Today’s inquiry came from ‘John J’ who asked, “I am looking for a kit to check my drinking water for mercury lead and aluminum.. can you please recommend a product or products?”

The Water Test Kit Store carries several products for testing metals in drinking water.

General Metals Test – SenSafe Heavy Metals Check performs a general test for metals and will let you know if you have any of a number of dissolved metals present. It gives a reading of the total dissolved metals in a water sample. It does not, however, break down the reading by individual metal ion.

WaterSafe Lead in Water Test – A pass/fail water test for dissolved lead in drinking water that yields positive results if a sample contains 15ppb or more dissolved lead. The test will read ‘negative’ for dissolved lead quantities under 15ppb.

Boris’ Mercury Test – Simple test for dissolved mercury in drinking water that has a low detection level equal to the USEPA action level for public water systems (.002 ppm) and a high detection level of .08 ppm. Testing takes just 60 seconds to perform and requires no mixing of chemicals, crushing of tablets, etc.

Regarding your request for an aluminum test, we do not know of an at-home drinking water test kit specifically designed to test for aluminum BUT we do know that the WaterCheck 1 & 2 mail-in testing package for 30 different water quality parameters contains a test for aluminum.

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

A few residents have experienced lead in their drinking water in recent weeks, prompting discussion of Belleville’s aging infrastructure and a warning to people about how to protect their health.

Township Manager Victor Canning said that “a couple of samples” of tap water tested positive for lead, and by law the township had to send notices to those residents. He said there is a bigger picture problem.

“This is something that has to be addressed in areas with older infrastructure,” Canning said.

For now, he has this advice: “People should let the water run for a couple of minutes to remove any lead or copper issues.”

The substances come from old underground water pipes that need replacing, an expensive proposition, he said.

“We are trying to address this, spending a couple of hundred thousand [dollars], but we’re talking millions and millions to fix it all,” Canning said. ( source )

As stated in the article, tearing up and replacing older copper water lines joined together with solder that contains lead costs a pretty penny and a lot of towns like Belleville simply cannot come up with the money. Therefore residents in these towns owe it to themselves to test their drinking water for dangerous heavy metals such as copper and lead on a regular basis.

Should You Test Your Well for Arsenic?

Water coming from a municipal or privately-owned water company with more than 15 service connections or serves 25 people more than 6 months of a year gets tested by the supplier.  Private well owners must make arrangements on their own to get their water tested and although no guaranteed method for assessing accurate risk of arsenic contamination exists because that risk fluctuates with the rise and fall of the underground water table, one can use the research data compiled by the United States Geological Survey to see if ground water in their area has a history of arsenic contamination:

• Maps of Arsenic in Ground Water in the United States

If you want more region-specific arsenic data, contact your local health department

How Can I Get My Well Tested for Arsenic?

1. Contact someone in your local health department or look in the yellow pages for an environmental testing laboratory.  Make sure to ask if the facility you contact has the proper certifications to do drinking water testing.
2. Call the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791 and ask for a state certification officer that can provide the names of certified facilities in your area.
3. If you wish to do the field testing yourself, take a look at the easy-to-use, field-ready Arsenic Quick Test Kits.

Responsibility for arsenic reduction/removal…

… falls squarely on the shoulders of individual well owners. No local, state or other branch of government will force a private well owner to test their water and/or fix any problems that may exist.

Filters for arsenic reduction/removal?

We believe that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing correctly. Therefore, before you spend money on a water filter for arsenic, make certain you do not have other unwanted drinking water contaminants, as well.

For testing of that nature we suggest contacting an independent (and accredited) water testing lab in your area and/or using a test kit such as the WaterCheck Laboratory Test Kit for Drinking Water which test for 97 different water quality parameters: Bacteria (presence/absence for coliform and E.coli), (19) heavy metals and minerals, (6) other inorganic chemicals, (5) physical characteristics, (4) trihalomethanes, (47) volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), and (20) pesticides, herbicides and PCB’s.