
By Elliott Negin
An essential component of the Trump administration's campaign to roll back regulations that it considers "burdensome" is getting rid of experts whose inconvenient truth-telling refutes the rationale for its pro-industry agenda.
During its first two years in office, the administration pushed more than 1,600 federal scientists out the door, most notably "social scientists, soil conservationists, hydrologists and experts in the physical sciences — chemistry, geology, astronomy and physics," according to a recent Washington Post investigation.
At the same time the administration has been sidelining, muzzling and sacking federal scientists, it has been eliminating independent advisory committees that in some cases have been providing technical advice to the government for decades.
According to a General Services Agency (GSA) database, in fiscal year 2018 there were approximately 1,000 committees with more than 60,000 members advising federal agencies on a range of issues, from pollution control to nutrition guidelines to transportation safety. Nearly 600 of the committees are required by law. Each of them are made up of top experts from academia, industry and state, federal and tribal governments who volunteer to meet one to a dozen times a year, produce reports and provide recommendations. This extraordinarily cost-effective resource has made Americans healthier, the environment cleaner, and U.S. neighborhoods and workplaces safer.
The Trump administration started shutting down advisory committees soon after it took office, but on June 14 of last year, the president issued an executive order requiring all federal agencies to purge at least a third of the roughly 400 non-mandated panels by the end of September. Neither the White House nor the GSA has released a list of terminated committees, but my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), has been able to confirm that more than 50 have been targeted for elimination thus far and at least 10 were cut as a result of the executive order.
"For the past few years, the administration has been shrinking the role of advisory committees, and now it is making it even more difficult for agencies to access unvarnished scientific and technological advice," said Genna Reed, lead science and policy analyst for the UCS Center for Science and Democracy. "If agencies won't listen to their own scientists or the independent experts who have donated their time year in and year out, the government will be flying blind."
Kill the Messenger
It is difficult to determine just how many committees have been killed because their websites — if they still exist — do not necessarily indicate their status. For example, the Interior Department notified the 12 members of its National Invasive Species Council (ISAC) in an early May 2019 phone call that their charter was ending in the fall. The council, which had been advising the department since 1999 on how to prevent and control invasive species that cost the United States more than $100 billion annually, was eliminated due to "budget constraints," according to the call minutes.
As of this writing, there is nothing on the council's home page that mentions its demise, but on a page listing the papers it produced from 2006 through last May, directly under the headline "Invasive Species Advisory Committee Products," it reads: "Note: ISAC is presently in an administratively inactive status." Apparently that's bureaucratese for "dead." At least three other Interior Department advisory committees met a similar fate before Trump issued his executive order.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scrapped at least two advisory committees: the 16-member Environmental Laboratory Advisory Board, which was founded in 1995, and the 27-member National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology, founded in 1988. The EPA deleted their pages on its website.
The Environmental Laboratory Advisory Board, which counseled the EPA on testing protocols to ensure communities have safe drinking water, met a dozen times in 2018 and five times last year. At its last meeting, on May 15, the board discussed state drinking water testing protocols and testing for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination. The chemicals, which have poisoned the drinking water of more than 110 million Americans, have been linked to cancer and low infant birth rates.
The National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology, which advised the agency on general environmental management and technological innovation, held its last meeting last July, its only meeting in 2019. It met three times in 2016, twice in 2017, and once in 2018. According to its now defunct web page, the council convened some 30 subcommittees and worked with more than 900 stakeholder groups since its inception and published more than 80 reports that made more than 1,500 recommendations to the EPA administrator. Most recently it provided suggestions on incorporating environmental justice communities into the agency's policymaking process.
The Commerce Department, meanwhile, canned the 19-member Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee and the 11-member National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Smart Grid Advisory Committee.
As its name suggests, the marine committee — founded in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration — consulted with Commerce on designing, monitoring and enforcing marine sanctuaries. It did not meet in 2019, but it held three meetings in 2018 and four in 2017. A notice at the top of the committee's website states: "As of September 30, 2019, the Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee has been terminated through [the June 14, 2019,] Executive Order 13875."
The Smart Grid Advisory Committee advised NIST on how to improve the electricity grid by incorporating energy meters, smart appliances and other digital components. It held its last meeting last June. It met twice in 2019, once in 2018, and twice in 2016. Unlike the marine committee, the smart grid committee's page on the NIST website does not mention that it was terminated.
Forging Ahead Without Federal Support
Two dismissed advisory groups have taken the unprecedented initiative to meet on their own: the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment, and the Particulate Matter Review Panel, which were terminated in August 2017 and October 2018, respectively.
