To a certain extent the human body CAN and DOES flush out most things (like metals) that it does not require or want to keep. BUT we must keep in mind that although the human body does function (usually) like a well-oiled processing machine, it does not always function perfectly and sometimes traces get ‘stuck’ in the system.

Those stuck ‘traces of metals’ in the system may become a health hazard over time as their quantities increase with the body’s prolonged exposure to more metals.

Additionally, in the case of heavy metals like mercury, for example, scientists have determined that some metals form bonds with organic materials within the body and get absorbed into the body. Those compounds will not leave on their own and overtime may cause a problem as their concentrations in the body increase.

Heavy metals and the food chain?

Our planet has a hierarchical food chain. Everyone knows that. But, did you know that cases of ‘mild contamination’ by heavy metals or other potential toxins at one level of the food chain may have innumerable effects on all levels above it in the food chain?

Example: Fish in a river or lake become contaminated with mercury. We eat the fish. We become home to the mercury in the fish.

Easy to test for metals in water?

In some cases like mercury, arsenic, copper, iron, manganese, chromium, lead, and select others, simple at-home water test strips and water test kits exist.

Other metals, however, can only get detected using sophisticated laboratory equipment and techniques.

To the untrained eye each ‘glowing’ report tells a wonderful water quality success story and most of the reports use pristine pictures of crisp, clean water flowing beautifully from a sparkling faucet to paint a picture of water quality perfection.

We congratulate every water department that passed Federal muster and thank them for doing a fine job.

We scold every water department that failed Federal muster. Please get your acts together and do a better job this year!

The problem with annual water quality reports

In a good number of the reports we have looked through we found a rather ugly truth buried in the tables, charts, and pretty pictures: Yes, the water tested below Federal Guidelines for potentially hazardous metals like lead, chromium, etc. and disinfection byproducts (DBP’s), but detectable levels of those drinking water contaminants existed in the water.

Health officials have stated for a long time that ANY amounts of toxic metals like lead in drinking water or chromium may cause serious health problems — especially in young children. Exposure to metals like lead may lead to lower IQ’s, developmental problems, behavioral issues, and impaired learning abilities.

Oh, and one more thing: When last we checked, the medical community agrees that any concentration of lead in drinking water constitutes an unsafe concentration of lead in drinking water.

Why are Federal Guideline concentrations higher than medically ‘safe’ concentrations?

The United States Environmental Protection Agency set the maximum allowable contaminant concentration levels for most unwanted drinking water contaminants… a long time ago. In some cases the levels for some contaminants may have hit the books more than 50 years ago!

One must also remember that regardless of the toxicity of a drinking water contaminant, the number of potential drinking water contaminants that the USEPA has to keep tabs on grows by leaps and bounds each year. We imagine that a case load of that magnitude would result in a standard operation procedure based on the following principle: Squeaky Wheel Gets the Oil.

Contaminants making the news and/or waves in the health community probably get the bulk of attention, laboratory time, and financial resources while research and legislation on other, less newsworthy (but no less dangerous!) drinking water contaminants get put on the back burner.

Moral of the story?

As with anything in life, you should take your local water department’s Annual Water Quality Report with a grain of salt. Read through the data and verify for yourself that when your water leaves the treatment facility it contains NONE of the drinking water contaminants that you hear about on the news or that you find in the EPA’s Primary Drinking Water Standards List — especially if you have small children in the house.

When setting MCL’s (maximum contaminant levels) for drinking water contaminants, the weight of a person gets factored into the equation and health officials typically set MCL’s using the weight of an average sized adult, not a child.

How would a heavy metal like hexavalent chromium get into my drinking water?

An article on the EPA’s web site states, “The most common forms of chromium that occur in natural waters in the environment are chromium-3 and chromium-6. Chromium-3 and chromium-6 occur naturally in the environment, and are present in water from the erosion of chromium deposits found in rocks and soils. Chromium-6 is also produced by industrial processes and manufacturing activities including discharges from steel and pulp mills among others. At many locations, chromium compounds have been released to the environment via leakage, poor storage, or improper disposal practices.” ( source )

Another source states, “Hexavalent chromium is a metal used in industrial processes such as chrome plating (which puts a shiny, anti-corrosive finish on wheels or plumbing fixtures, for example), steel production, metal working, tanning, paint and pigment manufacturing, glassmaking and cement manufacturing. Until recently, chromium compounds, including hex chrome, were widely used as a wood preservative in pressure-treated wood.” ( source )

So, can hexavalent chromium get into your water supply? Given the number of potential sources around most of us, the possibility certainly exists.

Testing for hexavalent chromium?

While only laboratory testing by a certified water testing laboratory can tell you for sure if and/or how much dissolved hexavalent chromium your water contains, you can perform simple water tests at home that can let you know if you should consider getting your water tested by a certified water testing laboratory.

