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

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).

• Chromium will appear in nature in one of three forms: Chromium(0), Chromium(III) or Chromium(VI).
• Chromium(0) gets used in the production of steel.
• Chromium(III) and/or Chromium(VI) may appear in compounds used for chrome plating, making dyes and pigments, tanning leather, and preserving wood.
• Chromium(III) aids the human body in its use of sugar, protein and fat, though health officials suggest not using excessive amounts of dietary supplements containing chromium compounds.
• Higher levels of chromium(VI) may cause irritation to the lining of the nose, ulcers in the nose, runny nose, and other breathing problems such as asthma, coughing, shortness of breath, and/or wheezing. While both Chromium(III) and Chromium(VI) in air can cause the aforementioned problems, effects occur at much lower concentrations of Chromium(VI) than Chromium(III).
• Chromium(III) and Chromium(VI) may exist in drinking water and have no associated tastes or odors.
• If ingested, Chromium(III) compounds tend to have less toxic tendencies and appear to cause fewer health problems than Chromium(VI) which causes anemia, irritation of the stomach, ulcers in the stomach, and ulcers in the small intestine.
• Some laboratory animals exposed to Chromium(VI) experienced sperm damage and damage to the male reproductive system.
• Some Chromium(VI) compounds may cause skin ulcers and a percentage of the population have extreme sensitivity to Chromium(VI) and/or Chromium(III) with allergic reactions manifesting themselves as severe redness and swelling of the skin.
• The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the EPA have determined that Chromium(VI) compounds are known human carcinogens. ( source )

• Some developmental effects have been observed in animals exposed to Chromium(VI). ( source )

Regulations, rules and recommendations pertaining to Chromium?

The EPA has determined that exposure to chromium in drinking water at concentrations of 1 mg/L for up to 10 days is not expected to cause any adverse effects in a child. The FDA has determined that the chromium concentration in bottled drinking water should not exceed 1 mg/L. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has limited workers’ exposure to an average of 0.0005 mg/m3 chromium(VI), 0.5 mg/m3 chromium(III), and 1.0 mg/m3 chromium(0) for an 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek. ( source )

What NSF/ANSI Standards apply to chromium in drinking water?

Standard 53, Standard 58, and Standard 62.

For more information on the specifics of those NSF/ANSI Standards and others, take a look at the NSF International Web Site. It offers a wealth of information for both the consumer AND water professionals alike.

Removing chromium from drinking water?

As far as units for the average consumer, pretty much only reverse osmosis makes any sense. One could use a process like distillation, but it has a flow rate that most likely would not meet homeowner needs and a much higher entry cost.

As an example of a reverse osmosis that carries NSF Certification for chromium reduction, you may want to take a look at the Pentek RO-3500 which has a price tag of under $270 and appears to offer a lot of filtering power for the money.

Pentek RO-3500 Reverse Osmosis Water Filters have tested and certified to NSF/ANSI Standard 58 for the reduction of Pentavalent Arsenic (Arsenic V), Barium, Cadmium, Copper, Hexavalent & Trivalent Chromium (Chromium VI & Chromium III), Cyst, Fluoride, Lead, Nitrate/Nitrite, Radium 226/228, Selenium, TDS and Turbidity.

Water Metals Test Kit

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 $14.00 (about $0.28 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.