ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD
May 22, 1986
VILLAGE OF LAKE ZURICH,
Petitioner,
v.
)
PCB 86—41
ILLINOIS ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY,
)
Respondent.
DISSENTING OPINION (by J. D. Dumelle):
The majority has found that the health risks at the radium
content of the Lake Zurich water to be “minimal” (p. 5). I
disagree. Radium is a carcinogen and has no threshold for its
effects. There are real risks.
The Federal Register of August 14, 1975 gives the risk as
“between 0.7 and 3 fatal cancers annually per million exposed
persons” at 5 pCi/i of combined radium. Lake Zurich has water at
5.7 pCi/i so the risk would rise slightly to 0.8 to 3.4,
averaging 2.1.
Thus every year new residents drink the water an individual
cancer risk of 2.1 per million or l—in--476,000 will occur. The
variance runs for almost 5 years and the risk over that period
becomes 1—in--92,000 for someone beginning to drink the water in
1986. Does the public really understand that this risk exists?
It is quite possible that the risk given above is
understated. The Agency does not cite or provide two recent
studies on cancer (including leukemia) and radium in drinking
water. The respected Journal of the American Medical Association
on August 2, 1985 carried a paper titled “Association of Leukemia
with Radium Groundwater Contamination” and is authored by a
physician, Dr. Gary H. Lyman and others. The article points out
that “A significant association between leukemia incidence and
the extent of groundwater incidence and the extent of groundwater
contamination with radium is reported herein.” It urges further
studies.
A related paper is “Drinking Water and Cancer Incidence in
Iowa” by Dr. Judy A. Bean and others. This appeared in the
American Journal of Epidemiology (Vol. 116, No. 6). A conclusion
was “Incidence rates of cancers of the lung and bladder among
males and of cancers of the breast and lung among females were
70-44
—2—
higher in towns with a radium 226 level in the water supply above
5.0 pCi/i.” More studies are also urged.
The USEPA is currently evaluating the radium standard. It
may well find these two studies and others so convincing that the
radium standard will be tightened in 1987.
A major point at issue in this and related proceedings is
whether a “threshold” exists for ionizing radiation effects. The
Agency’s principal technical witness, Dr. Richard E. Toohey,
feels that there is a threshold.
The April 26, 1986 explosion at the Cherriobyl nuclear plant
in the Ukraine has raised this same issue. The New York Times of
May 18, 1986 in an article by Malcolm W. Browne sums up the
controversy as follows:
The long term effects of relatively small
doses of radiation include increased
susceptibility to cancer, but these effects
are hard to quantify and remain the subject
of scientific controversy. According to one
school of thought, there may be a threshold
of ionizing radiation below which tissues are
able to repair themselves, leaving a person
essentially unscathed. But an opposing view
is that any amount of ionizing radiation,
however small, inevitably causes damage of
the kind that can lead to genetic disruptions
and cancer. The difference between these
views accounts for the widely varying
predictions of the global total of cancer
cases from
Chernobyl’s fallout.
The USEPA risk estimate, mentioned above, is an annual risk.
It
is based upon the “no threshold” theory.
I agree that there is no threshold for radiation effects.
Because there is a real risk to people of cancer and leukemia
from the Lake Zurich drinking water I dissent.
~,,/Chairman Dumelle, P.E.
70-45
—3—
I, Dorothy M. Gunn, Clerk of the Illinois Pollution Control
Board, hereby c~rtifythat the above Dissenting Opinion was filed
on the
/~‘~
day of
___________
1986.
Dorothy M. unn, Clerk
Illinois Pollution Control Board
70-46