On Nov. 2, New Yorkers voted to add an important sentence to the Bill of Rights in our state constitution: “Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”

We believe this right to be inalienable — and one that should be protected by every level of our government.

Right now, we’re focused on water.

We have a front-page story this week by Sean Mulkerrin on what may seem like a small problem in the village of Altamont, population 1,675.

But we believe the problem could be widespread and now is the time to find out if it is and to take action to solve it.

Mulkerrin wrote a story in early November about a water-main break on Schoharie Plank Road and mentioned that the 1940s pipe was made of asbestos cement.

Asbestos, a mineral made of long, thin fibrous crystals, occurs naturally and has been used by humans since the Stone Age. Large-scale mining of asbestos began in the late 1800s as the heat-resistant fiber was used widely in building materials.

Although asbestos industry officials since the 1930s knew of health dangers — most notably deadly lung diseases — caused by asbestos, it wasn’t until the 1970s that there was enough public pressure in the United States that the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration began to ban some uses of asbestos and regulated the process for its removal.

We are left with a legacy of asbestos that permeates many of our buildings and, as we have recently learned, many of our water systems.

Julian Branch, a Canadian journalist, read Mulkerrin’s Nov. 4 story and told of us the coverage he has provided on the issue in Canada. He lives in Regina in Saskatchewan where he said use of asbestos-cement water pipes is widespread.

Asbestos-cement pipes, like the one that broke this fall in Altamont, were largely installed in the mid-20th Century and are now deteriorating. As they do so, they can leach asbestos fibers into the water supply.

Mulkerrin spoke about the potential danger with Altamont’s superintendent of public works, Jeff Moller. Moller is a local government official whom we trust. He always answers our questions, even the tough ones.

Moller said that biofilm has built up on Altamont’s water pipes over the years, which keeps asbestos fibers from getting into villagers’ water. He also said that orthophosphate is regularly added, which forms a layer of calcium carbonate to create a protective pipe within a pipe.

Moller and his crew have to be careful when cutting the asbestos-cement pipes for repairs, he said, and so don’t use the machine they normally would so as not to create dust.

We’re glad Moller is protecting his workers from asbestos fibers but we were concerned and wanted to make sure biofilm really did protect residents from asbestos.

“The biofilm can do good or can do bad,” professor Yanna Liang, who chairs the Department of Environmental and Sustainable Engineering as well as the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Albany, told Mulkerrin.

Liang said that “biofilm” is a very general term and she did not know what is in Altamont’s pipes. “Without any testing, I don’t know what you have,” Liang said. 

We appreciate her caution. And that is precisely why we urge Altamont and any other municipality with asbestos-cement pipes, to do the necessary tests to see if the water is safe.

Liang writes, on the University at Albany website, that she is passionate about sustainability. “I believe that every scientific field and every corner of our society should apply the principle of sustainable development,” Liang writes. “No matter if it is environment, energy, and economy, we must consider our future generations and not just our own needs.”

We, too, embrace a philosophy, a world view, of thinking beyond our own needs to meet the needs of future generations.

In the case of asbestos-cement pipes, however, current and future needs are one. We need a safe water supply now as well as for the generations that follow.

Liang suggested residents with safe-water concerns should call the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which Mulkerrin did; he was directed by the DEC to the county’s health department.

The county responded that it wouldn’t be involved unless a water-main break lasts more than four hours or there is a significant system-wide loss of pressure.

So, we see here three levels of government failing to protect Altamont residents from potential risks in their drinking water: village, county, and state.

Mind you, we are not sounding an alarm, saying that Altamont residents may be poisoned by their water.

Rather, we are saying: Government, at some level, has a responsibility to examine the pipes to see if biofilm or the orthophosphate is actually protecting residents from ingesting asbestos fibers and must test the water to find out.

At the final level of government, the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 set a maximum contaminant level for asbestos in drinking water of seven million fibers per liter.

In about 16 percent of United States water facilities, the EPA reported in a 1979 study, “consumers using asbestos-cement mains may be exposed to high concentrations of fibers, over ten million fibers per liter.” In a few areas, people were exposed to one-hundred million fibers per liter. In the more than four decades since that study, we would suspect asbestos-cement pipes have deteriorated further.

