Asbestos Cancer Exposure from Drinking Water? No! Well, maybe. You decide what the scientists are trying to say.

When it comes to asbestos related historical science, we have a number of failures that confuse rather than clarify. Just look at my blog from March 5, 2021 entitled “The Disappearing Blog on Chrysotile Asbestos” posted at https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=2052 for a discussion on some of these issues.

The scientific literature on whether asbestos related cancers arising from ingesting drinking water suffers from the same problems. Lets look at two historical documents in this regard: (1) the English based scientific and technical report entitled “Asbestos Fibres in Drinking Water” by B.T. Commins published in May 1983 (for which I can provide you my copy upon request) and (2) the 2021 World Health Organization document entitled “Asbestos in drinking-water: Background document for development of WHO Guidelines for drinking-water quality” found on the Internet at https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/350932.

Let’s start out with the Commins study in 1983. As to the background, the main issue involving asbestos exposure from ingesting water involves the historical use of asbestos-cement pipe. As stated in the publication:

Although Commins found that “little information is available worldwide on levels of asbestos in water,” he found sufficient science to state “A very important finding is that despite numerous animal feeding studies, the accumulated evidence for ingested asbestos being a carcinogen seems to be zero” and came to the conclusion that:

“Finally it is worth reflecting on the history of the interest in ingested asbestos from drinking water. A great deal of time and money has been spent in the last 10 years or so in evaluating he subject, and now it would seem that the controversy has for all practical purposes ended, and maybe the issue can be regarded as essentially a non-problem. Perhaps research effort should now be sensibly diverted into various other environmental issues.”

So, in 1983, Commins claimed that sufficient science existed to tell the public to move on and the issue of safety was settled in favor of the water being safe to ingest.

Move forward 35 plus years and the World Health Organization doesn’t necessarily disagree with Commins on the danger or exposure; but, then again, hedges its bet because of the lack of scientific studies. After stating that the “current body of evidence from both human and animal studies, including consideration of its limitations, does not support a clear association at present,” the World Health Organization says that the data has “uncertainties and limitations”, and that it is “appropriate to try to minimize the concentrations of asbestos fibres in drinking-water as far as practical.”

The last paragraph in the above page concludes that, after all this time, we still need better studies. As stated, “In view of the limited data available on occurrence of asbestos in drinking-water, it would be useful to conduct investigative monitoring to obtain further information on the contribution of older A/C pipes to fibre numbers, types, size and shape in drinking-water.”

My take away is to be careful out there. When uncertainty exists, it is best to avoid unnecessary exposures. Especially exposure arising from day to day necessities such as clean drinking water.

I appreciate your considering the issues raised in this blog. Let me know what you think either in the comments section or by email to TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Thank you. Marty