The 15-member climate change committee was established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2015 to distill the conclusions of the quadrennial National Climate Assessment so that state and local governments could integrate them into their adaptation and mitigation plans. The Trump administration terminated the committee in August 2017 after the president announced he would pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.
With support from the American Meteorological Society, Columbia University's Earth Institute and New York State, 10 of the original members began working together again in January 2018. Since then, the group has doubled its size, renamed itself the Independent Advisory Committee on Applied Climate Assessment, released a report in an American Meteorological Society journal, and launched the Science to Climate Action Network to provide recommendations for updating infrastructure and building codes, reducing wildfire risk, managing flooding, and cutting carbon emissions.
Before it was sacked, the Particulate Matter (PM) Review Panel advised the EPA's congressionally mandated, seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which was established in 1978 to review the most recent scientific findings to ensure current air pollution standards adequately protect public health.
The EPA created this iteration of the PM panel in 2015 to evaluate the latest science on the microscopic particles emitted from smokestacks, tailpipes, farmland and wildfires that can cause respiratory, cardiovascular and other diseases, as well as — and especially — premature death. Fine particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) were responsible for more than 88,000 premature U.S. deaths in 2015, alone, according to a 2017 Lancet study, more than all firearm and traffic deaths that year combined. Today, more than 20 million Americans live in areas that exceed current particulate pollution standards.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler — a former coal industry lobbyist — axed the PM panel in October 2018 and replaced all but one of the scientists on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee with appointees from industry and Republican-controlled state agencies.
With UCS's help, the dismissed PM experts reconvened their group, which they now call the Independent Particulate Matter Review Panel. Last October, the panel's 20 members met for two days and issued a 183-page report that concluded the current federal particle standards are inadequate. They recommended that the EPA lower the current annual limit for PM2.5 by as much as a third.
The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which acknowledged it was out of its depth and asked Wheeler to reconvene the PM panel, disagreed with the panel's conclusions. In mid-December, the committee sent a letter to Wheeler recommending that the current PM standards "be retained."
Pushback From Scientists and Legislators
The scientific community and some members of Congress have mounted an effort to blunt the administration's assault on expertise.
Last October, nearly 80 scientific, environmental and public health organizations sent a letter to the White House calling on the president to rescind his executive order, arguing that it "arbitrarily eliminate[s] essential advice that informs government decisionmaking."
"The justification for this order is to reduce costs to the government, but advisory committees provide substantial value to agencies for costs far below those of hiring additional staff or contractors to perform the duties they fulfill," the letter continued. "… Gathering premier experts who volunteer their time to deliberate on pressing matters is a bargain for taxpayers."
The administration did not respond.
In Congress, House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson sent letters to eight agencies asking how they planned to implement the executive order and how it could undermine their ability to solicit independent expert advice. Meanwhile, Reps. Sean Casten, Mike Quigley and Paul Tonko introduced the Preserve Science in Policymaking Act, which would prevent the president from shuttering federal advisory committees without the approval of Congress or key career officers at the agency that created them. It also would require public notice of termination and a comment period. It is unlikely that the House will take up the bill any time soon, however, and — if enacted — it would not revive any committees that have already been eliminated.
Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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Cities Can Help Migrating Birds on Their Way By Planting More Trees and Turning Lights Off at Night
By Frank La Sorte and Kyle Horton
Millions of birds travel between their breeding and wintering grounds during spring and autumn migration, creating one of the greatest spectacles of the natural world. These journeys often span incredible distances. For example, the Blackpoll warbler, which weighs less than half an ounce, may travel up to 1,500 miles between its nesting grounds in Canada and its wintering grounds in the Caribbean and South America.
