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Many doubt water risk as Joliet area is forced to find better source

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May 6, 2001

JOLIET � Fears about health risks linked to elevated levels of radium in drinking water are unfounded, say city officials and some scientists.

Still, many new residents of Joliet, Plainfield, Lockport and other towns that use deep wells are alarmed to discover they and their children may risk getting cancer by drinking the tap water.

"People moving in from Chicago suburbs have no understanding of radium in water. I'm reluctant to use the word panic, but there is extreme concern with some of them," said Dennis Duffield, Joliet's director of public works. Duffield said he gets three or four calls a week about radium in the water.

   Longtime area residents have had to educate themselves about the issue and decide whether to drink the tap water or seek some other source, like bottled water.

   "I don't drink the water. I won't even give it to my dogs. Animals can get cancer just like everyone else," said Jill Foster of Lockport as she left a grocery store with 6 gallons of bottled water.

   Others dismiss the belief that drinking water with relatively low levels of radiation might cause cancer. Judy Hopkins is a nurse. Her husband, Dan, is an X-ray technician. They live with their children in the city's Cathedral neighborhood, and they drink the tap water.

   "Back when my children were babies, I asked my pediatrician about it, and he told me that at those levels it was nothing to be concerned about," Judy Hopkins said.

   But concerns about the possible harm of drinking the tap water remain prevalent, with some parents fearful that one sip from a drinking fountain at school could lead to problems later in life. Recently, a young mother was observed at a local YMCA admonishing her toddler for attempting to use a drinking fountain.

   "Don't drink that! It's Joliet water," the mother exclaimed.

   Notices on water bills about radium levels are enough to trigger radiophobia, or fear of radiation and X-rays. The fact is, there is no proof that long-term exposure to low levels of radiation causes cancer, and not a single case of someone getting cancer from drinking water with Joliet's level of radium has been documented.

   Low-level radiation is everywhere: in sunlight, in the ground and in the air we breathe. Many scientists believe that exposure to naturally occurring radiation stimulates the body's resistance to larger doses and is essential for sustaining life.

   "Radiation panics people. It's a bit of an irrationality," said Jim Volk, a city council member in Batavia who holds a doctoral degree in physics and works as a research scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Concerns over bone health

   Radium always has been present in the water Joliet draws from deep wells. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes that even the low levels of radium ingested by people who drink from public water supplies poses a risk. Children are believed to be especially at risk.

   "The more (water with radium) you drink, the greater the threat. Sixty percent of the lifetime risk comes before age 18. If you want to identify the most susceptible population segment, it would be children. You can see where the vulnerability is," said Miguel Del Toral, safe drinking water regulation manager for the EPA's regional office in Chicago.

   The risk is because radium acts like calcium. Most of the radium ingested by the body is excreted, but about 20 percent finds its way to the bones. Since bones grow fastest when we are young, the risk to children is greatest.

   Still, bone cancer is rare. About 2,900 new cases will be reported in the United States this year, and about 1,400 of those will be fatal, according to the American Cancer Society. During the five years ending in 1998, the most recent period for which data is available, there were 22 reported cases of bone cancer among Will County's 500,000 residents, said Mel Lehnherr, assistant division chief of epidemiologic studies for the Illinois State Cancer Registry.

   "Ionizing radiation increases the risk for bone cancer," Lehnherr said. "But the available evidence suggests the cancer risk from radioactive drinking water is relatively small. Basically, that's because of the amount of dilution."

Facts on cancer

   If radium in drinking water caused cancer, then it would stand to reason that cancer rates here would be higher than in other towns which don't have radium in their water supplies. But in reality, cancer rates in Will County are between 5 percent and 20 percent below statewide averages.

   Radiation can cause bone cancer, but genetics also plays a factor, said Dr. Lawrence Schilder, medical director of the Silver Cross Cancer Center and assistant professor of clinical medicine at Northwestern University Medical School.

   Joliet's Silver Cross Cancer Center is affiliated with the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University in Chicago, one of only two designated National Cancer Institute sites in Illinois.

   "Despite the fact that we, as a nation, all regularly drink water contaminated with low levels of radium over our lifetimes, osteogenic sarcoma (bone cancer) remains a very rare disease," Schilder said.

   "If radium in ground water at its current level represents a clear and present danger, why is the prevalence of osteogenic sarcoma in the U.S. only five cases per million people per year?" Schilder said.

   Determining the cause of every type of cancer is still an inexact science, but Lehnherr said only about 5 percent of all cancers are attributable to environmental pollution, including naturally occurring radium. But government officials maintain that however slight the risk of getting cancer from drinking water with radium, the risk is real.

   "We need to do a better job of placing the risk in perspective," Del Toral said. Chances that people will die from drinking water with radium in it are minuscule, especially when compared to the risk of getting heart disease from eating fatty foods or getting lung cancer from smoking cigarettes, he said.