Usually we report about water conditions in a region getting worse but today we proudly announce that we recently stumbled across some news about improved water quality in a region. It feels good to deliver good news every once in a while, ya’ know?

So anyways, an independent environmental monitoring group in the Chesapeake Bay area (Chesapeake Bay Foundation) announced that results of recent water quality testing indicate definite improvements in the bay’s overall condition.

With its crab population rebounding and water quality slightly better, the Chesapeake Bay is showing signs of improvement, the region’s leading environmental group says, but the estuary remains seriously impaired and needs a strict pollution “diet” to ensure its restoration.

The Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Foundation upped the estuary’s overall health score by three points in its latest “state of the bay” report, while warning that it remains in critical condition, barely above a failing grade.

“That the bay is getting better is a huge development, but sadly not the whole story,” William C. Baker, the foundation’s president, said in a release accompanying the report. “Dead zones, fish kills and water contact advisories are constant reminders of how far we still must go.” ( source )

Got a body of water in your area that you’d like to keep an eye on? The Chesapeake Bay Foundation probably uses quite a few advanced tools such as multi-parameter meters to measure a wide range of critical water parameters but in all honesty, sometimes using simple tools such as a TDS Meter or Eco-Check, a very popular product which tests for nitrates, nitrites, hardness, total alkalinity, and pH all with a single dip of a test strip and typically costs less than $14.00 for a bottle of 25 tests.

Drastic changes in basic water quality parameters sometimes serve as warning signs that other, more serious water quality problems exist.

Ordinarily when a water treatment facility’s product tests positive for too great a concentration of a heavy metal such as lead, copper, iron, mercury, etc. all sorts of people — especially environmental watchdog groups — lay the blame on the doorstep of the water treatment facility.

But not this time. Environmental Working Group (EWG), a lobbying group hailing from Washington, D.C., regards the finding of hexavalent chromium in several public water supplies as a problem, yes, but not necessarily all the fault of local water treatment facilities.

Instead, EWG would like for people to place the blame with the sources of chromium contamination.

Makes perfectly good sense to us. Stopping the flow of pollutants from entering the water supply sure would take a lot of the burden off of water treatment plants and ultimately off of the end user… AKA: All of us in the general public.

A Washington D.C. based environmental group says it’s not trying to put blame on local cities for contamination of hexavalent chromium. A single sample taken an Avion Water Company customer’s tap was one of 35 taken across the country that showed levels in excess of what the State of California is proposing as a public health standard. “This is an upstream pollution problem that needs to be stopped at the source. We need better water source protection and while we do advocate all utilities do their own testing for this and let their all their customers know the results, this doesn’t mean that they’re the ones responsible for the pollution.”

Leanne Brown with the Environmental Working Group says the only consumer level filtering system that can remove this chemical is a reverse osmosis system. Hexavalent chromium can come from manufacturing, pulp mills, and leather tanning. ( source )

So where does that leave average people like us? In the exact same place as before this result… in charge of making sure we have safe, clean drinking water going into our glasses.

Obviously a problem with chromium-6 pollution exists in this country and we, as end users, will not know whether or not we personally have chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium) in our own water supplies unless we perform testing on a periodic basis.

How to test for chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium) in your water

As usual, nothing beats laboratory testing of your water by a certified water testing laboratory (i.e. National Testing Labs)… but that does not mean each and every test needs to get shipped off to a lab.

Periodic testing for chromium-6 using at-home drinking water test kits between annual (or more frequent) lab testing provides continual piece of mind and does not cost a fortune.

SenSafe manufactures a simple dip-n-read test strip for hexavalent chromium (chromium-6) that provides results in under 2 minutes… and 50 tests costs somewhere in the neighborhood of around $17.00 (just $0.34 per test!).

Detection Levels for the SenSafe product: 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5, 10, 25, 50 mg/L (parts per million).

If we found one metal, might there be more?

No one can answer that question honestly… without conducting additional testing. A home or business owner might assume that the presence of chromium or other heavy metals such as lead, mercury, etc. also exist in their water supply, but as we said, without additional testing no one will know for sure.