Blackpoll warbler abundance in breeding, non-breeding and migration seasons. Cornell Lab of Ornithology / CC BY-ND
<p>For many species, these journeys take place at night, when skies typically are calmer and predators are less active. Scientists do not have a good understanding yet of how birds navigate effectively at night over long distances.</p><p><span></span>We study bird migration and how it is being affected by factors ranging from <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=S04C3UMAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">climate change</a> to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pPk38-8AAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">artificial light at night</a>. In a recent study, we used millions of bird observations by citizen scientists to document the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.116085" target="_blank">occurrence of migratory bird species in 333 U.S. cities</a> during the winter, spring, summer and autumn.</p>Blackpoll warbler. PJTurgeon / Wikipedia
<p>We used this information to determine how the number of migratory bird species varies based on each city's level of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/light-pollution" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">light pollution</a> – brightening of the night sky caused by artificial light sources, such as buildings and streetlights. We also explored how species numbers vary based on the quantity of tree canopy cover and impervious surface, such as concrete and asphalt, within each city. Our findings show that cities can help migrating birds by planting more trees and reducing light pollution, especially during spring and autumn migration.</p>Declining Bird Populations
<p>Urban areas contain numerous dangers for migratory birds. The biggest threat is the risk of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1" target="_blank">colliding with buildings or communication towers</a>. Many migratory bird populations have <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw1313" target="_blank">declined over the past 50 years</a>, and it is possible that light pollution from cities is contributing to these losses.</p><p>Scientists widely agree that light pollution can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708574114" target="_blank">severely disorient migratory birds</a> and make it hard for them to navigate. Studies have shown that birds will cluster around brightly lit structures, much like insects flying around a porch light at night. Cities are the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2029" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">primary source of light pollution for migratory birds</a>, and these species tend to be more abundant within cities <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.13792" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">during migration</a>, especially in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103892" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">city parks</a>.</p>Composite image of the continental U.S. at night from satellite photos. NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data from Miguel Román, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
The Power of Citizen Science
<p>It's not easy to observe and document bird migration, especially for species that migrate at night. The main challenge is that many of these species are very small, which limits scientists' ability to use electronic tracking devices.</p><p>With the growth of the internet and other information technologies, new data resources are becoming available that are making it possible to overcome some of these challenges. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07106-5" target="_blank">Citizen science initiatives</a> in which volunteers use online portals to enter their observations of the natural world have become an important resource for researchers.</p><p>One such initiative, <a href="https://ebird.org/home" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">eBird</a>, allows bird-watchers around the globe to share their observations from any location and time. This has produced one of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.04632" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">largest ecological citizen-science databases in the world</a>. To date, eBird contains over 922 million bird observations compiled by over 617,000 participants.</p>Light Pollution Both Attracts and Repels Migratory Birds
<p>Migratory bird species have evolved to use certain migration routes and types of habitat, such as forests, grasslands or marshes. While humans may enjoy seeing migratory birds appear in urban areas, it's generally not good for bird populations. In addition to the many hazards that exist in urban areas, cities typically lack the food resources and cover that birds need during migration or when raising their young. As scientists, we're concerned when we see evidence that migratory birds are being drawn away from their traditional migration routes and natural habitats.</p><p>Through our analysis of eBird data, we found that cities contained the greatest numbers of migratory bird species during spring and autumn migration. Higher levels of light pollution were associated with more species during migration – evidence that light pollution attracts migratory birds to cities across the U.S. This is cause for concern, as it shows that the influence of light pollution on migratory behavior is strong enough to increase the number of species that would normally be found in urban areas.</p><p>In contrast, we found that higher levels of light pollution were associated with fewer migratory bird species during the summer and winter. This is likely due to the scarcity of suitable habitat in cities, such as large forest patches, in combination with the adverse affects of light pollution on bird behavior and health. In addition, during these seasons, migratory birds are active only during the day and their populations are largely stationary, creating few opportunities for light pollution to attract them to urban areas.</p>Trees and Pavement
<p>We found that tree canopy cover was associated with more migratory bird species during spring migration and the summer. Trees provide important habitat for migratory birds during migration and the breeding season, so the presence of trees can have a strong effect on the number of migratory bird species that occur in cities.</p><p>Finally, we found that higher levels of impervious surface were associated with more migratory bird species during the winter. This result is somewhat surprising. It could be a product of the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/heatislands" target="_blank">urban heat island effect</a> – the fact that structures and paved surfaces in cities absorb and reemit more of the sun's heat than natural surfaces. Replacing vegetation with buildings, roads and parking lots can therefore make cities significantly warmer than surrounding lands. This effect could reduce cold stress on birds and increase food resources, such as insect populations, during the winter.</p><p>Our research adds to our understanding of how conditions in cities can both help and hurt migratory bird populations. We hope that our findings will inform urban planning initiatives and strategies to reduce the harmful effects of cities on migratory birds through such measures as <a href="https://www.arborday.org/programs/treecityusa/index.cfm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">planting more trees</a> and initiating <a href="https://aeroecolab.com/uslights" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lights-out programs</a>. Efforts to make it easier for migratory birds to complete their incredible journeys will help maintain their populations into the future.</p><p><em><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/frank-la-sorte-1191494" target="_blank">Frank La Sorte</a> is a r</span>esearch associate at the </em><em>Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kyle-horton-1191498" target="_blank">Kyle Horton</a> is an assistant professor of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at the Colorado State University.</em></p><p><em></em><em>Disclosure statement: Frank La Sorte receives funding from The Wolf Creek Charitable Foundation and the National Science Foundation (DBI-1939187). K</em><em>yle Horton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/cities-can-help-migrating-birds-on-their-way-by-planting-more-trees-and-turning-lights-off-at-night-152573" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Lynne Peeples
Editor's note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. Read the launch story, "Thirsting for Solutions," here.
