Worry and anger can motivate people to keep buying bottled water for weeks, even months, after a crisis involving their community’s tap water is resolved.

Those two emotions, according to a major paper published 17 years ago by the Society for Risk Analysis, are at the root of why many people stick with bottled water, according to the lead author, Robert J. Griffin, a journalism and communications professor at Marquette University who specializes in assessing risks from environmental and health issues.

Water hits home more than most other environmental issues because it flows out of our taps and we’re conditioned to have a sense of trust in it. 

When that’s breached, behavior changes, Mr. Griffin and other experts agree.

“Worry and anger are two of those things that get us [to dig deeper],” he said. “Uncertainty is not a good feeling for any of us, so we try to reduce that.”

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Mr. Griffin’s main frame of reference is one of the greatest waterborne crises ever to strike America, the 1993 fouling of Milwaukee’s water supply by the parasite known as cryptosporidium.

Nearly 400,000 Milwaukee-area residents, nearly 40 percent of that metro area’s population at the time, were sickened by it, with symptoms such as cramps, nausea, and diarrhea. At least 69 people — many of them with immune systems weakened by AIDS, cancer, or other health problems — died from exposure to the parasite.

“Those who didn’t get sick probably knew others who did,” Mr. Griffin said.

Cryptosporidium is resistant to the common and usually effective disinfectant, chlorine.

It is not fully known why cryptosporidium became such a problem in Milwaukee, lasting throughout much of March and April of 1993. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tightened procedures to help prevent recurrences.

There’s virtually nothing in common, biologically, between cryptospordium and western Lake Erie’s most pervasive form of toxic algae, microcystin.

But Mr. Griffin agreed there are some similarities about how Toledoans have responded to microcystin, not only during the 2014 crisis but also the knee-jerk reaction this summer when stores were cleared of bottled water as a substantial bloom started to form again.

Last year’s algae-induced water crisis ended on Aug. 4, 2014, barely entering a third day after being declared on Facebook at 2 a.m. on Aug. 2, 2014.

The city worried what might happen to pressure in the distribution lines if everyone turned on their water at once. That didn’t happen. Water-usage records showed there was no rush on tap water.

A survey by the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department five weeks after the 2014 crisis showed that while people were taking showers again and easing back into their routines, nearly 60 percent of people in the metro area continued to distrust what was coming out of the tap to resume drinking it on a regular basis.

None of that surprises Mr. Griffin, who said it’s impossible to know exactly when people get over the trauma of a water crisis or if they really do.

According to the paper he co-wrote, 29 percent of Milwaukee County residents still believed their tap water was not safe to drink in September, 1993, five months after tests showed the cryptospordium threat had passed.

About 27 percent of Milwaukee-area residents also said five months after the threat had subsided that they continued to have less confidence in city government because of the water problem.

The results were based of telephone surveys of 610 Milwaukee residents in the summer and fall of 1993.

Milwaukee residents probably continued to worry long after the crisis subsided “because they believed that they would be readily vulnerable if the parasite reappeared,” according to the findings.

Perceptions of risk “always involve the future in some ways,” Mr. Griffin said.

The closer to home, the more people worry. Many people don’t take climate change as seriously as bad water coming out of their tap because the latter affects them personally, Mr. Griffin said. Anger emerges when people lose confidence in those they have entrusted to prevent recurrences, he said.

“If I can’t trust them, I not only get worried, I get angry,” Mr. Griffin said.

Research shows people are motivated by peer pressure to go beyond headlines, he said.

Brainy people who pride themselves as being “in the know” in their social circles spend an inordinate amount of time trying to stay ahead on news and academic research about water after a crisis strikes, Mr. Griffin said.

“What struck us the most is the effect of social pressure on people to pay attention to information,” he said. “It’s a status thing.”

Robyn Wilson, associate professor of risk analysis and decision science in Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, agreed that people are more likely to become engaged when they lose confidence in those they’ve entrusted to protect them on health and environmental issues.

“If you lose that trust or confidence, then people tend to seek out more information on their own,” she said.

She agreed there’s a “social pressure to know what your friends are talking about,” especially with issues such as water quality.

Tap water is one of the most uniquely personal issues because it flows out of home faucets, Ms. Wilson said.

The 2011 record algal bloom, for example, was noticed by many Toledoans but didn’t resonate with them as much as the 2014 water crisis unless they were a fisherman or a boater.

“Suddenly, it’s important when you can’t turn on water,” Ms. Wilson said.

Ms. Wilson is one of the primary researchers of an ongoing study Ohio State has been doing of attitudes and perceptions of northwest Ohio farmers.

About three out of four farmers are concerned about Lake Erie, feel partially responsible for its degraded water quality, and are willing to do more, according to the research, which is based on surveys of nearly 3,000 farmers in 2014 and 700 in 2012.

But they want proof that a stronger commitment to better farming techniques will pay off. Many see the value in them, but aren’t convinced they contribute to the problem that much, she said.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published August 17, 2015, 4:00 a.m.