It's a concentration issue, whether it's agriculture or whether it's urban development. Little research has been done in Canada to try to gauge the public health effects of contaminated drinking water. Most often, said Lawrence, problems go unreported. One or two people get sick. But the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga., did studies in the early 1990s suggesting water-borne viruses that cause diarrhea and other stomach upsets contribute to the deaths of several hundred infants and up to 1,500 elderly people every year in the United States.
Aboriginal communities face even worse odds.
Assembly officials suggest the real total is even higher. This is only an abstract. Link was good on date posted here, but some news sources only allow free access to articles for a week or so, then articles are removed or a charge made for access. Earth Crash has 1,000s of news article abstracts on a wide range of environmental subjects and can easily be searched by entering your search terms here. Subscribe to the Earth Crash Newsletter and receive the latest news article headlines by e-mail.