How clean is your city/county water?

We have all come to expect clean water to flow from the taps when we turn them on. After all, every home and business (except those using ground water) pays their county/city/state government to provide clean water.

Is your local authority doing a good job?

That depends on how you look at it. There are two standards that have been set on determining the cleanliness of drinking water.

• A legal limit number
• A goal number

Most authorities that test above the goals remain below the legal limits, but there are occasions when numbers fall above the legal limit. If the numbers go above the legal limit and stay there long enough, the utility can be issued a violation.

How much of a health risk is there?

That varies depending on what the contaminant is and how high the concentration is in the water you drink. These vary greatly depending on which utility supplies your water.

In my home state of Georgia, between 2014 and 2017 there was a total of 81 different contaminants found to be over the legal limit in 30 of the 1747 utilities in the state.

That doesn’t sound bad when you think of it in terms of only 30 out of 1747 systems, but keep in mind, these are only the ones that were in serious violations what went over the legal limits in one of the better states. The number that are above the goal limit is much higher.

Screen capture from epa.gov

How much is too much?

In my county, there were 8 contaminants, all of which are known to cause cancer that were above goal limits. All 8 were below the legal limit where there would have been a violation issued, but where our health is concerned, how much is too much?

Screen capture of 1 of 8 cancer causing chemicals that are above goal limits in my home county’s water. From ewg.org website.

For this chemical, my home water is 21 times over the goal limit. Yet this amount did not exceed the legal limit where a violation would have been issued.

What does the goal limit mean?

The goal limit is set at the level at which you could be expected that a person would have a 1 in a million, lifetime chance of catching cancer from this chemical by drinking the water.

So, in my county’s water, this chemical alone is 21 times that amount giving us a 21 in a million chances of catching cancer from this chemical.

Alone, those numbers don’t sound too bad. This is only 1 chemical however. There is a total of 8 chemicals in my county’s water that are above the goal and all 8 of them are cancer causing agents.

Many utilities are much worse

Obviously, I did not check every utility included in the database. In Georgia alone, there are over 1700. I glanced at about 30 chosen at random. My home county is reasonably average for my state. Most have between 7 & 9 contaminants.

Other states have many utilities with closer to double what my home county’s numbers are.

How can I check my local water source?

Many local water providers have a website where they track how well they did in keeping your water clean. If your area doesn’t have one, or if you want to double check their numbers with what is reported to the government, you can check the EWG’s Tap water Database. Simply click on your state for a list of the water authorities.

Is ground water better?

The only way to know if ground water is better is to have your water tested. Pollutants can come from many different sources. It is possible your well water has more or less pollutants than your closest utility.

Which is best filtering or distilling

Like most things in life that costs money, each industry that has a financial interest in answering the question will give you a different answer. To my knowledge, there is not a single filtering system n the market that can remove 100% of all chemicals, bacteria, cysts, parasites and viruses.

Filters range from removing only the largest contaminants to removing all but the very smallest.
Distilling and reverse osmosis systems provide pure or almost pure water, but also removes minerals which are actually good for you. The biggest difference between the two is cost to purchase and cost to operate.

A high-quality filtering system such as the Berkey systems which were designed for use my relief organizations who go into many types of situations where no clean water is available, can be expensive to purchase the initial system. Ongoing costs however, are much cheaper as the filters tend to last 3 to 5 years and it requires no electricity or gas to operate.

A distillation system can be made cheaply from materials you may already have or can be purchased cheaply at thrift stores. There are also commercial made systems. Prices can run from about what the Berkey system runs, up to several thousand dollars.

The ongoing cost of fuel is a problem with these systems. Commercial built systems are designed to connect to gas or electricity which is consumed during the entire period the machine is in operation (5 to 8 hours).

Most home built systems can be operated over an open fire, however this process requires a large amount of firewood to provide clean drinking water for an entire family.

There are solar distillation systems that can be made, however, they require your system to remain in the sun for 5 to 8 hours making it less than useful in an emergency.

Where do these pollutants come from?

Pollutants come from a wide range of sources. Any process that produces chemical byproducts which are unhealthy, can be a source of chemicals in our water.

Cars, Trucks, Factories, agricultural chemical uses, landfills, basically any waste that we create in our lives, could end up in our water.

You could say, the people who use the most “products” in their lives are the ones who contribute the most to allowing these chemicals into our water supply. This is yet another reason why our current health system does not work. Those who contribute the least to pollution by buying few products are the most apt to suffer the effects of the chemicals and the least likely to be able to get treatment when they do get sick.

Sources:

ewg.org tapwater lookup by state
inhabitat.com
usatoday.com
epa.gov