A good way to test for metals commonly found in drinking water?

If you want a fast and inexpensive testing method for metals in drinking water that will tell you if you have a dissolved metals concentration greater than 10 parts per billion in your water, take a look at the Water Metals Check Test Strips.

While this product will not tell you exactly WHICH metal(s) your water contains, it will allow you to quickly and easily determine whether or not you will want to opt for other, more ion specific testing.

The other day we received an email from ‘SandraDiDeeYo’ who asked a question we could not believe no one had asked us in the past…

“The news is full of boil water advisories in my state recently. Maybe I never paid attention before and they were always in the news but since now I am paying attention I want to know why do cities advertise boil water advisories?”

A very good question, indeed, and not one that has a definite set of answers… though we will attempt to give a few reasons anyways explaining why cities might issue boil water advisories.

1. Water main breaks: Unexpected ruptures in the previously sealed system may allow unwanted bacteria and other contaminants to enter the water supply.

2. Scheduled water line maintenance: Opening the previously sealed water line for any reason, even for scheduled maintenance, can allow unwanted contaminants access to the water supply.

3. Pump failures: If a pump or related component fails water pressure in the lines drops. When that happens, back pressure in the water lines could possibly ‘suck’ unwanted contaminants into water supply via small cracks or fissures ordinarily not considered a problem because normal operating pressure expels water out through those openings in the form of small leaks.

   WaterSafe All-in-One Test Kit Tests for Bacteria, Lead, Pesticides, Nitrates, Nitrites, Chlorine, pH, and Hardness

4. Water quality testing reveals contamination: Seemingly an obvious reason, but we mention it to remind everyone that municipal and private water treatment facilities must, by law, perform a set number of tests on the water they distribute each and every day, hour, week and month.

   If a predetermined number of tests come back positive for bacteria the facility must, by law, notify local authorities who will issue a boil water alert until the situation gets remedied.

Having said what we just said, we’d now like to take a moment to thank the dedicated men and women who spend their days monitoring the quality of the drinking water too many people take for granted.

Interested in learning more about the quality of the tap water in YOUR area? Contact you local water treatment facility or health department and ask for the most recent Water Quality Report. By law they have to provide you with a hard copy or the link to where they have the information posted online.

What does boiling the water do?

Quite simply, it kills off any potentially harmful that may have slipped into the water supply on its way to your home or office. Do make sure you bring the water to a full rolling boil before use and make sure you do not leave the water sitting around too long out in the open (unsealed) because boiling will have also removed any disinfectants normally found in your water that provide a buffer against incidental bacteria floating around in the air.

One danger associated with boiling water, aside from the risk of getting scalded or badly burned by hot water, has to do with metals in drinking water. Boiling water concentrates the metals — if present in the source water — so if your water normally contains dissolved metals you may want to consider switching to bottled water instead of boiling your water until the boil water advisory gets lifted.

Interested in removing metals from your drinking water? You may want to consider a reverse osmosis water filtration system.

Over the weekend we received an email from ‘Franny5Franny’ who asked the following question:

“Hi. You guys always talk about the eXact Micro 7+ meter and I just wanted to know if you know if the 8 version has been released yet. My friend works in a wastewater treatment plant and he said he talked to Industrial Test Systems at a tradeshow and the lady told him they were working on the 8 version over the summer. So do you know? Thanks.”

Thanks for writing in, Franny. We, too, had heard that the makers of the eXact Micro 7+ Photometer planned to release a new meter soon… but until you asked we had not really looked into the matter all that much.

Since you asked, though, we did some digging and discovered that Industrial Test Systems, a Rock Hill, SC based manufacturer of water testing products, has actually released a new meter called the eXact Micro 8 Advanced Photometer which performs direct read testing for 7 different water parameters (Cyanide, Total Iron, Ferrous Iron, Ammonia, Phosphates, BT-pH, Sulfide).

