The Truth About Whats in Your Tap Water

Tap water is the water that comes from your water faucet.  It may come from a centralized source inside a town or city and be treated by a municipal water treatment plant.  It may also come from a well dug in a rural area that is used by one family on private property, usually in outlying areas or in a rural area. Some older homes have wells that supply the water to the house.

Unless you regularly test your well water for bacteria, parasites and chemicals like pesticides, you have no idea what’s in your well.  If you happen to live in a big city, chances are good that your water is tested at least occasionally; however, the results may be those you won’t like or they could be buried under bureaucratic paperwork so you’ll never see it—regardless of the results.

 The National Resources Defense Council (NDRC) refers to tap water as following a “tap water train”, which is the way water comes to your tap, from the source of the water, which could be a reservoir, river or lake, to the way the water is treated at the water treatment facility, and finally, to how the water comes from the treatment facility to the faucet in your home. Water needs to be cleansed and made safe for you at every step along the way.   Some large cities do a reasonable job of treating water but the water at the source is so contaminated that even water treatment facilities are overwhelmed by the water it receives. Other cities will keep their water sources protected but will be inadequate in the way they treat the water.  The system could be outdated or an impurity can be allowed to pass.  Finally, the pipes underneath the street can be made of lead and the lead can leach into the water—even after it has been treated.    

Unfortunately, many of these areas of the water train are poorly controlled or, in the case of piping systems, are so old (pre –World War I Era) that leaching of lead and leakage of the pipes due to breaks and cracks are commonplace. 

The NDRC reports that it regularly finds lead in tap water samples. Lead is a metal found in aging pipes that is known to cause brain damage and cognitive delays in children.  As an example, corroded pipes carrying city water probably contributed to incidences of high levels of lead found in the cities of Newark, Seattle and Boston.  When these levels are reported on water quality testing sheets, they are listed as higher than the EPA recommendations.  Unfortunately, the EPA recommendations are often lax and allow for levels of chemicals and dangerous metals much above levels considered safe by scientists who study the health effects of these contaminants.

Other chemicals, such as trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, are byproducts of the treatment of chlorine.  These chemicals are quite possibly cancer-causing and may cause reproductive disturbances.  Arsenic, perchlorate (rocket fuel), radon and other chemicals—some of which aren’t even normally tested for—are often found in tap water from normal-appearing tap water faucets in many cities.

Cities and smaller towns also have very little means to protect individuals against bacteria and parasites that contaminate reservoirs and lakes but aren’t tested for in many places.  Sometimes it takes an outbreak among a large population of people who suffer from Cryptosporidium or Giardia or coliforms, like E. coli, until steps are made to test the water for these parasites or bacteria.  By then, the case often involves numerous people who have become infected with the pathogenic organism and, in some cases, deaths among children, immunocompromised people or the elderly have occurred.