Plain-English guides on tap water safety, water quality data, and protecting your family — written by Marcus J. Webb, environmental data analyst with 10 years of EPA compliance research. New articles published regularly.
Every year, sometime before July 1, your water utility is legally required to send you a document called the Consumer Confidence Report — also called the CCR or Annual Water Qualit...
When the EPA finalized its first-ever federal drinking water standards for PFAS chemicals in April 2024, it was genuinely historic. For decades, these synthetic compounds had been ...
Walk through the water filter aisle at any home improvement store and you'll find dozens of products making bold claims. "Removes 99% of contaminants." "Hospital grade filtration."...
About 43 million Americans — roughly 15% of the U.S. population — get their drinking water from a private well. That's a significant number, and what many of those people don't ful...
If you've ever lived in Phoenix, Las Vegas, or most of Texas, you know hard water. The white crusty buildup around your faucet handles. The soap that just won't lather right. The w...
Nitrate contamination is one of the most widespread drinking water quality problems in the United States, and it's one of the least discussed. While lead and PFAS get most of the h...
When most people think about arsenic, they think about old detective novels and Victorian-era poisonings. They don't think about their morning cup of coffee. But arsenic in drinki...
Chlorination of public drinking water is one of the most successful public health interventions in human history. Before cities began chlorinating their water supplies in the early...
Moving into a new home comes with a long checklist of things to figure out — schools, utilities, neighbors, the local coffee shop. Water quality is rarely near the top of that list...
Few topics in drinking water generate as much passionate disagreement as fluoride. On one side, public health organizations — the CDC, the American Dental Association, the World He...
When you're pregnant, you become acutely aware of everything you put into your body. The food, the medications, the cleaning products. But drinking water — which you consume eight ...
Renters face a particular disadvantage when it comes to water quality. In most apartments and rental homes, you have no control over the building's plumbing, can't easily install w...
In the last decade, researchers began looking for microplastics in water — and found them essentially everywhere they looked. Tap water, bottled water, groundwater, rivers, lakes, ...
A boil water advisory arrives at the worst possible time — usually on a weekday evening, often after heavy rain or a water main break, when you already have a full evening ahead an...
At some point in my career, I started counting the number of times people asked me "how do I actually test my water?" The question comes up constantly — from new homeowners, from r...
Most waterborne disease that makes headlines involves E. coli outbreaks from agricultural runoff, or Cryptosporidium breaches in municipal treatment plants, or lead from aging pipe...
The question "should I drink tap water or bottled water?" generates more revenue for the bottled water industry than any other single piece of consumer confusion. Bottled water sal...
Children are not small adults when it comes to water quality. Their relationship with water contaminants is categorically different from adults' — they're exposed to more per body ...
The conversation about drinking water quality in America tends to center on cities — on Flint and Newark and the infrastructure crises that make national news. But some of the most...
All the articles above apply to your specific local water. Search your ZIP code for a personalized EPA-based water quality report.
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