See If You're One Of The 250M Americans Whose Drinking Water Is Laced With Cancer

May 06, 2023

When water flows out of the faucet and into a glass, it usually appears clean and healthy. A report released Wednesday, though, found hundreds of harmful contaminants across the American water supply that can cause cancer, developmental issues in children, problems in pregnancy and other serious health conditions.

"There are chemicals that have been linked to cancer, for example, that are found above health-based limits, or health guidelines, in the water of more than 250 million Americans," said Nneka Leiba, director of Healthy Living Science at the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, an independent nonprofit organization that released a detailed account of the contaminants.

Other substances found in the water of millions of Americans can profoundly impact our health. Lead has been linked to behavior problems in kids, polyfluorinated chemicals are tied to altered thyroid function, and nitrosamines can damage DNA. (For more national stories, subscribe to the Across America Patch and receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

EWG, in conjunction with outside scientists, assessed health-based guidelines for hundreds of chemicals found in our water and compared them to the legal limits. The law often permits utilities to allow these dangerous chemicals to pollute our waters.

"Legal is not safe," said Leiba. "In many cases, it's far from safe."

In the case of trihalomethanes, the carcinogen in the water of more than 250 million Americans, the legal limit is 100 times higher than safety guidelines. Some contaminants in our nation's water supply violate both legal and health guidelines.

In May, Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state discovered extremely high levels of the substances PFOA and PFOS, artificial chemicals linked to multiple forms of cancer, in local drinking water wells. Airway Heights, a nearby city where around 6,000 people people live, tested its water and found high levels of contamination as well. Locals were forced to start boiling their water on their own and using free bottled water provided by the base.

While this contamination event was particularly severe, water across the country carries serious risks.

"There are more than 250 contaminants across our nation's drinking water," Nneka Leiba, director of Healthy Living Science at EWG, told Patch. "About 160 of those are unregulated. And that's a big concern, because if a chemical is unregulated, that means it can be present in our water at any level — and be legal." Most of the water in the United States comes from local utilities that measure contaminants in their water supply, but this data can be difficult to obtain. (More below)

Contaminants in your water: EWG has released a public database cataloguing contaminants in water systems in every state in the country — the first comprehensive database of its kind that took two years to build. First select the state where you live, and you'll see state-level data. For more local information, enter your zip code.

After you enter your zip code, you'll be directed to a page showing the water utilities in your county. Select your town to see which contaminants put your families at risk.

No single group has collected all this information for all 50 states in an easily searchable database — until now. And it's incredibly easy to use it to see what contaminants are coming through your faucet.

The Risks

While we know our water supply is full of harmful chemicals, scientists struggle to quantify the wide-scale effects of the hundreds of contaminants people are drinking across the country.

Leiba said that cancer rates have gone up in recent years, as the World Health Organization confirms, even as the death rate from cancer have declined overall. It's impossible to know for sure how large a part water contaminants play in the increased prevalence of the disease.

But this uncertainty, Leiba said, is "another reason why precaution is so necessary."

Becoming aware of the dangers is an important step. Here's a short list of just some of the chemicals that endanger the health of children, pregnant women and the population at large:

In any individual case, it may be difficult to link a specific contaminant to the development of cancer or other adverse conditions. However, we can be confident that as long as substantial levels of harmful chemicals are in our environment and drinking water, the country as a whole will be sicker and worse off.

What You Can Do

Once people know about the high levels of dangerous contaminants lurking in their water, the question becomes what they can do to protect their health.

"There's a way to reduce those levels simply by buying a water filter," said Leiba.

"We don't want to scare the population by saying there are 250 chemicals and just leaving it there," she continued. "As a consumer you may look at it and get a little overwhelmed."

For this reason, EWG provides a guide to finding water filters. Its website allows you to search for filters that block particular chemicals and pollutants. If you find that your local water supply has a particularly high level of a dangerous chemical, you can search for a filter that blocks that substance.

There are many types of filters, including carbon filters, deionization filters and distillation filters. Each type has its own strengths and weakness, so sometimes a filter will include multiple filtration methods to eliminate more potential threats.

To find the most effective filter, look for certifications from the Water Quality Association and NSF International. Different filters remove different contaminants.

It's important to remember, though, that even high-quality filters are not 100 percent effective.

"Filters don't remove everything," Scott Meschke, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, told Patch. He emphasized that it's important to make sure you’re using a filter that is designed to fit your local needs.

He also said that users should change water filters on a regular basis. Old filters that are never replaced can host bacterial, which also pose potential dangers.

People who don't get their water through a public utility will have different needs.

"If you are on a private well, I would say that you need to be monitoring your water. You should be paying on a regular basis to have it tested," Meschke said.

Government Inaction

The EPA faces many barriers when regulating water quality across the entire country, but critics say the federal government has could put in more effort to address this problem.

"The legal limit, which is set and enforced by the EPA, is a compromise between a health limit and the cost and feasibility of removing the contaminant," explained Leiba. "The fact is that the EPA has not set a new safe drinking water standard under the Safe Drinking Water Act since 1996, despite us coming out with this database three times since then, and despite us knowing about all these contaminants."

She argued chemical manufacturers lobby the government to stop any regulations on the contaminants they produce.

"The real reason they haven't done that is that the process can be influenced by industry," she said. "The same industry that's polluting our water is also heavily influencing the policy-making process."

Environmental groups criticized the EPA in March when Scott Pruitt, head of the agency, rejected the opinion of chemical experts in the agency when and decided not to ban the insecticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to cognitive declines in children and farm workers. Industry leaders praised the decision not to regulate the chemical, while environmentalists continue to fight it.

The EPA's press office declined an interview request from Patch for this story. It also did not directly address EWG's criticisms of the agency and instead offered a blanket statement in response.

"America's drinking water remains among the safest in the world and protecting drinking water is EPA's top priority," an agency spokesperson said. "We take our commitment to protecting public health seriously and when issues arise, we work closely with states, local governments, and water suppliers to review and address, as appropriate."

There's some disagreement about the extent of industry's influence over environmental regulations, and some argue that there are significant obstacles to fixing this problem.

"There's more that could be done there," said Meschke, the Washington University professor. "But it would increase the overall cost of the water, and we already have some pretty expensive water compared to other places in the world."

Part of the reason the standards haven't been updated is that there are hundreds, if not more, potential contaminants to regulate, Meschke said. "The chemical industry tends to create new compounds and new products faster than we can test them," he said. Calling for a lot more investigation of these contaminants, he said, is a good place to start.

There are many pollutants currently in our drinking water, though, such as arsenic, that are indisputably harmful.

Both Leiba and Meschke noted the importance of protecting ground water sources from these sorts of chemicals, which is part of the EPA's jurisdiction. Utilities themselves can only do so much to remove contaminants, they said; preventing these substances from entering the water supply in the first place is the safest policy.

"Source water protection is your best initial line of defense, no question," said Meschke.

Most people, however, aren't in control of their own water supply; they simply get what they can from their local regulated utility. Aside from using EWG's database and perhaps buying a filter, it may seem like typical consumers aren't in much of a position to improve what comes out of their pipes.

Real change may only come through political action.

"There is something consumers can do," said Leiba. "They need to push their elected officials to strengthen drinking water programs."

Photo credit: Steve Johnson