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In California jails and prisons, where Latinos make up 41% of the population, drinking water contains potentially dangerous levels of arsenic, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Latinos, who make up 38% of California’s population, account for 41% of people in California prisons, with an incarceration rate of 757 per 100,000 people in that group, according to Prison Policy Initiative (PPI).
Meanwhile, African Americans, who make up only 6% of the state’s population, account for 27% of those incarcerated, with a rate of 3,036/100,000.
Researchers on Rempel’s team analyzed water quality data for 20 years at Kern Valley State Prison and nearby communities in the Central Valley, including Allensworth, McFarland, and Delano.
Water in those regions comes from subway aquifers that already naturally contain unhealthy levels of arsenic. At all sites, the study found arsenic levels in the water supply that have exceeded established health limits by months and even years.
Long-term exposure to even small amounts of arsenic in drinking water has been linked to various cancers and other serious health problems. In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lowered the maximum allowable contamination level from 50 to 10 parts per billion (PPB).
The study found that in all four communities considered; arsenic levels have exceeded 10 PPB over the past two decades, sometimes even after the community had received state funding for remediation.
In California, the highest rates of confinement are concentrated in a handful of counties in northern and central California, including Del Norte, Siskiyou, Shasta Tehama, Lake, Yuba, Kings, and Tulare, according to PPI.
