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Amy Volk, State Senator, Scarborough — As a state senator representing a district that is rapidly growing with people who come here to raise their families, I feel an obligation to do what I can to give children the best shot at healthy, productive lives. That means making sure that all children have access to safe and clean drinking water.

Unfortunately, too often Maine families are unknowingly drinking water that is contaminated with levels of arsenic that are above the national safe drinking water standard.

“In Gorham, an overwhelming 57 percent of our private wells are contaminated with too-high arsenic levels, while arsenic contaminates 47.5 percent of Scarborough’s private drinking water and 41.2 percent of wells in Buxton.

That’s really scary when you consider that arsenic is linked to cancers of the bladder, skin and lung. Maine has the highest rate of bladder cancer in the nation, followed closely by New Hampshire, a state that shares our aquifer and has a very similar problem with arsenic in groundwater.

Arsenic is also linked with lowered IQ scores. When a study came out showing that Kennebec County children exposed to arsenic in their drinking water had IQ scores 5 to 6 points lower than youngsters who hadn’t been exposed, I thought about the children in my own district who could be drinking similarly contaminated water. That amount of difference in IQ is significant enough to require special education services, and can produce dramatic learning disabilities that really change the course of a child’s life.”

Read the full Opinion Editorial here. This piece was written by Amy Volk, a Republican state senator from Scarborough and was published in the Portland Press Herald.