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.

Thank you, Margo, for your inquiry and you raise a very good question: Can you trust the quality of your tap water since the EPA regulates its quality?

The EPA only regulates and forces water treatment facilities to test for a select number of potential drinking water contaminants… that have already shown to modern science, beyond the shadow of a doubt, their harmful nature if consumed in drinking water.

The EPA adds new chemicals and contaminants (some which occur naturally in our environment, believe it or not) as scientific methods of analysis get better and mankind learns more about the harmful effects of chemicals, toxins, and pollutants it has directly or indirectly added to the environment.

Years ago we did not have advanced spectrometers to analyze water down to parts per billion levels for chemicals and compounds that we could not taste, smell, or feel — so we didn’t KNOW some of the compounds the EPA now regulates heavily even existed.

Additionally, some of the contaminants the EPA recently discovered in our water supplies and started to regulate, like the growing number of VOC’s (volatile organic contaminants), didn’t have names in the past because the industrial processes that create them did not, yet, exist… and in the short time that we have known about them we have not, yet, had enough time fully understand the long and short term health effects caused by exposure to them.

When it comes to water quality, Margo, mankind put itself on the wrong side of the learning curve and now spends an enormous amount of time learning how to correct the environmental evils that our lust for ‘bigger, better, faster, more’, usually derived from the latest technological or chemical breakthrough, has created.

We blindly reap the benefits afforded us by the newest and most convenient products on the market without ever considering the downside to them. Good example: While bottled water may not (usually!) contain undesirable compounds like DBP’s (disinfection byproducts), our early use of bottled water products caused landfills to grow in size much faster than their designers anticipated.

Granted now most people do recycle their bottles, but we had to first learn from our mistake before we could do anything about it. The same principle applies to all the chemicals and pharmaceuticals we create on a daily basis.

Moral of the story?

We will choose not to trust in a bureaucratic, behind the times, often backwards thinking, politically motivated organization’s rules to keep our water safe and clean. The EPA and other organizations who strive to keep drinking water safe may mean well, but their reach can only extend so far and cannot keep up with the blistering pace of today’s technological innovations.

Oh, and one more thing before we go: Water treatment plants, like everyone else these days, have limited budgets and the EPA knows this. Therefore we can only assume that the EPA prioritizes the contaminants it makes them test for into a list with limited spots… and that means some contaminant levels that ought to get checked will not get checked because they didn’t make the list.

So should you worry about the quality of your water, Margo? That’s entirely up to you.

Well, Tony, you raise a very good point. We can only say that we would HOPE municipalities used reputable third party testing agencies (which we believe they must) to perform the required testing. At some point SOMEone in the equation must have the values required to tell the truth if problems exist with a city’s water.

Assuming you can trust the water report…

Let’s say that the water reports we receive each year do tell the truth and all the reports say our water meets or exceeds Federal, State and Local guidelines for water quality — and we believe the reports accurate and factual. Does that mean we all have safe, clean drinking water coming out of our faucets?

Not by a long shot, unfortunately. Our tap water may have left the water treatment plant in perfect condition but before it reaches our homes it must travel through many miles of mixed composition plumbing (i.e. PVC, copper, cast iron, etc.) that may have gotten installed well before health regulations outlawed the use of heavy metals like lead in the solder used to connect pipes.

This means the crystal clear water produced by the water treatment plants could have picked up some unwanted drinking water contaminants along the way even though the political folks who wrote the annual drinking water quality reports told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Does this mean everyone needs a water filter?

While water filter manufacturers would LOVE for everyone to run out and purchase a water filter for their home, not everyone really does need a water filter. In fact, the vast majority of people on public water systems do NOT need water filters and have them merely for aesthetic reasons (i.e. removal of chlorine taste, removal of chlorine odor, etc.).

So… Should YOU have a water filter in your home? You will not know until you test your water — and of home drinking water test kits range from basic (4-in-1 City Water Check tests for pH, total alkalinity, total hardness, and total chlorine) to slightly more advanced (SenSafe Water Quality Test Kit tests for 14 water quality parameters).

Which water test kit will work best for you?

We have found that most people who draw their water from a municipal source typically can get by with total hardness testing, metals testing, pH testing, alkalinity testing, total chlorine testing, and/or coliform bacteria testing.

This does NOT mean, however, that some municipal water quality situations will not require more advanced testing for VOC’s and other drinking water contaminants.

Already know what you want to filter out of your water?

Next step: Determine which type of filter will work best for your application and where you want to install it (i.e. countertop, undercounter, whole house, on the shower head, on the faucet, etc.). Each location has benefits, but understand that each also has drawbacks.

So, before you plunk down you hard earned cash on a water filter for your home, school or office, make sure the type of filter you choose will do what you want it to do!