Drinking Water Pollution? You Need to Test the Water in Your Area
Drinking water pollution is an invisible problem, but one that can have quite real effects on your health and the health of your family. Several states and municipalities do have extremely safe drinking water, but in other areas, water quality is more questionable. It can have high levels of agricultural chemicals such as fertilizer and pesticides, elevated contamination levels from industrial runoff or pollution from oils, household chemicals and other consumer products.
Your risk of drinking water pollution depends upon your water system and your community’s safeguards.
For instance, if you live in a rural area that uses well water, there is a good chance that pollutants from farms can gradually seep down, contaminating the water tables and lowering the quality of the well water you drink. Likewise, if you live in an area with outdated sewer systems, a big rain can cause runoff to contaminate drinking water, posing a risk to your health. Open reservoirs are also a risk, since they can be polluted by anything that falls or is dumped into them. In general, they’re safe, but they can suddenly and unexpectedly develop dangerous levels of E. Coli and other contaminants.
It’s crucial to remember that, just because you may have drinking water pollution doesn’t mean that you necessarily do. In general, water quality is well controlled in most areas, so you’re more likely to be safer than not. Tap water also has fluoride and minerals in it, which are beneficial for your teeth and general health. Furthermore, best of all, municipal water is extremely cheap compared to distilled water. You shouldn’t give up all of these advantages unless you have a really good reason to suspect you have drinking water pollution.
If you want to investigate your own drinking water quality, you should contact your state environmental organization. Environmental agencies regularly test drinking water, so you should be able to obtain a test from the past year. If you’re not satisfied or can’t get a test from the agency, you can always pay a private lab to test your water quality. Whatever you do,you should do some research into what the levels mean. Pollution is measured in parts per million, and different areas may have slightly different definitions of what acceptable contamination is. Do some research into water quality studies and make up your own mind about whether or not your water has too much heavy metal, biological and other forms of contamination.
