As Toxic Algae Blooms Proliferate, There's Still No Federal Plan For Dealing With Them
Most of the air we breathe comes from algae and other aquatic organisms that have been photosynthesizing sunlight into oxygen for a billion years. But not all algae are life-giving. Blue-green algae contain a powerful class of toxins called cyanotoxins. When these algae form blooms — rapid accumulations of algae in fresh or marine water — they can damage ecosystems and cause vomiting, fever, headache, neurological problems, and even death in humans and animals.
These poisonous organisms have been cropping up a lot lately. Beaver Lake in Asheville, North Carolina, was closed last week after local officials found toxic algae in the water. Three dogs died from playing on a beach suspected to be contaminated with toxic algae on the Columbia River in Washington state last month. In California, the Bureau of Land Management closed a 28-mile stretch along the Merced River after water samples south of where a family of hikers mysteriously died in August showed high levels of toxic algae. These types of incidents are not rare. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that toxic algae sent more than 300 Americans to the emergency room between 2017 and 2019.
But despite the dangers of algae-related poisoning and the harmful and costly impacts of blooms on ecosystems, the federal government doesn’t have a cohesive strategy for dealing with freshwater harmful algal blooms, or HABs. That’s the conclusion of a new watchdog report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General. “The EPA does not have an agency-wide strategy for addressing harmful algal blooms,” the report says, “despite Congress appointing the EPA administrator as the leader for federal actions focused on reducing, mitigating, and controlling freshwater HABs.” The report recommends that the EPA needs to focus on developing a national program to “forecast, monitor, and respond” to these blooms; establish new water safety criteria for algae-causing chemicals in lakes, rivers, and streams; and take a closer look at whether water with algae in it is safe to drink.
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In 2015, Congress put the EPA in charge of developing informational drinking water health advisories for cyanotoxins. Exposure to even low doses of the toxins over a long period of time can encourage liver tumors and other disease. But the report notes that the agency still hasn’t developed those advisories. Experts say the EPA should go a step further and set maximum contaminant limits, a legal threshold on the amount of a substance that is allowed in public water systems under the Safe Drinking Water Act, for cyanotoxins, which would require states to meet those standards for their drinking water supplies. Only two states, Oregon and Ohio, have forged ahead without the EPA and regulated cyanotoxins in drinking water. Until the EPA releases a set of federal standards, most states won’t monitor their drinking water supplies for these toxins. “If you think about how people respond to regulations in general, they typically step up to the plate to meet what regulations are on the books,” Christine Kirchoff, associate professor of water policy and management at the University of Connecticut, told Grist. “And there aren’t regulations for cyanotoxins except in those two states.”
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https://grist.org/politics/toxic-algae-blooms-are-multiplying-the-government-has-no-plan-to-help/
