Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 1 2007 (IPS) – Residents of the city of Arica, in northern Chile, are demanding regulations to limit the amount of boron in their drinking water, while the authorities are waiting for the results of a study to determine whether it has a harmful effect on human health.
You can t drink the tapwater in Arica, said Verónica Grunewald, 44, a retired teacher, in a telephone interview with IPS.
The water has a strong, thick taste, and it s not transparent, but cloudy, she said.
People prefer to buy bottled water in the supermarkets for drinking and cooking, she said.
Kettles, washing machines and boilers all deteriorate rapidly because of the build-up of sediment, said Grunewald, who had to take early retirement because she has Parkinson s disease.
In 1990 she moved to Concepción, the capital of the southern region of Bío-Bío, but she continues to visit her hometown.
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In 2000 I noticed that the water I drank in the two cities was very different, said Grunewald, one of the leaders of the Arica Campaign for Water Quality, promoted by the online news journal El Morrocotudo, in which ordinary citizens often act as reporters.
On investigation, Grunewald found that boron levels in the Arica water were above the limit of 0.5 milligrams per litre recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for drinking water.
Boron is a chemical element present in some foods, such as prunes, nuts, fruits and vegetables. It is also found in the soil and water. It is used in the manufacture of enamels and glass, as an industrial catalyst, in the nuclear industry and in medicine.
In 1997 the state Tarapacá Sanitation Services company (ESSAT) began to extract water from the Lluta valley aquifer, which contains between 10 and 30 milligrams of boron per litre. This is treated in a desalination plant, which reduces the boron concentration by about 60 percent, and it is then mixed with water from the Azapa valley aquifer.
ESSAT was privatised in September 2004 and a 30-year concession was granted to the Chilean company Aguas del Altiplano. The company supplies 125,000 households in the Arica-Parinacota and Tarapacá regions.
Grunewald s concern led her to start writing articles on the subject in January, which were published by El Morrocotudo.
Vlado Mirosevic, the editor of the online journal, told IPS that Aricans immediately identified with the articles, which documented a situation that had already been reported in 2004 by then parliamentary deputy Rosa González.
Soon the Arica Consumers Association, community councils, secondary school and university students, and the United Workers Federation (CUT) joined the campaign. Among other actions, they collected 2,000 signatures on a petition delivered to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
The campaign s main demand is that the Ministry of Health include boron on the list of substances for which there is a maximum permitted concentration in drinking water, as is the case for water for irrigation, in which boron cannot exceed 0.7 milligrams per litre.
Why are crops protected in Chile, but not human beings? Grunewald asked.
The citizens campaign is also receiving support from deputies of both governing coalition and opposition parties, including Ximena Valcarce of the centre-right opposition National Renewal party, who will be presenting a draft law to change Chile s legal drinking water standards within the next few weeks.
This initiative is a last resort to pressure the sanitation authorities, who are empowered to change the drinking water standards by decree at any time.
Health ministers during the Ricardo Lagos administration (2000-2006) and that of Bachelet have refused to set a cap on boron concentrations, arguing that there is no evidence that it is harmful to health. A two-year study was commissioned in late 2006 to investigate the issue.
The study, an evaluation of the health effects of exposure to boron through consumption of drinking water in Arica, is being carried out by the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, the University of Chile, and the University of Tarapacá in Arica.
The study has a budget of 100,000 dollars. Measurements of boron levels will be carried out in drinking water from several locations in Arica, and urine and semen samples from young people in the city will be analysed.
Studies in animals suggest that boron may affect fertility. Foods will also be tested, and about 3,000 pregnant women will be examined.
Grunewald said she had read several studies indicating that drinking water in Arica has boron concentrations of between 4.5 and 25 milligrams per litre.
However, the director of the government study, Catterina Ferreccio, told IPS that the tapwater samples taken by her team from Arican households had boron concentrations that ranged between 0.5 and four milligrams per litre, although in the Lluta river basin concentrations of up to 20 milligrams per litre 40 times the maximum recommended by the WHO had been found.
Ferreccio said that no study on boron in human beings has so far demonstrated negative health effects.
She said that the WHO bases its recommendations on the precautionary principle, and on results from animal studies in which massive doses of boron were used. These studies demonstrated harmful effects on the male reproductive system.
On the other hand, some recent studies show that boron has positive effects on human health, and that s why the Chilean Health Ministry has not wished to regulate it yet, said Ferreccio, who appealed to people to remain calm.
People who have a high boron intake are at lower risk of getting cancer of the cervix and prostate cancer, and post-menopausal women are at less risk from osteoporosis, because boron helps fix calcium in bones, she said.
Ferreccio therefore regards the study she is directing as a key factor for the WHO to review its recommended limits on boron levels. The first guidelines proposed 0.3 milligrams per litre, and the second recommendation raised this to 0.5 milligrams. I think that in the next few years the accepted levels will continue to rise, she said.
But Mirosevic and Grunewald fear that water quality in Arica is related to the increasing number of people suffering from kidney stones. In these cases, doctors recommend that patients avoid drinking tapwater, said the editor of El Morrocotudo.
In a telephone interview with IPS, the president of the Arica Medical Association, Viviana Durán, acknowledged that water quality is an important problem in the region, and confirmed that the incidence of kidney stones has increased markedly.
However, Ferreccio insisted that boron, which she defines as a micro-nutrient, is not responsible for the kidney stones. We checked hospitalisation rates, and found no difference between Arica and other regions, she said.
The fact that people dislike the taste of the water doesn t necessarily mean that it s bad for them. On the contrary, some studies show that hard water, with a high content of salts, reduces the risk of heart attacks, she said.
The leaders of the citizens campaign are sceptical, and say they are not prepared to wait until late 2008 for the results of the study. Neither do they think that the seawater desalination plant promised by President Bachelet to supply drinking water to the area will solve the problem. The authorities are experimenting with our lives, they say.