But, despite these EPA findings and the resulting regulation, after the September water-main break in Altamont, no tests for asbestos were performed. This makes the federal regulation meaningless since there is no way to know if it should be enforced.

Mulkerrin spoke to an expert, Arthur Frank, a medical doctor with a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences and an expert in asbestos-related diseases at Drexel University in Philadelphia, who said that, although most people think of asbestos as only being inhaled, it can also be ingested.

“We swallow it,” Frank said. “And when you swallow it, it goes down into your intestines.”

Just one day of exposure has been shown to give both humans and animals mesothelioma, which is because the asbestos fiber can get into your system and just stay there, Frank said.

He surmised that the blowout of Altamont’s water main this fall was because asbestos-cement pipes thin-out over time, they get worn away, and the asbestos in the pipes comes out as well. 

Asked about Moller’s explanation for not needing to test the water since it was protected from the asbestos pipe by the biofilm, Frank acknowledged the buildup but said, “We also know that asbestos does leach out of pipes.”

Danger from asbestos-cement pipes is not new in New York State. In the 1980s, the state’s Department of Health set up a registry after asbestos contamination was discovered in Woodstock, resulting from corroded asbestos-cement pipes.

After “strainers on faucets and showerheads were clogged with asbestos fibers,” a decade-old water sample confirmed that “leaching of asbestos into the water supply began as early as 1976,” the state report says.

In the end, the Woodstock report concluded, “This prospective cohort study, with a retrospective component for the years 1980-1985, did not demonstrate an increased incidence of total gastrointestinal cancer, total respiratory cancer, or all cancers combined among individuals living on a water supply contaminated with asbestos. When individual gastrointestinal cancers were examined, only pancreatic cancer was significantly elevated and the excess occurred primarily among males.”

However, the state’s Woodstock report notes six epidemiologic studies that show an association between asbestos fibers in drinking water and incidence of stomach cancer and other gastrointestinal or respiratory cancers as well as two studies that do not.

As we’ve all learned from nearly two years of living with COVID-19, science evolves.

It takes time and many studies to determine what causes risk and what prevents it. This is especially true with cancers that often take two decades or more to develop after a person has been exposed to a known carcinogen, like asbestos.

“There have been a number of recent studies which have shown that asbestos fibers can penetrate the digestive tract and even are excreted through the urine,” reported the Environmental Protection Agency in 2004.

Frank says there is growing research that shows ingested asbestos has been linked to esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, and small and large bowel cancer, as well as kidney cancer.

Why should Altamont residents — or anyone else — live with this risk?

Moller thinks there is not much asbestos-cement pipe in Altamont but he doesn’t know for sure since no records were made when the pipes were installed. He knows there is asbestos-cement pipe on Maple Avenue Extension and along Schoharie Plank Road because pipes have broken there.

Asbestos-cement pipes, most of which were installed in the mid-20th Century, are at an age in Altamont and elsewhere when they are deteriorating, and should be replaced.

The $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15, assigns $3 billion to New York State for clean water. While much of the focus had been on replacing lead pipes, we believe municipalities should put forth plans to replace asbestos-cement pipes as well.

Asbestos-cement pipes are like a ticking bomb. It is only a matter of time before they deteriorate further and break like the one in Altamont.

In the 1970s, the EPA took the Reserve Mining Company to court to get it to stop dumping waste from its ore processing plant into Lake Superior. After appeal, the final court decision said both that “Reserve’s discharges into the air and water give rise to a potential threat to the public health,” violating federal and state laws and also that “no harm to the public health has been shown to have occurred to this date and the danger to health is not imminent.”

What has stayed with us from reading that case, though, is the testimony given by the plaintiff’s chief medical witness, Irving Selikoff, who was the director of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and a nationally recognized authority in asbestos-induced disease.

Selikoff likened doing nothing to stop Reserve’s dumping to playing Russian roulette. “If we’re wrong, the consequences would be disastrous,” he said.

Why should we play a deadly game of chance with our health or with the health of future generations?

Asbestos-cement water pipes should be replaced — now.