21 ms·

We sampled tap water across the US – and found arsenic, lead and toxic chemicals

172 points by yellowyacht 6y ago

mox1 6y ago
If you would like to test you own water, I recommend something like this - https://www.cleanwaterstore.com/lab-tests/watercheck-deluxe-lab-test-with-pesticide-option.html https://www.cleanwaterstore.com/lab-tests/watercheck-deluxe-...
Proven 6y ago
Of course you did. But likely in negligible amounts.
refurb 6y ago
Consumer Reports recommended levels? CR = 10 ppt EPA = 70 ppt Level found in testing = 80 ppt Why not use EPA’s? Oh, because there wouldn’t be a story.
- sneak 6y ago
  TFA: > Despite mounting evidence of widespread contamination and health risks, the EPA has still not set an enforceable legal limit for PFAS in drinking water.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Citation?
    - antsar 6y ago
      Not hard to find. https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking-water-health-advisories-pfoa-and-pfos https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking... > EPA has established the health advisory levels at 70 parts per trillion > What's a health advisory? > ... health advisories are non-enforceable and non-regulatory ...
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        Is that for 'mounting evidence of widespread contamination and health risks' that show the EPA has too low standards? That's the citation I was looking for. Seemed a bit hand-wavy.
- Ninjinka 6y ago
  Wouldn't 80 still be more than 70?
  - refurb 6y ago
    Sure, but nothing magic happens when you go from 69 ppt to 71 ppt. And tests have accuracy of +\- a few ppt. Number can fluctuate day to day. 80 ppt is probably worth watching but when the limit is 70 ppt it’s much less alarming (11% over limit) than if the limit is 10 ppt (8 times!!!)
  - fX0rObfoMN4 6y ago
    14% above recommended levels doesn't sound as dangerous as 800% of recommended levels.
sneak 6y ago
The US spends $2B USD/day on the military, but can't pay a few hundred people to do this on a regular basis and put the results on a public webpage for everyone to see. The priorities are all out of whack. Government-provided water should be government-monitored water (all data for such should be publicly available and accessible immediately).
- varispeed 6y ago
  It's rather easy for connected people extract money out of the military budget than from the water one. Those people are just thieves, but they also got an entire force that could otherwise investigate this type of fraud busy fighting the "war on drugs".
- tesmar2 6y ago
  We spend a /ton/ more money on entitlements. Let’s start by eliminating that. Edit: looks like I insulted the HN golden calf lol
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    And what happens when we don't spend money on social security?
    - tesmar2 6y ago
      A whole new world of freedom and responsibility. Innovation in the grannycare space. Families brought closer together. Lots of good things, some bad. A net win.
      - aaomidi 6y ago
        And if you don't have a family and you're 70?
        tesmar2 6y ago
        Now that not nearly as much of your wages have been garnished, you would have had all that money during your working years to invest for your retirement. You could even use a private ss-like setup if you like. Besides having more options, more people would pursue having a family for this reason, so the situation would be rarer. Beyond that, you’d have a much stronger charity network.
symlinkk 6y ago
Friendly reminder that people who brought this up a decade ago were called “conspiracy theorists” and generally mocked and berated
dahart 6y ago
I care a lot about clean water & air, and I know there are a few places in the US where this is a very serious issue. That said, this piece started feeling a little exaggerated as I was reading. Like the first thing I thought was strange is how they sampled a single home in a given geographic area. It’s critically important to find out whether tainted water is coming from the city’s water facility or getting polluted in the pipes along the way. Sampling at the water treatment facility would reveal that. Sampling several homes would do it to. It also seems to lack a lot of comparative context needed to actually understand how levels of chemical compare, how much is in bottled water, how much is in other countries, how much is in “clean” water systems. Anyway, I got to the bottom and saw the line about funding of the series and suddenly thought maybe some industry was funding this. I googled for a minute and didn’t see any donor lists, but I did immediately bump into this article by the American Council on Science and Health: (Is this a reputable organization?) “Toxic America: The Guardian Spreads Chemophobia And Anti-Americanism” https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/01/toxic-america-guardian-spreads-chemophobia-and-anti-americanism-14128 https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/01/toxic-america-guardian-...
- ping_pong 6y ago
  I actually donate to ACSH because during the Pandemic, they had the most level-headed and accurate reporting of any source that I could find. But they do tend to pooh-pooh any anti-chemical reporting. They are very data-driven so they don't "worry" about things like PFAS because there hasn't been any proven deaths from it, which I find a bit too arrogant. They are also very pro-GMO, which I disagree with. However, I still support them with my donations because we need level-headed reporting like this. Here's an article from today that I just read that shows their philosophy on anti-hysteria media. https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/04/01/abc-news-terrible-scary-and-inaccurate-vaccine-headline-15448 https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/04/01/abc-news-terrible-scary...
- cowmoo728 6y ago
  Given that ACSH documents leaked in 2013 indicated that they were offering to put out industry-friendly press releases in exchange for cash, I would wager that they're not a reputable source. They also seem to be vociferously anti-Obama and weirdly pro tobacco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_and_Health#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_an...
yabones 6y ago