The meter also has the ability to test for 11 other water quality parameters: Total Alkalinity, Biguanide, Calcium (as CaCO2), Chloride, Cyanuric Acid, Magnesium, CG-pH, Potassium, Protein (as BSA), Sulfate (as SO4), and Turbidity.

If you any additional information about the eXact Micro 8 Water Testing Meter, you should take a look at the product description on the FilterWater.Com web site.

Are other eXact Meters still available?

Yes. Industrial Test Systems appears to have committed itself to the eXact 7+ / eXact 8 chassis and reagentstrip reagent delivery technology which uses smaller sample sizes and smaller amounts of chemicals per test. Smaller sample sizes and fewer reagents per test both mean less chemical waste generated during mandatory and precautionary testing.

Local officials in an area near the city of Columbia, SC announced recently that residents living in and around the Allbene Park area should boil their water before use…

… and by use they mean for drinking, cooking, as ice, or as a wash solution for food or anything that will come in contact with food.

The reason for the alert: a water main broke and when that happens unwanted bacteria could possibly find their way into the water supply.

Residents of the Allbene Park subdivision in the Hopkins area of Richland County were advised Tuesday to boil their water before drinking or cooking with it.

A break in a water line caused a loss of pressure to Allbene Park residents, the Richland County Utilities Department said Tuesday afternoon. That prompted the advisory, which the department described as a precautionary measure that will remain in effect until further notice.

Residents are instructed to boil water for at least one minute, the department said. In addition, any ice made from water that has not been boiled should be discarded.

Questions may be directed to the department at (803) 401-0050.

Vicinity of Allbene Park. ( source )

Not in the Allbene Park area and want to test your water supply for bacteria anyways? Take a look at the WaterWorks EZ Coliform Test Kit. It allows users to obtain positive/negative test results for bacterial contamination down to the EPA limit of 1 coliform unit per 100 mL of sample.

Need to confirm the presence of coliform bacteria?

Simply shine a UV light source at, or add a Kovacs reagent to, the sample tested using a WaterWorks EZ Coliform Test Kit and that can happen.

We received a very direct question from ‘HonestJr’ about a product we wrote about recently: The Filtrete Water Station manufactured by 3M.

“My question is regarding the Filtrete Water Station made by 3M. Does it remove fluoride from the water being filtered?”

Thank you for your question, Honestjr. As best we can tell from the information available online, the Filtrete system does NOT remove fluoride — but we suspected that even before beginning research.

Simple water filtration units will most often remove (or more likely reduce) chlorine levels to improve taste and odor of water — and not really do a whole lot more.

Reducing/removing fluoride requires technologies beyond simple GAC (granular activated carbon) filtration devices.

If you have serious concerns over fluoride in your drinking water you may want to consider taking a look at the following pages from our site, as they give more information about removing fluoride from drinking water.

• Inexpensive Countertop Fluoride Filter

• Fluoride Removal Media for Water Filters

• Removing Fluoride From Drinking Water

• Filters to Remove Fluoride From Drinking Water

We hope this helps. If not, please feel free to write back and we’ll do what we can to provide additional information!

Best regards,

– Water Testing Blog (www.watertestingblog.com)

Every once in a while we get requests from foreign countries asking for pricing and availability of specific products.

Unfortunately we do not know a whole lot about the International market and what products exist in countries outside of the United States and Canada, but we generally assume that interested parties can acquire the same stuff we can, just at a higher cost due to import taxes and shipping fees.

Having said that, though, today’s international inquiry comes from ‘Zahid Afzal’ in Pakistan who asked who wants to know, specifically, about places to purchase a product called the Hanna Checker HC Photometer for Free Chlorine

Dear Sir/Madam,

Can you please give us the price for the “Hanna Checker HC Photometer for Free Chlorine” for our project in the Flood affected areas of Pakistan.

Regards,

Zahid Afzal

Thanks for the inquiry, Zahid. We really don’t know all that much about the “Hanna Checker HC Photometer for Free Chlorine“… except that a swimming pool supply company ( In the Swim ) began carrying this product at some point last Summer.