The WaterWorks Chromium in Water Test Strips accurately detect the presence of chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium) in concentrations as low as 0.1 ppm (the level set by the EPA as an enforceable limit in drinking water) and as high as 50 ppm in water samples.

You can find the hexavalent chromium test strips in our online water test kit store.

Today’s Chromium-6 well water finding comes to us from the Coachella Valley region of California known and the detected levels of Chromium-6 in the water greatly exceed California’s public health goal.

Hexavalent chromium, a potentially cancer-causing heavy metal made famous by activist Erin Brockovich, is found in drinking water supplies throughout most of the Coachella Valley at 150 to more than 1,000 times above California’s public health goal, a Desert Sun review of local water agencies’ well-testing results found.

The National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded in 2008 that hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, in drinking water shows “clear evidence” of causing cancer in laboratory animals. And a 2010 draft toxicological review by the EPA found the contaminant in tap water is “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

But scientific study on chromium-6 is ongoing, and some recent findings call into question at what levels and under what circumstances ingesting the metal may cause cancer.

California’s public health goal for chromium-6 levels is not a regulatory standard, only a step in the process of establishing one. State and federal regulators have yet to set a maximum allowable drinking water contaminant level for the metal, but work toward one is under way. ( source )

Regardless of whether or not California or the USEPA has established an official safety limit (i.e. Maximum Contaminant Level) for Chromium-6 in drinking water, none of us here at Water Testing Blog would want to drink water that contained that high a concentration of Chromium-6.

Testing for Chromium-6 in water?

You may pick up an easy-to-use test kit for chromium made by SenSafe/WaterWorks in our online water testing store.

As an alternative, yo can use a test called Heavy Metals Water Check Test Strip, a product also manufactured by SenSafe. It detects Chromium-6 but the product will not differentiate between Chromium-6 and the other metals it can detect. But, in all honesty, any heavy metals detected in one’s drinking water should make a person want to take action.

Removing or reducing Chromium-6?

A company called ZeroWater manufactures point-of-use water filters & water pitchers using NSF Certified (NSF 42 & NSF 53) technology that supposedly reduce the number of Total Dissolved Solids in drinking water to zero.

For those who in search of a water filter system capable of producing quality drinking water out of the tap rather than a pitcher or dispenser, the NSF 58 Certified Goldline Reverse Osmosis System which carries the WQA Gold Seal installs under the sink (i.e. out of sight) and produces just under 11.5 gallons of purified drinking water per day.

NSF 58 Certified RO System for the Reduction of Barium, Chromium III & VI, Fluoride,
Lead, Nitrate, Nitrite, Radium, Selenium, and TDS Levels

Today’s inquiry came to us from ‘Ric C’ who asked a very wise question about a water filtration unit he may wish to purchase (HomePure AP-0930):

Hi
Am dealing with a product that has an NSF certification, and below is the address;

http://www.nsf.com/Certified/DWTU/Listings.asp?TradeName=homepure&Standard=&ProductType=&PlantState=&PlantCountry=&PlantRegion=&submit3=SEARCH&hdModlStd=ModlStd

Does this mean the product is good?

Quite honestly, we have never seen the HomePure AP-0930 before but as we said previously, the marketplace has a ton of water filtration units out there and we seriously doubt that anyone could know the in’s and out’s of every single water filtration unit currently available for purchase.

With that said, we looked at the NSF credentials supplied by Ric and saw that this unit has tested and certified to NSF/ANSI STANDARD 042 (Drinking Water Treatment Units – Aesthetic Effects) for the reduction of chlorine taste and odor as well as NSF/ANSI STANDARD 053 (Drinking Water Treatment Units – Health Effects) for the reduction of volatile organic compounds (VOC’s).

While having NSF Certification does give the HomePure AP-0930 a bit of credibility, please keep in mind that not every water filter will work in every application — even with NSF, WQA, etc. certifications to back up its capabilities.

Think of it this way: A high quality hammer won’t do you a bit of good when you need to turn a screw.

Testing your water first?

Yes! Do it! Test your drinking water before spending money on a water filter!

Before investing in a water filter for your home or office make sure you test your water for as wide a range of potential contaminants as possible. Doing so could save you the expense and aggravation associated with installing a filter that addresses the wrong water quality issues.

Anything specific about the HomePure AP-0930 catch your eye?

We like the fact that the HomePure AP-0930 has NSF certifications. As we said before, it means the unit certainly has some credibility.

One thing we did not like about the unit dealt w/ it inability to filter out heavy metals such as lead, copper, iron, chromium, etc. In our opinion a well-rounded, general purpose water filter would also have the ability to remove/reduce levels of heavy metals in drinking water.

