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Is Your Drinking Water Safe? Here Are 6 Ways To Find Out

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First of all, relax, this is really not as technical as it sounds. You don’t have to get a degree in “water safety measures” to be able to check the safety status of your drinking water; you just need to read a lot of reports. 

And if you’re wondering if it’s worth the trouble the answer is a big yes! Water is one of the most essential liquids we consume and making sure that it is safe and healthy at all times is the top priority. 

These 6 tips can help you do just that: 

Choose The Easy Way Out; Get A Professional To Do It

There are just some things you can’t DIY your way around. You should seek the help of a professional with ample experience and expertise. The professionals at wellnesswaterfiltrationsystems.com can properly analyze your water and give you detailed recommendations on what works best for your home. So instead of spending hours reading bulky reports and looking up industry jargon, just outsource it to an expert. 

Read Your Water Company’s Report

Your water company is required by the law to send you detailed reports of the water you are supplied every year. It’s called a Consumer Confidence Report and it should contain details of any possible contaminants that could be present in the water being supplied to you. The report also tells you the health risks these contaminants pose to you and everyone else consuming the water. You can access it online so you can easily download it as a PDF and read it at your pace.  Or it can be sent alongside your water bill and uploaded on the company’s official website. 

But getting the report is the easy part, reading it is where the chunk of the work is and you have to make out time to do it. 

Consult The Watchdog Agency

Asides from your water company, you can also get information on the safety status of your water from the Environmental Working Group’s National Drinking Water Database. It sounds like a mouthful but the work they do cannot be overemphasized. They keep and update a database of water quality reports from different companies. For search optimization the reports are usually categorized by zip code and water company, so to find your water company’s report just put in the name. 

Keep in mind that the EWG’s report should be consumed in comparison to your water company’s report. The EWG flags chemicals that are above their set health limit and the legal limit for safe water. Their list also acknowledges many other chemicals that have no EPA legal limit and for those chemicals, the automatic baseline is zero so if the water contains even the slightest trace of the chemical, it is flagged. 

Usually, if the report signals a very low PPB (parts per billion) level of a contaminant, it’s probably not a cause for concern. But while doing your reading, compare the health limit with the legal limit and if the numbers are not close you have nothing to worry about. If they are close then you need to start asking questions to the relevant authorities. 

Look up the EPA’s Drinking Water Watch Program. 

There’s actually a Drinking Water Watch program dedicated to keeping the public updated with thorough information on water quality violations, reported health hazards as well as actions taken by the law to implement water quality or clean up pollution. 

To confirm if the country you live in participates in this program and then look up the name of your public water system. You can even streamline your search to the specific information you need from the water quality test results. 

Focus Your Search On The Contaminants

To get a more comprehensive understanding of your water’s safety you can look up each chemical on the EWG’s chemical database or their list of water contaminants. There’s also a body called The Water Quality Association whose job is to research and maintain information on emerging contaminants. But keep in mind that because it’s a business association they have a biased interest that’s more likely tilted towards making people anxious about water contaminants. 

If Your Water Comes From A Private Source

If you get your drinking water from a well (private or community), it will be a notch harder for you to get a report. The good news is the EPA already has an established guide to private drinking water wells but the bad news is, this guide is not always consistent. You can find it online on their official site or you can contact your state government directly to get more information that should be more up to date.

Congratulations! You now know how to check the safety of your drinking water. It wasn’t that hard now, was it? 

 

One thought on “Is Your Drinking Water Safe? Here Are 6 Ways To Find Out

  1. I filter mine makes a big difference

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