PFAS is a pretty serious problem with US (and global) water supplies. There was a great documentary a couple years ago that covered it [0]. Even though they 'stopped' using these chemicals in manufacturing 10-15 years ago, there's still an incredible level of contamination - 26,000 sites listed by EPA [1]. But that's sort of irrelevant, because these compounds don't break up over human time scales. Eventually every place in the world will be contaminated, and with how harmful they are it's not clear if the old adage "the solution to pollution is dilution" will hold up. It's hard not to be alarmist about this, PFAS contamination is genuinely terrifying. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Is there a way to break them down? Let's say I have X liters of contaminated water I want to drink, how can I clean it, preferably without expensive or difficult to obtain equipment?
  - voisin 6y ago
    Distillation?
    - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
      Yep, that is the right answer. Some volatile compounds may get through though.
  - hammock 6y ago
    RO removes most of it. Cannot really be broken down easily, that's part of the problem.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    I think Brita and such can filter it out. Seemed like it last time I researched?
citizenpaul 6y ago
This will only get worse and worse. AVG Disability Check $1,200mo AVG Unemployment Check $300week Current CARES Unemployment bonus $600 week. Total,30k Per year w/o CARES, $61K per year w/CARES. AVG Salary of a dangerous physically challenging job at the water department. $25K-$35k per year Gee I wonder why we have these problems when you can be paid more to sit at home and level up in World of Warcraft or whatever. All of these totals of course vary quite a bit depending on state but they overall the story I am telling remains disturbingly consistent. So basically your drinking water is prepared exclusively by people that are too honest or too stupid to manipulate the system.
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  So we should pay people in the water department more money, makes sense to me.
  - citizenpaul 6y ago
    That was exactly my point. Too bad there is 0% chance that all of a sudden county/city governments across the nation suddenly decide to double to triple the pay for those positions so that they can be filled by competent people. IDC either way I already have my own way to produce clean drinking water.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
  You live in a fantasy world. People who're on disability aren't living their best life at 60 or even 30k a year. Their main worry is whether they're going to be able to afford their medicine, rent and food, whether they're going to end up homeless in the near future, and whether they're going to receive their stimulus checks any time soon.
  - citizenpaul 6y ago
    I knew your comment would be one of the first. lol. Even without that I illustrated that it is not difficult to make a quick distinction that you can make more money not working than actually working. especially at a job that is hazardous and physically difficult. Funny though that a job working around heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals (water works) is also going to put those workers in a high likelihood to be out on disability from the water job in question anyway. Not to mention that the government of the US itself has self admitted that the disability program is filled with "rampant abuse" and even casual investigation has shown roughly 1/3 of cases are fraudulent. Not that this diminishes those legitimately on disability.
s0rce 6y ago
Saying no detectable lead is a bit hard to interpret without also listing the lower limit of detection for the measurement. I assume based on the sig figs it might be less than 0.5 ppt or something around that. Is 1 ppt lead really bad for you? There is lead in everything, see: https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/lead-food-foodwares-and-dietary-supplements https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/lead-food-food..., note many of the LOD reported there are 1000x higher...
- jeffbee 6y ago
  There is not a known-safe level of lead.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    But there is a level where the cost of water treatment by far outweighs the health impacts of an atom of lead remaining... The question is where is that level?...
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Isn't that trade-off already made on the CDC guidance of 5µg/dL? This is pretty much an economic decision, because the reference value is changed to match the .975 quantile of blood lead observations. It was 10µg/dL until 2012.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Which is also a useless statement without knowing the lower threshold for measurement. There certainly exists an amount of lead that's safe. One molecule won't harm you. Two won't either. But where the limit is nobody knows. And nobody will know for a long time because current trends in lead exposure are rife with confounding factors (i.e. poverty) and the proliferation of statements like "no safe level" dis-incentivize research (finding a number won't matter if nobody cares about your number because "there's no safe level).
    - 6y ago
jandrewrogers 6y ago
The arsenic limits are unscientifically low and came about as part of a campaign to stop mining. Many parts of the world have natural environmental levels far exceeding these limits with no discernible impact on human health. Which makes sense since arsenic is a necessary micro-nutrient, albeit poorly understood, with a profile similar to selenium -- also highly toxic but also necessary in trace quantities, often from the water supply. The 3 ppb (or 10 ppb) limit the EPA wanted to use is pure scaremongering and is essentially unachievable in some geographies.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  There are also plenty of natural geographies with dangerous levels of some compounds. The question really is "what is the optimal level of this compound" followed by "how far are we happy to deviate from the optimal amount in either direction to make water production cheaper while having minimal health downsides?"
mondoshawan 6y ago
