Sometimes our drinking water systems experience dangerous failures, such as the Flint lead poisoning disaster that made major news beginning in 2014. But outside those headline grabbing crises, how safe is our drinking.
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group wants to help you answer that question. It has collected all the water-quality information that utilities in the U.S. submit to their state environmental or public health agencies. That information has been compiled into a newly updated database that allows residents to check the safety of tap water in their community and then learn what kind of actions they can take if their water contains contaminants. In many cases it’s as simple as adding a filter.
But there are some bigger issues lurking that could affect our water quality far into the future. For starters, regulations and standards aren’t keeping up with science, and there are many unregulated contaminants that could pose a health threat. There are also big data gaps on water quality for some people living in more rural […]
