By Michael Fumento Enrique Ghersi's voice shook with emotion as he spoke to a gathering of Latin American, British, and U.S. policy makers in January. Ten thousand Latin Americans have died of cholera in the past five years, according to the Pan American Health Organization, and more than a million have been made sick. But this imperialism didn't come at the point of a bayonet. It came from EPA pronouncements on the chlorination of drinking water.
Chlorine is the most effective killer of bacteria in water supplies.
While other techniques such as ozonation or using ultraviolet light can kill bacteria at the point of contact, chlorine a dded to water keeps on killing all the way to the faucet. About three-fourths of all U.S. drinking water is chlorinated, while most of the rest is treated with a combination of chlorine and ammonia. But the broad class of chemicals known as chlorines has been under an all-out assault by American environmentalists lat ely, who accuse them of everything from thinning the ozone layer to causing cancer to reducing sperm counts to shrinking alligators' penises. Other critics, pointing to Peru, say it would cost many American lives. The Peruvian government took the environmentalists and the EPA seriously.