Word: thms
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While members of the Harvard community said yesterday that they did not know that there were high levels of carcinogenic triha-lomethanes (THMs) in the water from July, 1988 to December, 1989, they did believe that the water was unsuitable to drink...
...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...
...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...
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...
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...