Older homes most likely contain metal piping and the majority of public water systems contain metal pipes, as well. “But, we live a newly constructed home.” Does not matter (in our opinion). Newer homes, while mostly containing PVC or some other type of plastic piping, still get connected to public water systems that contain miles and miles of metal pipes.

Depending upon the quality of the water when it leaves the water treatment plant, it has the opportunity to pick up anywhere from traces of metals to noticeable levels of metals as it travels through those miles of metal pipes to homes and offices on the water system.

Interesting fact: The literature for the HomePure AP-0930 water filter system did mention metals and say that metals in water may cause problems, but the HomePure AP-0930 does not remove/reduce metals.

Replacement filters for the HomePure AP-0930?

According to the NSF web site, the HomePure AP-0930 uses a replacement filter element with model number “AP-0931”. A quick search on two popular online water filter web sites (FilterWater.Com, FiltersFast.Com) and a Google search yielded no locations where a person could purchase replacement filters.

Not a particularly good sign! What happens in 3 months or a year when the original filter kicks the bucket?

Moral of the story?

Not all water filter systems are created equal and even though some bear seals of certification and/or endorsement from well-known, reputable organizations such as NSF or WQA, not every one of those ‘certified’ products will clean up every possible water quality condition.

So, test your water to see what problems/issues it may have and THEN set about the task of locating the correct water quality improvement device for your water.

Look for products that bear the NSF and/or WQA logos, but do not assume the logo automatically means that a particular device will do what you need it to do.

Oh, and one last thing: Check to make sure you can easily acquire replacement filters for any water filter you consider buying.

Chicago’s first round of testing for a toxic metal called hexavalent chromium found that levels in local drinking water are more than 11 times higher than a health standard California adopted last month.

But it could take years before anything is done about chromium contamination in Chicago and scores of other cities, in part because industrial polluters and municipal water utilities are lobbying to block or delay the Obama administration’s move toward national regulations. ( source )

As some of you may recall, we wrote about chromium showing up in drinking water in the past and from the sounds of things we will very likely find ourselves writing about it many more times.

The discovery of hexavalent chromium in drinking water is renewing a debate about dozens of unregulated substances that are showing up in water supplies nationwide. Potential health threats from many of the industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs and herbicides still are being studied, but researchers say there is strong evidence that years of exposure to chromium-contaminated water can cause stomach cancer.

Test results obtained by the Tribune show that treated Lake Michigan water pumped to 7 million people in Chicago and its suburbs contains up to 0.23 parts per billion of the toxic metal, well above an amount that researchers say could increase the long-term risk of cancer. ( source )

For those of you not familiar with the articles previously written about chromium in drinking water on this site, the following links will really come in handy:

• Chromium in Drinking Water
• Chromium in Drinking Water Information
• Specifics From EWG’s Report on Chromium in Drinking Water
• Meter to Test Chromium in Water

We have written more, but the ones above ought to give you a pretty good understanding of the chromium in drinking water situation facing many areas of the United States. Water supplies previously deemed ‘safe’, and we include both municipal and private water supplies in this statement, have come under new scrutiny and many do not measure up to the current quality standards.

Speaking of tests, can the average person test for chromium in drinking water? Of course they can — but as always the best testing solution comes in the form of analysis by a certified water testing laboratory.

If, however, you would like a fast and easy method to test for the presence of chromium in water, you will definitely want to take a look at the chromium test strips produced by SenSafe. They make field testing for hexavalent chromium in water a simple and inexpensive process.

Apparently some folks believe that water lacking ANY minerals will somehow cause problems for people who consume it as drinking water, cook with it, bathe in it, etc. While somewhat true that water produced by reverse osmosis may have ‘aggressive’ tendencies in certain plumbing situations, we have found that the largest ‘problem’ people have with demineralized reverse osmosis water… is its flat, boring taste and not its lack of minerals.

Water’s ‘taste’ comes from its dissolved minerals content so it stands to reason that without any minerals would also have no ‘taste’ — a problem easily remedied by the use of a remineralizing cartridge after the reverse osmosis system.

Don’t we need minerals in our water for health?

To this day we have not personally found any solid evidence to support the notion that an appreciable amount of necessary dietary elements gets absorbed by the body from drinking water — unless, of course, the water got used to wash down a vitamin or supplement. 😛

Humans obtain the bulk of nutrients required for healthy living from the foods they eat… EXCEPT when they eat mostly (and too much) fried stuff like this.

Moral of the Story?

Eat healthy and drink clean water… and don’t buy into every ‘health trend’ and health fad’ that flashes on your television screen or in banner ads that pop up on web sites you visit.

The water we drink needs to have unwanted impurities removed. End of story.

If given a choice, we’ll take flat-tasting water over water containing potentially dangerous and/or bothersome levels of dissolved heavy metals (i.e. lead, copper, iron, manganese, chromium, arsenic, etc.) and other junk any day of the week!