Seems like an opportunity for a hardware startup to develop a water quality tester that continuously monitors home water supplies. Can't seem to find anything on the market that can test any of these specific chemicals -- including lead. All I could find were TDS meters.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  There is a gap in the market in general for "health testers". I want a $1 chip I can put a bit of an Apple on and have it tell me how many pesticides, how organic, and stuff like that. It seems all the tech is possible for that kind of thing (microfluidics, micro gas spectrometry), but there isn't a big enough market to sell it all for rock bottom prices
  - intrasight 6y ago
    Depends what is "rock bottom". I do believe there's a huge untapped opportunity. And I assume that some tech entrepreneurs will figure it out. We have the computers in our palms. We just need the sensors. I think there's be a strong demand at the $500 price point - assuming that the consumables don't cost too much.
nimos 6y ago
Is there any decent way to filter PFAS and other chemicals without a RO system? It seems like filter jugs at best filter heavy metals. Very hard to research with the amount of blog spam.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  activated charcoal works. It's cheap stuff and should be available as inline filters. Put a cheaper filter in advance of it to get more life out of it. https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-water-treatment-technologies https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa... Also, ion-exchange resins.
intrasight 6y ago
I'm not willing to buy bottled water. But I'm also growing concerned about the quality of my tap water. So I'd like to hear from others who have researched whole house water filters. I am familiar with Pelican and Rhino.
- hashkb 6y ago
  I'm on a well in the CO mountains. We have radon and high TDS. I installed a cheap carbon radon mitigator for the whole house and a Hague RO system for the kitchen. Tests went from scary to mostly zeroes. Water tastes amazing.
- mleonhard 6y ago
  Bottled water is just tap water from somewhere else with added micro-plastic.
js2 6y ago
The wirecutter recommends filters which are ANSI/NSF certified to remove these chemicals: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-under-sink-water-filter/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-under-sink-w... https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-faucet-water-filter/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-faucet-water... I have the Aquasana AQ-5300+ but the filters are expensive. It’s currently $75 to replace them and they last about six months. The convenience of a sink mounted filter is nice however.
Scoundreller 6y ago
The UK is pretty much a world leader in lead reduction: > The percentage of homes in the US with a lead service line, lead pipe or lead gooseneck has been estimated to be between 3 and 6% (Triantafyllidou & Edwards (2012). > The UK has the most accurate information and understanding of the extent of lead concentrations in drinking water as a result of widespread sampling at consumers' taps for over thirty years. > In contrast, many other European countries have very little knowledge of the extent of the problem because they have not routinely monitored at private residences, or have done so only after flushing the pipework (CIWEM, 2012). However, on the basis of evidence gained by an international research network (COST Action 637) it appears that problems with lead in drinking water are widespread in Europe (Hayes, 2014; H. C., 2009). > Estimates suggest approximately 25% of houses in the EU have a lead pipe, putting 120 million people at risk in today’s 27 member states. Overall, it has been estimated (IWA, 2010) that up to one in four children in Europe could be at risk from lead in drinking water (CIWEM, 2012). p. 13: https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/media/browser/2015-11-13/proposed_corrosion_control_plan.pdf https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/media/browser/20... No idea how things are outside of N. America and Europe. Given that you can install a machine at your water treatment plant to pump in orthophosphates to build a protective layer on supply/household piping to get a 90% lead reduction (takes a couple years), I'm not sure what the excuse is for any water system that has lead pipes/solder/brass fittings.
rich_sasha 6y ago
Without discounting the risks such chemicals cause, I often wonder how general environment toxicity changes over time. Victorian England for example sounds awful, with soot from burning coal everywhere, lead being used for babies’ dummies (its soft and all), and general lack of appreciation of hygiene. Dangerous chemicals like mercury and lead were used all over the place because they were cheap, and I guess no one knew any better. When we are now concerned about those toxic chemicals, to what extent is that an absolute concern, and to what a relative one?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sizzle 6y ago
Can someone please recommend the best method of filtering PFAS + Lead and other toxic crap from drinking water, is it a multi-stage filter with activated carbon and reverse osmosis? Or is it making distilled water + adding back in electrolytes and storing in a lead-free glass container? Someone make this into a startup and I’ll pay for verified toxin free tested water, is there a market for this? I’m on a mission to get the purest water at home and there is so much misinformation and outright fraud and snake oil salesmen in the water filter industry it is beyond absurd how they prey on emotions to get you to buy their crap. They don’t list where the raw filter materials were sourced (usually “made” in China), where the materials they are using inside the filters are mined from... any toxins leeching into my filtered drinking water here? No I won’t take your word on it, show me the safety data from a reputable lab with legit standards and what are all the raw materials used in production and methods to create these filters (injection molding high heat plastics? BPA and other chemicals here? otherwise it’s a black box I can’t trust. So I just drink my black box “filtered” water and hope I don’t get cancer in my 50’s from the unfiltered toxic industry byproducts in the filters themselves + PFAS types of things that aren’t filtered at all.
- nolroz 6y ago
  Based on "cptskippy"s comment below activated carbon filters sound like they may be effective.

