Puerto Rico’s unclean water raises fears of health crisis
Medical volunteers treat widespread symptoms
LOIZA, Puerto Rico – Massive damage to Puerto Rico’s water system from Hurricane Maria poses a looming health crisis for island residents exposed to contaminated water, health workers and environmentalists warn.
Doctors and nurses who traveled to the island since the hurricane hit Sept. 20 said they treated widespread symptoms related to unclean water, from vomiting and diarrhea to conjunctivitis (pink eye), scabies and asthma. At least 74 suspected cases of leptospirosis, a dangerous bacteria, have been reported, including two deaths.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that it was testing suspected leptospirosis samples.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s office said 82% of the island’s water meters are now active, but many residents say they still have no running water or the water they have is unsafe.
Many people are still collecting water from mountain springs and creeks alongside roads. Some know they should boil the water and others don’t.
Island officials did not comment about the water and health problems.
Morovis Mayor Carmen Maldonado said that despite the governor’s claims, none of the 13 neighborhoods in her city has water service.
“The humanitarian crisis that so many speak of is what we are living daily in Morovis, while the AAA refuses to look for alternatives,” Maldonado said in a statement.
“We’re worried that in places even that have running water whether that water is safe,” said Erik Olson, health program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
His group reported in May that Puerto Rico’s water system had the worst record under the Safe Water Act, with 70% of the people living with water that violated standards set by the U.S. law. And now the situation is worse, he said. “The drinking water system was already very fragile. When you lose water pressure, what can happen is if there’s groundwater contamination with sewage or flooding, that water can get into those pipes.”
In the coastal municipality of Loiza, municipal officials are providing water to 29,000 residents with tanker trucks and going house to house with bottled water, said Israel Morales Alicea, the town’s communications adviser.
Iricelis Ortiz, 42, worries that the blue-colored water that runs in her pipes is unsafe. She and her aunt use it only to clean clothes and dishes, and to shower. They tried boiling it, but “it tasted weird,” Ortiz said.
Bottled water can be hard to find and gets expensive, said her aunt, Maria Ortiz, 66. “A pack of 24 water bottles that used to be $3.99 now is about $7.50,” she said.
Medical workers who volunteered across the island report patterns of symptoms almost everywhere.
“Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen a continuous stream of adult and pediatric patients with gastrointestinal illness, most often involving fever, vomiting and diarrhea,” said Christopher Tedeschi, an emergency medicine physician at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center who returned from Puerto Rico last week. “It’s hard to say the source ... although contaminated food and water are very likely.”
Tedeschi said his team treated more than 1,000 patients in the town of Manatí, 30 miles west of the capital. They also met with residents who either didn’t have access to clean water or weren’t sure their water was safe. “While boiling is an easy way to decontaminate water, most people I spoke to either didn’t (have) electricity or cooking gas to get that done,” he said.
Alicia Schwartz, a home-care nurse in New York City, said her group saw a resident whose uncle died from leptospirosis after collecting water from a mountain stream.
“They learned their lesson. They stopped” using the water, she said.
But others continue, Schwartz said. “That day we were visiting that town we had to stop numerous times, because people were collecting water from the streams.”
Dorell reported from Washington.