In late September 2020, officials in Wrangell, Alaska, warned residents who were elderly, pregnant or had health problems to avoid drinking the city's tap water — unless they could filter it on their own.
Unintended Consequences
<p>Chemists first discovered disinfection by-products in treated drinking water in the 1970s. The trihalomethanes they found, they determined, had resulted from the reaction of chlorine with natural organic matter. Since then, scientists have identified more than 700 additional disinfection by-products. "And those only represent a portion. We still don't know half of them," says Richardson, whose lab has identified hundreds of disinfection by-products. </p>What’s Regulated and What’s Not?
<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently regulates 11 disinfection by-products — including a handful of trihalomethanes (THM) and haloacetic acids (HAA). While these represent only a small fraction of all disinfection by-products, EPA aims to use their presence to indicate the presence of other disinfection by-products. "The general idea is if you control THMs and HAAs, you implicitly or by default control everything else as well," says Korshin.</p><p>EPA also requires drinking water facilities to use techniques to reduce the concentration of organic materials before applying disinfectants, and regulates the quantity of disinfectants that systems use. These rules ultimately can help control levels of disinfection by-products in drinking water.</p>Click the image for an interactive version of this chart on the Environmental Working Group website.
<p>Still, some scientists and advocates argue that current regulations do not go far enough to protect the public. Many question whether the government is regulating the right disinfection by-products, and if water systems are doing enough to reduce disinfection by-products. EPA is now seeking public input as it considers potential revisions to regulations, including the possibility of regulating additional by-products. The agency held a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/dwsixyearreview/potential-revisions-microbial-and-disinfection-byproducts-rules" target="_blank">two-day public meeting</a> in October 2020 and plans to hold additional public meetings throughout 2021.</p><p>When EPA set regulations on disinfection by-products between the 1970s and early 2000s, the agency, as well as the scientific community, was primarily focused on by-products of reactions between organics and chlorine — historically the most common drinking water disinfectant. But the science has become increasingly clear that these chlorinated chemicals represent a fraction of the by-product problem.</p><p>For example, bromide or iodide can get caught up in the reaction, too. This is common where seawater penetrates a drinking water source. By itself, bromide is innocuous, says Korshin. "But it is extremely [reactive] with organics," he says. "As bromide levels increase with normal treatment, then concentrations of brominated disinfection by-products will increase quite rapidly."</p><p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15487777/" target="_blank">Emerging</a> <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b05440" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">data</a> indicate that brominated and iodinated by-products are potentially more harmful than the regulated by-products.</p><p>Almost half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of either the Atlantic or Pacific coasts, where saltwater intrusion can be a problem for drinking water supplies. "In the U.S., the rule of thumb is the closer to the sea, the more bromide you have," says Korshin, noting there are also places where bromide naturally leaches out from the soil. Still, some coastal areas tend to be spared. For example, the city of Seattle's water comes from the mountains, never making contact with seawater and tending to pick up minimal organic matter.</p><p>Hazardous disinfection by-products can also be an issue with desalination for drinking water. "As <a href="https://ensia.com/features/can-saltwater-quench-our-growing-thirst/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">desalination</a> practices become more economical, then the issue of controlling bromide becomes quite important," adds Korshin.</p>Other Hot Spots
<p>Coastal areas represent just one type of hot spot for disinfection by-products. Agricultural regions tend to send organic matter — such as fertilizer and animal waste — into waterways. Areas with warmer climates generally have higher levels of natural organic matter. And nearly any urban area can be prone to stormwater runoff or combined sewer overflows, which can contain rainwater as well as untreated human waste, industrial wastewater, hazardous materials and organic debris. These events are especially common along the East Coast, notes Sydney Evans, a science analyst with the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG, a collaborator on <a href="https://ensia.com/ensia-collections/troubled-waters/" target="_blank">this reporting project</a>).</p><p>The only drinking water sources that might be altogether free of disinfection by-products, suggests Richardson, are private wells that are not treated with disinfectants. She used to drink water from her own well. "It was always cold, coming from great depth through clay and granite," she says. "It was fabulous."</p><p>Today, Richardson gets her water from a city system that uses chloramine.</p>Toxic Treadmill
