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Secondary Drinking Water Standards
Water Testing Blog
Water Quality Testing
Consumers often ask the question, “OK, so my water is safe to drink according to my local Water Authority and a recent certified laboratory test, but why does it taste funny, smell bad and/or appear so cloudy?”
The answer to that question lies in something called Secondary Drinking Water Standards. The United States Environmental Protection Agency makes suggestions as to limitations for water parameters that do not necessarily pose health risks to humans, but can affect drinking water’s aesthetic properties (i.e. color, taste, odor, etc.).
| Contaminant | Secondary MCL | Noticeable Effects above the Secondary MCL |
| Aluminum | 0.05 to 0.2 mg/L* | colored water |
| Chloride | 250 mg/L | salty taste |
| Color | 15 color units | visible tint |
| Copper | 1.0 mg/L | metallic taste; blue-green staining |
| Corrosivity | Non-corrosive | metallic taste; corroded pipes/ fixtures staining |
| Fluoride | 2.0 mg/L | tooth discoloration |
| Foaming agents | 0.5 mg/L | frothy, cloudy; bitter taste; odor |
| Iron | 0.3 mg/L | rusty color; sediment; metallic taste; reddish or orange staining |
| Manganese | 0.05 mg/L | black to brown color; black staining; bitter metallic taste |
| Odor | 3 TON (threshold odor number) | “rotten-egg”, musty or chemical smell |
| pH | 6.5 – 8.5 | low pH: bitter metallic taste; corrosion high pH: slippery feel; soda taste; deposits |
| Silver | 0.1 mg/L | skin discoloration; graying of the white part of the eye |
| Sulfate | 250 mg/L | salty taste |
| Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) | 500 mg/L | hardness; deposits; colored water; staining; salty taste |
| Zinc | 5 mg/L | metallic taste |
| * mg/L is milligrams of substance per liter of water | ||
August 4th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
[...] National Secondary Drinking Water Regulations, as set forth by the USEPA, recommend an iron level of no more than 0.3 ppm. Detection levels for the WaterWorksTM Total Iron visual test are 0, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 3, 5 mg/L (ppm). The test kit contains 50 individually wrapped foil powder pillows, a test vial with cap, and a color chart card — everything you need to detect total iron in drinking water. [...]
August 5th, 2008 at 12:48 am
[...] an unpleasant taste, etc. It does not, however, at least according to the current Primary and Secondary Drinking Water Standards set forth by the USEPA, pose a health [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 4:11 am
[...] National Secondary Drinking Water Regulations, as set forth by the USEPA, recommend an iron level of no more than 0.3 ppm. Detection levels for the WaterWorksTM Total Iron visual test are 0, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 3, 5 mg/L (ppm). The test kit contains 50 individually wrapped foil powder pillows, a test vial with cap, and a color chart card — everything you need to detect total iron in drinking water. [...]
January 19th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
[...] the presence of iron in drinking water, it does not, at least according to the current Primary and Secondary Drinking Water Standards set forth by the USEPA, pose much of a health [...]
October 6th, 2010 at 8:30 am
[...] We have also taken the liberty of posting/linking both the Primary Drinking Water Standards and Secondary Drinking Water Standards on this [...]
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