Every year, nearly 1.5 billion people -- mostly children under five -- suffer from water-borne diseases. Yet environmental activists in wealthy industrialized nations are leading a campaign to eliminate the most effective means of purifying water -- chlorination.

• An estimated 25 million people die every year from cholera, typhoid fever, amebic dysentery, bacterial gastroenteritis, giardiasis, schistosomiasis and various viral diseases such as hepatitis A -- due to contaminated water.

• In Latin America, where some cities stopped chlorination due to a suspected link with cancer and others can't afford to treat water, there have been nearly one million cases of cholera and 10,000 cholera deaths since 1991.

• Alternative chemical disinfectants such as ozone and ultraviolet light have been used in water treatment, but they are far more expensive and not as safe or effective as chlorination.

On the other hand, opponents claim chlorine compounds can cause cancer, infertility or birth defects. However, recent research indicates the increased risk of cancer from chlorinated water is minimal or nonexistent.

For example, a 1994 toxicological study found no carcinogenic effects at chlorine concentrations a thousand times higher than Environmental Protection Agency standards. And the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded population studies on cancer rates were too flawed to draw any conclusions.

Water chlorination is just one target for some activists; they advocate eliminating some or all of the 15,000 chlorine compounds now in use. This would include most plastics, almost 85 percent of pharmaceuticals and 96 percent of crop-protection chemicals.

Yet most of the chlorine in the world occurs naturally. The annual global emission of some 1,500 naturally occurring chlorinated organic chemicals totals five million tons, compared to human emissions of chlorine compounds of only 26,000 tons.

Source: Michelle Malkin and Michael Fumento, "Rachel's Folly: The End of Chlorine," March 1996, Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1250, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 331-1010.