For years, Crestwood Illinois Public Water Supply secretly cut its “purified” Lake Michigan water with contaminated well water

Little did the Crestwood residents know, for years they were drinking significant amounts of chlorinated hydrocarbon dry cleaning chemicals because the Crestwood Public Water Supply mixed contaminated well water with the Lake Michigan water they claimed to be delivering into the municipal water system.

Incidence of kidney and lung cancer is significantly higher in Crestwood, and the EPA has reported that the contaminants detected in the Crestwood water are likely due to a spill of a dry cleaning chemical, perchloroethylene (perc).  From the EPA’s perc ‘chemfact’ page: “Laboratory studies show that PERC causes kidney and liver damage and cancer in animals exposed repeatedly by inhalation and by mouth.”

The EPA estimated that residents of Crestwood were consuming water containing the various chemical byproducts of the perc spill in the low PPB (parts per  billion) range, which may not seem like much, but over years of chronic exposure can lead to significant increases in the incidence of disease.

Those who are predisposed to certain diseases may find their tissues can not withstand the chronic exposure to organic chemicals.

From Natural News

A report by the Chicago Tribune has revealed that officials in the village of Crestwood, just outside Chicago, have been secretly introducing tainted well water into the town water supply for years.

“I feel deceived,” village resident Tom Parkis said.

For years before the story broke, town residents had wondered if there might not be something wrong with their water. For example, Frank Caldario was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2009, at the age of 30.

“I can’t help but wonder if what happened to me had something to do with the water,” said Caldario, a non-smoker.

“It’s just unreal for someone my age to get that.”…In response to the article, the Illinois Department of Public Health conducted a survey of disease rates in Crestwood between 1994 and 2006. The researchers found that rates of kidney and gastrointestinal cancer were significantly higher in Crestwood men than in the population at large, and rates of lung cancer were significantly higher in both men and women. The researchers could not prove that the higher cancer rates were caused by the polluted water, but did find it to be a possible cause.

From the Illinois EPA’S site regarding the contamination (check out the FAQ)

From 1986 to 2007, the Illinois EPA believes Crestwood was using water from its contaminated groundwater well to supplement the Lake Michigan source water without informing the Illinois EPA or its water customers. Since the Crestwood Public Water Supply (PWS) well was reportedly not in use during this time period, no routine samples of that well were taken; federal Safe Drinking Water Act regulations do not require sampling of PWS wells that are not in use. Consequently, no regularly-collected analytical data are available to determine the levels of contamination over those years. However, in a letter to the Illinois EPA from April 1998, a consultant investigating a nearby drycleaner solvent release reported results from two samples collected from the Crestwood well. This letter also documents conversations with Crestwood officials who told the consultants that the well water was being mixed with the purchased Lake Michigan water at a ratio of 10:90. If this report is accurate, this set of results indicates that the chemical contamination discovered in 1986 had not yet degraded into the more dangerous chemical, vinyl chloride, which was first found in a 2007 well sample

….

Where are the VOCs vinyl chloride, 1,1-dichloroethylene (1,1-DCE) and the cis- and trans- forms of 1,2-DCE coming from?

Vinyl chloride is often found in the environment as a breakdown product of other solvents and is most likely coming from a release of the drycleaner solvent known as tetrachloroethylene

…

Illinois EPA is actively researching potential sources of the Crestwood well contamination.