By SARAH LARSON The Intelligencer

Private well owners take note: if you haven't tested your drinking water for arsenic, you probably should, because Bucks County has just about the worst problem with arsenic in the state.

Scattered cases of arsenic leaching into groundwater can be found across Pennsylvania, said Nancy Roncetti of the state Department of Environmental Protection. But the highest concentrations are around Meadville, in Crawford County, and in the northern part of Bucks County, she said.

“There are also certain pockets of it in Eastern Montgomery County and some more toward Central Bucks, but those are the places where it is really problematic,” said Roncetti, the water supply manager for the DEP's southeast regional office.

Arsenic is a silvery-grey metallic element found in certain types of rock. It can easily leach into underground water flowing around the rock. It also was used in pesticides and for industrial uses and can contaminate water that way.

Public water suppliers are supposed to remove enough of the metal from the water so it meets new federal standards. The burden for private well owners, however, lies squarely on their own shoulders.

Karen Case found that out the hard way.

“We're on a private well, and we test every two years, but they never tested for arsenic,” said Case, who lives on Point Pleasant Pike in Plumstead. “I never realized that arsenic is naturally occurring and could be in well water.”

Case tested her well for arsenic at the behest of doctors, including Dr. Robert Schmidt who practices conventional and complementary medicine at the Woodlands Healing Research Center on Clymer Road north of Lake Nockamixon.

Schmidt said he and the three other doctors at the center aren't deluged by patients with symptoms of arsenic poisoning, but they get enough to realize it's an issue in some parts of Bucks County.

“People will come in and say, "I don't know what's wrong with me,' and we'll do a urine toxic metals screen and find it that way,” said Schmidt. “I've had a couple other people who have enough arsenic that we wonder where it came from.”

The culprit usually ends up being arsenic in well water, Schmidt said.

That's exactly how Case found that the water in her family's private well was laced with arsenic. After some health problems plagued her and her three boys, she went looking for an answer. Her well tests last year revealed 13 parts per billion of arsenic, which she suspects have contributed to their ailments.

She and her husband have since put a $5,000 treatment system on the well, she said.

Still, Case is ahead of most of the more than 1 million private well owners in Pennsylvania, said Bryan Swistock of Penn State. Most don't realize they need to test their wells at all, said Swistock, who is randomly testing about 700 private wells across the state to see what is in the water.

“They don't get their water tested; they just assume it's fine,” said Swistock, a water specialist in the school of forest resources. “It can look good, taste fine, and still have high levels of arsenic, nitrates or other things.”

Arsenic is a carcinogen, linked to cancer of the bladder, kidney, liver, prostate, skin and more, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Ingesting high levels of arsenic, through contaminated food or drink, can kill, making the most severe form of arsenic a favorite poison in murder mysteries and the play and film “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Exposure to lower levels can cause nausea and vomiting, abnormal heart rhythm, damage to blood vessels and more.

For decades, the acceptable level for arsenic in U.S. drinking water was 50 parts per billion. That threshold was set in 1942, with, critics charged, little to no scientific foundation.

Over the next 50 years, evidence piled up that low-level, long-term exposure to arsenic was more harmful than once believed. People who drank water laced with trace amounts of arsenic were more likely to develop bladder or lung cancer, several studies in the 1990s concluded.

In 1996, Congress substantially strengthened the nation's drinking water laws on several fronts, including requiring public water suppliers to tell people what is in the water they drink. That's why we now get annual reports detailing contaminants in our drinking water. The 2006 reports are due to customers by July 1.

The 1996 amendments also requested tightened standards for certain water contaminants — arsenic, radon, disinfection byproducts, cryptosporidium and sulfate. After some governmental waffling, the EPA in 2001 lowered the arsenic threshold from 50 parts per billion to 10.

By the end of 2006, community water systems had to test for arsenic, and, if they found it, are supposed to remove enough of it so the water meets the new limit.

Private well owners are not required to do anything.

Sarah Larson can be reached at (215) 345-3187 or slarson@phillyBurbs.com.

June 11, 2007 6:16 AM