Having said that, do you really want to use a pool water testing device to test drinking water?

Granted we have said over and over again that doing ANY testing of drinking water in an area recently affected by flood waters makes more sense than performing no testing at all, but we would suggest looking into other meters… or possibly even into simpler testing methods that do not rely upon chemical reagents (i.e. DPD powders, DPD tablets, DPD reagentstrips, DPD liquids, etc.)

Do you wonder what terrible contaminants may or may not lurk in your water? Have you tried to find a reputable water testing company in your area and had no luck? If so, then you and ‘Joyce B’ should get together for coffee because the two of you have the same trouble right now…

“I have searched for hours. How does one find a water testing company? We live in Northern Colorado and can find no information on this. It’s very frustrating.”

Yes, Joyce, we agree. The internet has become so cluttered with nonsense that finding valuable resources such as reputable water testing companies has turned into a truly annoying adventure.

Thankfully the United States Environmental Protection Agency has put together a way for people to locate certified water testing laboratories in their State of residence. For you, Joyce, the EPA’s web site directed us to the following pdf file which lists State Certified Drinking Water Labs in Colorado.

For all you other folks interested in locating a certified water testing lab in your area, take a look at the EPA’s State Certification Officers for Drinking Water Laboratories. By each name you will find a link to that particular state’s web page with links to its approved drinking water testing laboratories.

Do we have to use a lab to test our water?

We strongly advocate using a certified drinking water testing laboratory in situations where the water has not gotten tested in a long time or people have good reason to suspect contamination of some sort. That does not mean, however, that people ought not perform spot check testing on the quality of their drinking water using at-home drinking water test kits made by reputable companies like SenSafe and WaterSafe because sometimes a drastic change in an easily monitored water quality parameter (i.e. pH, alkalinity, heavy metals, etc.) can indicate the presence of a much larger and potentially much more dangerous problem.

We have written about boil water orders all over the country since starting this site several years ago… and just to prove a point, check out these recent stories about communities instructed boil their water because of water main breaks, equipment failures, etc.

Before you WASTE money buying that expensive gift basket of bath scents and bath oils for your mother, sister, aunt, or uncle Wanda… we want you to consider the possibility that free chlorine and/or chloramines may ruin all those beautiful scents you will choose.

Fact: As an oxidizer, chlorine in any of its forms will viciously attack the chemical compounds contained in bath scents and bath oils. Those aggressive nature of those attacks by a strong oxidizing agent renders the scents less potent and in some cases may drastically alter the way they smell.

The Rainshow’r Bath Ball makes taking a leisurely bath a whole lot better and more enjoyable by removing bothersome chlorine from your bath water before use. Simply swish the ball around in the water for around 2 minutes (or hang it directly in the water flow from your faucet as you fill the tub).

While many other methods of removing chlorine from bath water require adding some sort of attachment to the plumbing leading to your tub but not the Rainshow’r Bath Ball which effectively removes 90% or more of total chlorine and leaves you with healthier bath water.

How do I see if my water contains chlorine?

The easiest way involves using a simple set of test strips such as the WaterWorks 2 Free & Total Chlorine Test Strips which will allow you to test for both free and total chlorine at the same time and get results in under 30 seconds.

What else makes the WaterWorks 2 Test Strips a good product? Simple: WaterWorks 2 Test Strips allow you to quickly and easily determine if your water contains just free chlorine, a combination of free chlorine & chloramines, or just chloramines.

How does that work? Just subtract the free chlorine concentration from the total chlorine concentration and you get the chloramine concentration. As an example, water with 2 ppm free chlorine and 3 ppm total chlorine contains 1 ppm chloramines.

Refills for the Rainshow’r Bath Ball?

Each Rainshow’r Bath Ball comes with a crystal pouch good for roughly 200 uses depending upon how much chlorine your water contains.

What happens after 200 uses? Pop open the ball, take out the old crystal bag, and put in a new Bath 2000/3000 Crystal Bag. Simple as that.

View the Rainshow’r Crystal Bath Ball Manual for additional product information.