Communication and Action Water Quality Monitoring and Human Health
Consider the following example. Suppose that parents have noticed that a number of children who attend a local elementary school report frequent headaches. A study reveals that the drinking water in an area elementary school contains slightly elevated levels of a substance that could be the cause of these headaches. A subsequent health study reveals that there’s an 80% likelihood that an association found between frequent headaches and children who regularly drink from the school’s water fountains is not due to chance; in other words there’s a 20% possibility that this association is due to chance alone. The rules of academic epidemiology would consider this association not statistically significant. Generally an association needs to have less than a 5% probability that it is due to chance to be considered statistically significant.
Public health officials may thus argue that the data is inconclusive and that parents should not jump to conclusions. While those officials would be absolutely correct that the data is inconclusive by academic standards, most parents would likely consider an 80% probability of an association sufficient to push their School Board to take action. It’s not that the parents would be correct – that this contaminant is the cause of the frequent headaches experienced by children – but their action would be simply precautionary in nature. Precautionary actions are taken not when a known cause to a health problem is confirmed but rather when one is strongly suspected and the precautionary thing to do would be to take action in case that casual association exists.
Therefore, you may need to push for action even when health officials express caution about jumping to conclusions. Realize that you may in fact be jumping to a conclusion, but that there are reasons to do that.
The goal of presenting your monitoring data should not be to prove a causal association between the elevated levels of a contaminant and adverse health outcomes – unless you’re planning to publish your data or use it in court – but rather it should be to convince most reasonable people that precautionary action is warranted to address the threat.
The Toxics Action Center recommends the following:
Defining the problem is important, but only a first step. As you publicize testing results with community members, public officials, and elected legislators, be sure to ask for the solution your community group is seeking. This may be a full clean up. It may be continued monitoring. It may be a change in policy to protect other communities moving forward. It may be that the polluter has to change their practices, and stop using the toxin. You may want the state to fine the polluter for breaking the law. As a group, decide what you want and use the publicity you generate around the testing results to put your solution on the table.
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