Editorial: Is your drinking water safe? Here’s one gauge
You will never view tap water the same way.
In fact, spend some time poking around on the Environmental Working Group’s Tap Water Database and you’ll desire more information about the water provided by your local utility.
We guarantee it.
Here’s why: The Environmental Working Group, an independent nonprofit organization, compiled 28 million water records from almost 50,000 utilities nationwide. The result is a comprehensive, user-friendly website that allows virtually every U.S. citizen to ascertain the safety of his or her drinking water.
Many of the findings are disconcerting. For example:
+ The number of chemicals detected in America’s drinking water: 250 and counting.
+ The number of water systems with contaminants linked to cancer: 40,000 (81 percent).
+ The number of water systems where lead was detected at levels that could be harmful to children: 19,000 (39 percent).
How safe is your drinking water? The database holds the answer. Go to the website (Ewg.org/tapwater) and type in your ZIP code. You might be surprised by what you find.
Legal vs. safe
This is one of the benefits of the Tap Water Database — exposing the difference between what is legal and what is safe.
Typically, what is legal is a political construct, hammered out by competing interests. Such is often the case with water standards at the state and federal levels. Major polluters (and their respective lobbyists) persuade and cajole government officials to compromise on water standards.
By contrast, what is safe is science-based.
The law often permits water utilities to allow contaminants at levels that pose serious health risks. This might be legal, but it’s not necessarily safe. Just because your local utility meets all standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t necessarily mean the water it provides is safe for human consumption.
“Many of the 250-plus contaminants detected through water sampling and testing are at levels that are perfectly legal under the Safe Drinking Water Act or state regulations, but well above levels authoritative scientific studies have found to pose health risks,” the database states.
Protecting your family
So what to do if there are unsafe contaminants in your tap water?
Water filters can protect your family by removing these contaminants. But not all filters are effective for all contaminants.
“Water filters vary widely in quality and in what contaminants they will reduce,” the database states. “Consumers need to do their research to make sure they are getting what they are paying for.”
The Tap Water Database explains the science behind water filters and identifies which filter you need to remove the specific contaminant(s) in your tap water.
Too often we take the safety of our drinking water for granted. We do so at our own peril.
-- Treasure Coast Newspapers editorial board. Treasure Coast Newspapers is part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, Florida.
Southwest Florida
We anticipate water utilities and their associations will take issue with the analysis and we look forward to hearing what they may say.
For now, we’ll simply run a comparison of how water companies in Southwest Florida fare in the database. More specifically, how do they compare when it comes to showing their water has contaminants above acceptable health levels?
Collier County utilities fared best in such a comparison, just slightly better than the Naples city utility. Meanwhile, Marco Island, Immokalee and Lee County utilities tied for the highest scoring among major water utilities in the contaminants analysis.
One surprise was that Orangetree Utilities acquired earlier this year by Collier government had the same ranking as the county’s utility. That system had been called into question by consultants.
Meanwhile, the system serving Golden Gate that county leaders now are considering acquiring had a middle-of-the-road number, as did the utility serving Bonita Springs.
The nonprofit’s database probably won’t be the last word. Stay tuned.
-- Naples Daily News editorial board