<p>Most community water systems in the U.S. use chlorine for disinfection in their treatment plant. Because disinfectants are needed to prevent bacteria growth as the water travels to the homes at the ends of the distribution lines, sometimes a second round of disinfection is also added in the pipes.</p><p>Here, systems usually opt for either chlorine or chloramine. "Chloramination is more long-lasting and does not form as many disinfection by-products through the system," says Steve Via, director of federal relations at the American Water Works Association. "Some studies show that chloramination may be more protective against organisms that inhabit biofilms such as Legionella."</p>Alternative Approaches
<p>When he moved to the U.S. from Germany, Prasse says he immediately noticed the bad taste of the water. "You can taste the chlorine here. That's not the case in Germany," he says.</p><p>In his home country, water systems use chlorine — if at all — at lower concentrations and at the very end of treatment. In the Netherlands, <a href="https://dwes.copernicus.org/articles/2/1/2009/dwes-2-1-2009.pdf" target="_blank">chlorine isn't used at all</a> as the risks are considered to outweigh the benefits, says Prasse. He notes the challenge in making a convincing connection between exposure to low concentrations of disinfection by-products and health effects, such as cancer, that can occur decades later. In contrast, exposure to a pathogen can make someone sick very quickly.</p><p>But many countries in Europe have not waited for proof and have taken a precautionary approach to reduce potential risk. The emphasis there is on alternative approaches for primary disinfection such as ozone or <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/eco-friendly-way-disinfect-water-using-light/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ultraviolet light</a>. Reverse osmosis is among the "high-end" options, used to remove organic and inorganics from the water. While expensive, says Prasse, the method of forcing water through a semipermeable membrane is growing in popularity for systems that want to reuse wastewater for drinking water purposes.</p><p>Remucal notes that some treatment technologies may be good at removing a particular type of contaminant while being ineffective at removing another. "We need to think about the whole soup when we think about treatment," she says. What's more, Remucal explains, the mixture of contaminants may impact the body differently than any one chemical on its own. </p><p>Richardson's preferred treatment method is filtering the water with granulated activated carbon, followed by a low dose of chlorine.</p><p>Granulated activated carbon is essentially the same stuff that's in a household filter. (EWG recommends that consumers use a <a href="https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/reviewed-disinfection-byproducts.php#:~:text=EWG%20recommends%20using%20a%20home,as%20trihalomethanes%20and%20haloacetic%20acids." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">countertop carbon filter</a> to reduce levels of disinfection by-products.) While such a filter "would remove disinfection by-products after they're formed, in the plant they remove precursors before they form by-products," explains Richardson. She coauthored a <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b00023" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2019 paper</a> that concluded the treatment method is effective in reducing a wide range of regulated and unregulated disinfection by-products.</p><br>Greater Cincinnati Water Works installed a granulated activated carbon system in 1992, and is still one of relatively few full-scale plants that uses the technology. Courtesy of Greater Cincinnati Water Works.
<p>Despite the technology and its benefits being known for decades, relatively few full-scale plants use granulated active carbon. They often cite its high cost, Richardson says. "They say that, but the city of Cincinnati [Ohio] has not gone bankrupt using it," she says. "So, I'm not buying that argument anymore."</p><p>Greater Cincinnati Water Works installed a granulated activated carbon system in 1992. On a video call in December, Jeff Swertfeger, the superintendent of Greater Cincinnati Water Works, poured grains of what looks like black sand out of a glass tube and into his hand. It was actually crushed coal that has been baked in a furnace. Under a microscope, each grain looks like a sponge, said Swertfeger. When water passes over the carbon grains, he explained, open tunnels and pores provide extensive surface area to absorb contaminants.</p><p>While the granulated activated carbon initially was installed to address chemical spills and other industrial contamination concerns in the Ohio River, Cincinnati's main drinking water source, Swertfeger notes that the substance has turned out to "remove a lot of other stuff, too," including <a href="https://ensia.com/features/drinking-water-contamination-pfas-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PFAS</a> and disinfection by-product precursors.</p><p>"We use about one-third the amount of chlorine as we did before. It smells and tastes a lot better," he says. "The use of granulated activated carbon has resulted in lower disinfection by-products across the board."</p><p>Richardson is optimistic about being able to reduce risks from disinfection by-products in the future. "If we're smart, we can still kill those pathogens and lower our chemical disinfection by-product exposure at the same time," she says.</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://ensia.com/features/drinking-water-disinfection-byproducts-pathogens/" target="_blank">Ensia</a>. </em><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2649953730#/" target="_self"></a></p>Trending
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