Another Water-Gate?

HARVARD health officials said this week that the University is now testing campus water to check whether the concentration of potentially cancer-causing chemicals has returned to a permissable level. But this revelation--whether or not it actually is true--cannot begin to make up for damage done by a month of misstatements, secrecy and paternalism that kept students and other University affiliates unaware of a serious health problem on campus. Harvard did not inform students and staff that the water they used for drinking, cooking and showering had been tainted for more than 16 months by excessive levels of trihalomethanes (THMs)--chemicals known to cause cancer in lab animals.

Why students were kept in the dark is about as complicated as the Harvard bureaucracy itself. In late January, all water users in Cambridge, including Harvard, received a letter from the city notifying them of the abnormally high concentrations of THMs over the past 16 months. The University's top environmental administrators deemed the notification they received from Cambridge too "alarming" to pass on to students. Mid-level environmental officials believed Cambridge's assertion that the dangerous concentrations of THMs had dropped, despite the city's abysmal history of environmental law violations.

And the University officials responsible for the welfare of students--namely Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 and the house masters--either misunderstood or received false information about the water situation. Jewett said he was told by the Environmental Health and Safety Office that Harvard had already tested the water (it hadn't) and found it safe (it wasn't). Leverett House Master John E. Dowling said he was told that the water had been safe for the past year (it wasn't).

What is apparent is that the system for dealing with environmental hazards on campus must be reformed. Those administrators who deal directly with students should not have to rely on third-hand information from lower-level bureaucrats. The recent misunderstanding arose in part because Jewett was not included in key meetings of the Environmental Safety Committee--the University body that sets its environmental policy--about whether to notify the University community of the water contamination.

But the reforms must run deeper than streamlining the flow of information. Harvard health officials should not be allowed to pick and choose the health information they reveal to students and staff. University policy should require full and prompt disclosure of environmental contamination.

To begin with, the Environmental Health and Safety Office must promptly release the results of water tests it is conducting this week, along with an assessment of the risks of the community's prolonged exposure to abnormally high levels of THMs.

CAMBRIDGE water has never been known for its purity. For years, observers have decried the rusty pipes, old equipment and adminstrative lethargy that make the city's water the most unsafe in the Boston area. Yet the January news that Cambridge water has contained concentrations of THM in excess of the level permitted by Environmental Protection Agency regulations for the past 16 months still shocked Harvard health officials. One would have hoped that administrators who are supposed to protect the community from health risks would have known about the situation earlier.

One would expect that when these administrators did find out about the problem, they would have acted decisively to inform the community. Director of University Health Services Dr. David S. Rosenthal, who serves on the Environmental Safety Committee, said that the committee discussed the situation on February 5, and decided that the Cambridge letter was too "alarming" to forward to University affiliates. "The [Cambridge letter] is an example of how not to do risk communication," he said.

But the committee's solution was to do no risk communication in the short term. Instead, they decided to study the problem further, "discuss" the test results and then choose the appropriate--presumably soothing--language with which to inform Harvard affiliates of tainted water. Rosenthal said that he and Dr. Warren Wacker, former director of UHS, felt that the THM levels posed no "obvious health risk."

So why didn't they just communicate that "feeling," along with the facts of the contamination, to the Harvard community? Their paternalism violates the spirit of Massachusetts' health-hazard notification law, which requires that municipalities notify water customers of contamination. Rosenthal's argument that a report of the Cambridge letter appeared in The Crimson cannot justify the absence of an official response to the problem. When health is at stake, administrators must make sure that everyone gets the information--not just Crimson subscribers.

Rosenthal and Wacker may also be wrong about the risks of THMs; prolonged exposure to the chemicals may have serious health consequences. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that "THMs in drinking water...[present] rather chronic or lifetime risks that increase with long-term exposure." Students and staff don't know whether 16 months of exposure poses a serious threat. That's why they deserve a thorough assessment of the risks involved as well as the facts of the water contamination.

Even now, health bureaucrats could not or would not name the company Harvard had hired to test the water supply. Rosenthal told a reporter, "I am not at liberty to tell you that." Even now, health officials want to take a privileged look at the data before coming clean with University students and staff.

LAST week, we argued that the "lessons from this disgraceful episode are painfully obvious." This week these lessons are only more obvious. The secretive committee that makes University health decisions must publicize its proceedings and pledge to inform the community of all health risks. The layers of bureaucracy--each with its own explanation of the water situation--must be revamped and streamlined.

Testing this week may reveal the water to be safe from high levels of THMs. But students and other University affiliates will not really be safe from health hazards until Harvard lives up to its responsibility of protecting and informing its community members.