Whether the arsenic comes from a public source or a private source, it can and will cause illness and sometimes death in high enough concentrations.  Since arsenic has no color, taste or odor when dissolved in water, often times a private well owner will not know they have an issue with arsenic contamination.

Should You Test Your Well for Arsenic?

Water coming from a municipal or privately-owned water company with more than 15 service connections or serves 25 people more than 6 months of a year gets tested by the supplier.  Private well owners must make arrangements on their own to get their water tested and although no guaranteed method for assessing accurate risk of arsenic contamination exists because that risk fluctuates with the rise and fall of the underground water table, one can use the research data compiled by the United States Geological Survey to see if ground water in their area has a history of arsenic contamination:

• Maps of Arsenic in Ground Water in the United States

If you want more region-specific arsenic data, contact your local health department

How Can I Get My Well Tested for Arsenic?

1. Contact someone in your local health department or look in the yellow pages for an environmental testing laboratory.  Make sure to ask if the facility you contact has the proper certifications to do drinking water testing.
2. Call the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791 and ask for a state certification officer that can provide the names of certified facilities in your area.
3. If you wish to do the field testing yourself, take a look at the easy-to-use, field-ready Arsenic Quick Test Kits.

In a nutshell, arsenic in ground water comes from a reaction between certain types of igneous (volcanic) rock and oxygen when a water table (aquifer) drops.  That reaction liberates ‘free’ arsenic and once the water table rises again, that ‘free’ arsenic gets carried away by the water.

As for whether or not arsenic in drinking water can harm a person, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has stated that water systems may NOT dispense drinking water with arsenic in concentrations greater than 10 ppb as of January 2006.

Below please find a brief list of SOME of the illnesses and conditions associated with consuming arsenic in drinking water:

• Long term exposure to arsenic has been linked to cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidneys, nasal passages, liver and prostate.
• Short term exposure to high doses of arsenic can cause other adverse health effects including death.

For more detailed information on the adverse effects on human health associated with exposure to arsenic, please refer to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry’s Arsenic Assessment.

Additionally, you can information on testing drinking water for arsenic on this page.