Sandeep Burman

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66 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2024 last heard Feb 2024

Sandeep Burman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Health Chatter · Water & Health · 9 Feb 2024 podcast

a fundamental right everyone's entitled to, whether they're drinking from private supplies or public supplies, then I think the private side of the matter probably needs a lot more discussion, a lot more attention to be paid for it to give those people the same kind of protection and facilities that public water supplies enjoy today.

Yes, Dan, again, that's one of the prevailing issues of our time is the debate about adding fluoride to water. So there's unquestionably data that has shown that the addition of those small quantities of fluoride has had a huge impact on dental health. But nonetheless, we also know that fluoride in higher quantities can go the other way, that it can cause you harm.

So this aspect gets studied very closely, and scientists the world over in the U.S. work very hard to make sure that the amount of fluoride that's set in Minnesota, it's set in California. It's set in state statute and nationally CDC has guidance for how much fluoride needs to be added. And those numbers have been revised downwards as now we get fluoride from other sources too.

There's fluoride in toothpaste and fluoride in mouthwash. So with all of that, the amount of fluoride that gets added to municipal waters has been revised downwards to keep that total exposure to fluoride at a safe level. And certainly, although this is a very, very highly researched topic, lots of experts looking at this very closely, the world over,

So I think people can be confident that the small amount of fluoride being added into municipal water supplies is not going to push us over that area where we're getting too much fluoride. But nonetheless, this is a topic of great debate and people are certainly justified in having concerns that we're getting too much fluoride because that is not healthy either.

But again, all we can do is assure people that this is an issue that everyone's aware of. And again, our medical community, our scientific community, keep a very close eye on how much is being added to municipal supplies to make things, just keep things in balance.

Yeah, the underpinnings, again, on public water supplies, everybody follows the Safe Drinking Water Act. That's the federal requirement. All the states in the United States, barring perhaps one, have been delegated the authority by the federal government to administer the Safe Drinking Water Act in the state. So we're all really using the same playbook.

So we can be assured that when you travel across the border, the water and the public water supply really is following the same rules and regulations and the same kind of testing, the same rules. Everybody has to meet the same quality criteria. So that's a pretty constant thing as you travel across the United States. So there's definitely some reassurance in that.

And besides that, there is a lot of coordination and communication and sharing of information and cross-training and learning from each other. We do a lot of things collaboratively with our neighboring states. And we share some of our source waters. We have the same aquifers, the same surface water bodies, the same rivers that flow across.

So there's a lot of coordination on making sure that we are helping each other out and keeping those source waters safe. There's definitely coordination there. And again, I think state to state, share the same values, share the same signs, share the same regulations. So it is not a patchwork. It is a pretty consistent body of regulation and practices across this country.

So that's a very good thing. That gives us that assurance that we're not going to be running into different sort of frameworks as we travel across the country. It is a very consistent situation. And I think that's reassuring.

So it goes back to, I grew up in India, a country that has lots of water and also very little water, depending on where you are in the country. And I trained to be an engineer and a geologist there. And I was fascinated with working on water. big projects, you know, mining and tunneling and building big dams. That's how I started and realized that water was central to all of those things.

You're either trying to control water, harness water, or do something with water. Got me thinking about the value of water itself fundamentally. So I got interested in water and I came to the United States for graduate studies and I wanted to really study water. And then I went from you know, just studying how to find water, use water to really protecting and conserving it.

You know, I went to work in the, pollution control industry, cleaning up big contamination, and again, contamination in water, especially drinking water with the most highest profile, highest importance projects. My graduate thesis had to do with water. I was part of the team that developed the wellhead protection plan for the state in the early days of the plan.

Then I kind of went away from drinking water per se, but worked in areas that were related to drinking water. So then came to MDH four years earlier in this position. It was sort of coming back to my roots and coming back to drinking water.

So I think a long association with water, different aspects of it, sort of over time really began to understand that water is liquid gold, and especially drinking water is the defining issue of our time, and it's going to define where we go as a species in the future.

I think there can be no, as you've said yourself, you cannot possibly understate the value of drinking water, what it means to humankind.

So I think, Stan, I think there's, unfortunately, there's the water infrastructure, however robust and resilient to make it, You can't really design something that can sustain human conflict and deliberate targeting because I think that is a strategic thing is to take out some of those infrastructure things to force the other side to capitulate.

So it takes a long time to rebuild your water system. So again, you have to make sure that the source waters have come through actively intact and groundwater, surface water, they'll be affected differently. Surface water is a lot more vulnerable. And the infrastructure, if it's been physically destroyed, you're looking at a very time-consuming, very expensive effort to bring that back into...

into use. So for a long time, you're probably looking at bringing water in and supplying it to people that way. And I think that's typically what you see as, that's why water is such a huge component of aid packages that go in and relieve supplies. Water is front and center. Humans can probably survive a long time with food shortages, but a lot less without water.

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