What's in the Water? Ask the National Tap Water Quality Database
by Jacob Gordon, Nashville, TN on 01. 3.06
If you’ve ever been curious to know what’s really in the water coming out of your tap, there is now a fun and user-friendly way to find out what may be poisoning you. The Environmental Working Group has created the National Tap Water Quality Database, the result of the largest ever evaluation of drinking-water contaminants. The database, 2.5 years in the making, looks at more than 22 million water quality tests and organizes the results such that people can search by city, state, or by contaminant, to see what’s in their water and what health issues are related to each substance. The scariest of their findings is that, of the 260 contaminants found in U.S. drinking water, more than half do not fall under any regulation at all. Among the unregulated are the auto fuel additive MTBE and jet fuel ingredient perchlorate, both of which can be found at my very own Los Angeles kitchen sink. :: National Tap Water Quality Database
I have been wondering about my water supply since i moved to Long Beach NY 2 years ago. when I looked it up I got
http://www.ewg.org/tapwater/yourwater/system.php?pwsid=NY2902834
which says:
"Notice: Water testing data is not available for this system. Either the state failed to provide EWG with this testing data in a suitable electronic format or this system has not reported testing to their state water regulators."
Then there was 1 violation which was
"1999-10-19 Failure to report information to the public or state agency in the Consumer Confidence Report"
Sounds like they "forgot" to rep[ort the data because it did not sound good.
I was wondering how I can test the home water. There ma be contaminates in the pipes that are not in the water supply as well. I drink about 40% poland spings and 60% britta filtered tap water.
Anybody have recomendations for testing kits and filtering water?
You can look inthe phone book/google under "environmental lab" in your area. A typical lab in Washington state will charge between 50 and 100 bucks for a full analysis of every contaminant regulated by the state.
For drinking water, the EPA sets the limit for a contaminant, but states have the responsibility to enforce compliance. In practical terms, this means there is an industry for small water quality labs to spring up everywhere.
As far as being nervous about various contaminants, I wouldn't be. Drinking water is arguably the most heavily regulated substance in the country, and the US system is light years ahead of just about any other country. Perchlorate, mentioned in the post, is probably the most prominent thing not yet regulated, and there are ongoing studies, mandated by EPA, to determine what the proper "mcl" (maximum contaminant level) is. Nothing wrong with a brita filter to take out the nasty chlorine taste (if there is one), but any more aggressive home filter and/or bottled water is more than likely a waste of money.
If you want the full details, community water systems with more than a certain population (I think it's 10,000 right now) are required to send out a Consumer Confidence Report every year to every address in their system (this is a summary of all the required monitoring they did during the year). If they don't (like in the previous comment), they are breaking the law. Call them and ask for a copy if you didn't get it. Request that they post it on the web.
Seriously, if you want to talk about relative risk, you have far more toxic things in your home than your drinking water that you may not give a thought to. Some systems have problems (for example, some refuse to filter, preferring the expense of lawyers to the expense of a filter plant), but in general, the water industry is doing pretty well.