Well a difference certainly does exist and since testing for hexavalent chromium (also known as chromium 6 and chromium (VI)) has become such a hot topic recently, we will outline the differences between Chromium ReagentStrips (available at FilterWater.Com) and Chromium Test Strips (available at Shop.WaterTestingBlog.Com).

Primary difference between reagentstrips and test strips?

Simply put, a test strip determines the value of a specific water quality parameter by getting dipped into a sample and having the color of its test area, also called a test pad, compared to a color chart, color wheel, or other visual colorimetric standard while a reagentstrip delivers controlled amounts of reagents to a pre-measured sample and the sample, after reagent delivery, gets placed in a meter or other device and its color gets analyzed.

• Test Strips — Dip, read and compare a portion of the strip visually.

• ReagentStrips — Delivery method for reagents into a test sample. Resultant color change in test sample gets analyzed visually or by a meter.

Which is a better testing device?

Not really a fair comparison, if you want the truth. Each has its benefits and each has its downfalls while both testing methods, if used properly, will yield results worth having.

In the case of testing for Chromium (VI),

• Chromium Test Strips work well as an on-the-spot visual screening method for hexavalent chromium… but they have limitations related to the testing party’s ability to interpret colors.

• Chromium ReagentStrips require the use of a specific testing meter, the eXact Micro 7+ water testing meter, but the results of testing have practically no subjectivity since the meter and not a person analyzes the test sample. The reagentstrip did nothing except add required chemical reagents to the sample before analysis.

No, really. Someone asked us that.

A reader named ‘WetterBetterH2O’ from Iowa asked…

“Do you have a way to test for chromium besides test strips? I don’t like test strips. I want a meter that doesn’t cost a thousand dollars though. Do they make one like that?”

Tell the truth, we’d bet that other people share your dislike, or distrust, of test strips. Although very different from when they first came out, test strips will always get looked at as the ‘least preferred’ testing method due to a few bad brands back in the day.

Having said that, we would now like to direct your attention to the eXact Micro 7+ Water Testing Meter, a multi-parameter water testing meter capable of testing for chromium (VI), also called hexavalent chromium, levels between 0.02 and 4.89 parts per million.

In addition to the affordable cost of the very useful eXact Micro 7+ Meter, which typically costs under $260 for the basic kit, you will need to pick up a bottle of ReagentStrips for Chromium Testing for use with the meter.

Don’t worry, though, because a bottle of 50 Chromium ReagentStrips costs less than $20 — less than $0.40 per test.

We think that will change now that the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released the findings of recent tests performed on municipal water supplies around the United States.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a report today stating that at least 31 U.S. cities have tap water that is contaminated with a dangerous chemical known as chromium-6.

…

According to the Environmental Working Group, chromium-6 is technically deemed cancerous if inhaled. However, the EWG are investigating the extent to which chromium-6 is cancerous when ingested. Water supplies are usually contaminated with chromium-6 by eroding steel and metal plating facilities.

Rebecca Sutton, a senior scientist with EWG and lead author of the study, explained to CNN that there are a significant amount of documented studies showing a positive correlation between contact with chromium-6 and an increased risk of stomach cancer in humans.

As stated in EWG’s report, “Studies in both animals and people show that exposure to [chromium-6] via drinking water leads to elevated chromium levels in tissues, particularly the gastrointestinal tract, blood, liver, kidneys and spleen, and in increased toxicity.”

Opting for bottled water isn’t necessarily a safer choice either because it isn’t guaranteed that there aren’t traces of chromium-6 in it. “There is no legal limit for [chromium-6] in bottled water either, so consumers cannot assume it is free of the contaminant,” stated in the report.

Sutton recommends investing in a quality water filter to protect yourself.

The cities with the highest level of chromium-6 in their tap water are Norman, Oklahoma; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Riverside, California. ( source )

We often get email from ‘unhappy’ readers who claim we exaggerate points and repeat ourselves ourselves ourselves. Oh, well we prefer to think of it as stressing important points and emphasizing them by means of repeated exposure because sometimes a message just doesn’t get fully understood the first time a person hears it.

As an example, no matter how many times we tell people they have ultimate responsibility for the quality of their drinking water, a good number of people STILL think some agency in the government goes around testing tap water at private citizens’ homes as a courtesy and warns citizens when their water contains unwanted contaminants that entered the water supply after it left a water treatment facility.

Let us say again that no such branch or division of State, Local or Federal Government exists!

On occasion a water department worker MAY test the water coming out of fire hydrants in your neighborhood but they will not knock on your door and ask if you’d like a free municipal water test. If you want to know what the water at YOUR house or place of business contains, YOU will have to test it or have it tested.

OK, well how do I test for chromium in tap water?

Easiest method for chromium testing: Chromium test strips manufactured by SenSafe detect Chromium (VI) levels down to 0.1 ppm (mg/L).