MTBE Found In Water Supplies of East Coast Communities

The gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) has been detected in the water supplies of two Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Also, another town found industrial solvents in its water supply system. As a result the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has opened an investigation into the matter.

The chemical is added to gasoline by many oil companies to make what is known as reformulated gasoline, which lowers levels of noxious emissions from automobiles and trucks.

Discoveries of MTBE in California water systems have caused concern, for example in Santa Monica, where the compound contaminated the water supply there so severely that more than half of the city's water services were stopped. State legislators have tried to ban the additive, while others have called for a change in the state's regulations to allow ethanol to be added to gasoline. It is known to be suitable as a clean-air promoting additive and is used across the U.S. outside of California.

In Virginia, water samples taken from four wells in Round Hill, a Loudoun County community west of the nation's capital, were found to contain evidence of MTBE. In nearby Hamilton, other wells showed signs of concentrations of MTBE. The state has hired a contractor to investigate the contamination sources and trace groundwater movement in the area. Some samples analyzed indicated MTBE concentrations in excess of 20 parts per billion (ppb). The limit set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) so far is 40 ppb, but the scientific investigative work on possible health effects is not complete.