Today's inquiry came to use from 'Margette' who asked, " We used your iron test to test our tap water and it read pretty high by the color chart.  Our house is old and in an older part of town we're told by neighbors the pipes underground are also really old and made of iron.  Is the high iron bad for us?"

Thank you, Margette, for the iron in water question.  The United States EPA does not consider dissolved iron in drinking water a hazard to anyone's health at any concentration.  It does include iron in its Secondary Drinking Water Standards which deal with aesthetic matters such as the color, taste or odor of the water.

We recently read a few articles written by chemists water professionals who decided to look a bit further into the effects of dissolved iron concentrations in drinking water.  They developed an interesting hypothesis that although dissolved iron does not directly cause health problems, it may indirectly play a part in allowing other, negative things to happen to the human body.

But, for now (at least), word on the street says that higher iron concentrations in drinking water pose no direct threat to human health... though they CAN ruin your favorite shirt/blouse with stains, make your plumbing fixtures look gross with ugly stains, and/or clog up your pipes, water heaters, water filters, etc.

WaterWorks Total Iron Test

We received the question of “Do total hardness strips test for iron?” over the weekend from a woman named ‘DodgeGirl’ and before any of you say that’s a silly question, please remember that not everyone has had a chance, or possibly even a reason, to learn about water hardness.

So, with that in mind, we would like to thank DodgeGirl for having the courage to ask a question about water hardness that many other folks may also want the answer to.

What does total hardness include?

While it may sound reasonable, and possibly even logical in many ways, that water hardness would include ‘hard’ substances like iron, copper, chromium, zinc, and various other water metals, a total hardness reading includes only a combination of the following two elements: Calcium & Magnesium.

Testing for total hardness?

Several methods for total hardness testing exist and the easiest method, dip-and-read total hardness test strips, usually take less than a minute to use, do not require the use of potentially dangerous or hazardous reagents, and cost very little — usually less than $10 for a bottle of 50 tests.

Testing for iron?

Earlier in this article we posted an image that will take you to our online store where you can purchase the WaterWorks Total Iron Visual Test Kit which, as its name implies, allows you to visually determine the amount of total iron in your water source — unlike a number of other iron tests which detect only dissolved iron.