How do people know their tap water is safe?

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If bottled water companies have succeeded in making us doubt the tap water in our houses, how can a normal person actually check whether their own tap water is safe? If I can't measure my water, I will likely follow the advice of the bottled water companies and by bottled water to be safe.

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3 Answers

  1. If you live in the USA you can contact your water supplier and obtain all of the information on the water quality and their performance meeting drinking water standards. There are about 100 standards that cover organic and inorganic chemicals and microbials and radionuclides, filtration and disinfection. They are required to produce a Consumer Confidence Report that explains it all.

  2. If you really want to know just what is in your drinking water, you need to do a lot of good thinking about what is potentially in that water, just how it was assessed by the supplier and the regulatory agencies. Then, you have to fill in the blanks in the knowledge. Try to determine what contaminants and potentiating water characteristics are possibly present that were not tested for by everybody else. Split samples to labs and test for the ones you have determined to be potential risks.

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  3. Testing your water

    Following the advice of the bottled water companies would not be sound advice. For one thing, bottled water comes with its own problems such as leaching of bpa and pthalates into the water. As you know most bottled water comes from municipal sources and is basically tap water that has been treated and re-packaged anyway. Not to mention the environmental impacts that bottled water is having on our earth, aquatic birds and sea life.

    If you want to know what contaminants are in your drinking water, check your annual water quality report from your water supplier or call the water supplier directly. If you want to have additional tests on your water, EPA recommends that you use a laboratory certified by the state. Call the state certification officer or click the web link here to get a list of certified labs .

    Kira Chatterton,

    http://www.gogreenwaterfilter.com