised to hear Wilcox noticed an odor in the water that runs through PEX pipes. He co-authored a study in 2014 that showed a variety of chemicals leached from various brands of PEX pipes. Odor and leaching "can vary significantly" among brands and batches of pipe, he said.
Odor doesn't necessarily mean water is unsafe, but it's a reason to check, Whelton said.
"If you can't explain or pinpoint what the odor's from, then you're deciding to ingest or expose yourself to water that you don't really understand," he said.
The chemicals that leach into the water aren't necessarily the ones water quality monitors look for, he said. His 2014 study found more than 15 chemical compounds leached from the pipes, many of which are not regulated in federal drinking water standards.
"Testing companies generally look for chemicals that they're used to looking for, and many of the chemicals that leach out of plastics are chemicals that companies are not used to looking for," he said.
Oversight of the indoor plumbing materials that make it to market is poor, Whelton argued. Results of safety tests are not routinely disclosed, according to his 2014 paper.
"Products are being sold into market today without adequate testing, and the testing that's conducted is being hidden from the public, the people who buy the product and the contractors who buy the product and install it," he said.
NSF International, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor, is among the handful of organizations that test plumbing products' safety. They don't determine what goes to market, but 99% of the plumbing codes in the U.S. and Canada say projects must use products that earn a seal of approval, Vice President of Global Water Programs Dave Purkiss said.
In order to pass muster, products must meet standards the organization sets for plumbing products, which includes oversight of leaching for about 2,000 chemicals, he said. A task group routinely updates those standards to add new chemicals to the list.
Two of the chemicals that have been found in Wilcox' water, acetone and toluene, are included in the screening of plumbing products. The amounts in her water are within the safe limit.
But the oversight NSF International provides is not enough, Whelton said. He criticized the organization as a machine that approves new materials without proper review. He said the nonprofit does not review PEX pipes' impacts on water odor, does not count the overall mass of chemicals leached from the pipes or screen for some of the chemicals Whelton and his team have found to leach into water.
"The certifications are not designed for the interest of the user," he said. "The certifications are designed to push products into market with as little transparency as possible and they're effective at that."
Purkiss disagreed. He said NSF International sometimes gives products failing grades, which proves its scientists are not influenced by companies whose products undergo testing.
"It's a fee-for-service model, which is pretty much how the economy works," he said. "Universities do that. You have to pay tuition to take a class. It doesn't mean everyone gets an A just because they pay for it."
After hearing a description of Wilcox' concerns about her home's water, Purkiss suggested she run a more detailed test, taking sequential samples to pin-point where the problem is. He said chemicals also could leach from coating, sealant or non-metallic pieces of fixtures.
"If the contamination was coming from the pipe then you would probably see it in several of those sequential samples," he said.
As for recourse, Wilcox could complain to whatever organization certified her brand of pipe and ask they retest the product, Purkiss said.
"If there is a complaint on a certified product, [the American National Standards Institute] requires us to have a process to investigate," he said. "If she thinks it's a certified product that's causing the problem, [she could submit] a complaint to us and then we'll look into it, contact the manufacturer and investigate to see if we can track it down."
The lesson for the rest of us? Flush your pipes before taking a sip
Wilcox' story illustrates an important step Whelton said should be required: "all new buildings should be tested" for contaminants like volatile organic compounds, lead or PFAS.
It also illustrates a lesson for anyone drinking from the tap, Whelton and Goodman agreed: flush it out before you take a sip.
Goodman recommends letting water run for 30 seconds to two minutes to let the stagnant water make its way through.
"It is always a good idea in the mornings to do a flush on your faucets," she said.
Wilcox is on a mission to find and connect with homeowners having similar problems. She recently spoke with a couple in Ohio who also have noticed odors in the water of their new home outfitted with plastic pipes.
Meanwhile, she and her family have adapted to life with troublesome water. The kids know to run it for a few minutes before brushing their teeth. She stocks the fridge with bottles of it purchased from the grocery store.
Still, Wilcox is preoccupied with questions. Do other people smell what she smells? Is the water what killed the rose bush? Is it causing her headaches?
That's why she and her husband have paid for the battery of tests and hired an attorney, all of which she said has cost $8,000, plus the hefty water bills that result from running so much water and the expense of bottled water at the grocery store.
"It's not a cheap process but I really feel strongly about it," Wilcox said. "I can't look down the road and then some of us have a weird cancer or something and be like 'You let us drink toxic water, and you should have done something.'
"I have to do something about it."
Contact Carol Thompson at (517) 377-1018 or ckthompson@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @thompsoncarolk.
"smell" - Google News
August 13, 2020 at 09:11AM
https://ift.tt/3kHocG7
Odor in DeWitt home's water sends woman on quest to learn more about plastic plumbing - Lansing State Journal
"smell" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35zrwu1
https://ift.tt/3b8aPsv
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Odor in DeWitt home's water sends woman on quest to learn more about plastic plumbing - Lansing State Journal"
Post a Comment