A review of the nation's new coverages serves as a ready reminder that drinking water safety is more than regional of local concern. In recent times, the print media alone has drawn attention to barium, bacteria, heavy metals, and increasingly organic contaminants, in public water supplies located in Florida, Rhode Island, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Michigan, and California, to name a few.
In an effort to address one of the major issues confronting the future of the nation's drinking water supplies, chemical contamination, the Drinking Water Research Foundation and the American Chemical Society presented the symposium, Safe Drinking Water: the Impact of Chemicals on a Limited Resource. To add balance to the total presentation, two papers were included that were not part of the symposium.
Many questions as to the public significance of hundreds of organic chemicals known to be present in the national drinking water supply are waiting to be answered. In some areas of the country, aid rain-induced alterations of the natural leaching process represent an unexplored potential source of toxic pollutants. Finding workable ways to clean up the water supply will be an ongoing task.
Addressing these questions, as well as investigating how other countries are responding to these problems, the alternate sources available, such as bottled water, and point of use devices, the presenters in this symposium have attempted to explain the problems, situation, and alternatives.
As progress is made in one area, setbacks will occur in another. As we eliminate problems thought chemical technology, we often create others, such as contamination of our waters.
While all the situations, problems, and alternatives are not discussed in these proceedings, it is hoped that some attention will be brought to the public, government, and private sectors so that future work will be done to assure the nation of safe drinking water resources.
About the Author: Dr. Rip G. Rice received his PhD degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Maryland, and has more than 36 years of varied experience in the deferal government, aerospace, the chemical industry, and as a private consultant in government liaison, envitonmental engineering, and water and wastewater treatment.
In 1973, Dr. Rice co-founded the Internation Ozone Association, is a member of its Board of Directors, and has served as its President during 1982 and 1983. During the period 1977-1980, he was a member of a consulting team of speacialists funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to survey and analyze European and Canadian water treatment practices involving the used of ozone, chlorine dioxide, granular activated carbon, and biological treatment processes. Recently, Dr. Rice conducted an extensive literature review of the oxidation products formed when drinking water is treated with various oxidizing agents, for EPA's Office of Drinking Water. Dr. Rice is coeditor of the series of books entitled, Handbook of Ozone Technology and Applications, and coauthor of the book Biological Activated Carbon, both published by Ann Arbor Science Publishers, Inc. In addition, Dr. Rice has edited 10 monographsand proceedings for the International Ozone Association.
A member of the AWWA, WPCF, Sigma Xi, IOA, AiChE, the International Bottled Water Association, and the Technology Transfer Society, Dr. Rice recently has been appointed to teh Joint U.S./USSR Work Group on the Prevention of Water Pollution from Industrial and Municipal Sources, directed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