172 points by yellowyacht 6y ago

mox1 6y ago

If you would like to test you own water, I recommend something like this - https://www.cleanwaterstore.com/lab-tests/watercheck-deluxe-lab-test-with-pesticide-option.html https://www.cleanwaterstore.com/lab-tests/watercheck-deluxe-...

Proven 6y ago

Of course you did. But likely in negligible amounts.

refurb 6y ago

Consumer Reports recommended levels? CR = 10 ppt EPA = 70 ppt Level found in testing = 80 ppt Why not use EPA’s? Oh, because there wouldn’t be a story.

sneak 6y ago
TFA: > Despite mounting evidence of widespread contamination and health risks, the EPA has still not set an enforceable legal limit for PFAS in drinking water.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Citation?
  - antsar 6y ago
    Not hard to find. https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking-water-health-advisories-pfoa-and-pfos https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking... > EPA has established the health advisory levels at 70 parts per trillion > What's a health advisory? > ... health advisories are non-enforceable and non-regulatory ...
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Is that for 'mounting evidence of widespread contamination and health risks' that show the EPA has too low standards? That's the citation I was looking for. Seemed a bit hand-wavy.
Ninjinka 6y ago
Wouldn't 80 still be more than 70?
- refurb 6y ago
  Sure, but nothing magic happens when you go from 69 ppt to 71 ppt. And tests have accuracy of +\- a few ppt. Number can fluctuate day to day. 80 ppt is probably worth watching but when the limit is 70 ppt it’s much less alarming (11% over limit) than if the limit is 10 ppt (8 times!!!)
- fX0rObfoMN4 6y ago
  14% above recommended levels doesn't sound as dangerous as 800% of recommended levels.

sneak 6y ago

The US spends $2B USD/day on the military, but can't pay a few hundred people to do this on a regular basis and put the results on a public webpage for everyone to see. The priorities are all out of whack. Government-provided water should be government-monitored water (all data for such should be publicly available and accessible immediately).

varispeed 6y ago
It's rather easy for connected people extract money out of the military budget than from the water one. Those people are just thieves, but they also got an entire force that could otherwise investigate this type of fraud busy fighting the "war on drugs".
tesmar2 6y ago
We spend a /ton/ more money on entitlements. Let’s start by eliminating that. Edit: looks like I insulted the HN golden calf lol
- aaomidi 6y ago
  And what happens when we don't spend money on social security?
  - tesmar2 6y ago
    A whole new world of freedom and responsibility. Innovation in the grannycare space. Families brought closer together. Lots of good things, some bad. A net win.
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      And if you don't have a family and you're 70?
      - tesmar2 6y ago
        Now that not nearly as much of your wages have been garnished, you would have had all that money during your working years to invest for your retirement. You could even use a private ss-like setup if you like. Besides having more options, more people would pursue having a family for this reason, so the situation would be rarer. Beyond that, you’d have a much stronger charity network.

symlinkk 6y ago

Friendly reminder that people who brought this up a decade ago were called “conspiracy theorists” and generally mocked and berated

dahart 6y ago

I care a lot about clean water & air, and I know there are a few places in the US where this is a very serious issue. That said, this piece started feeling a little exaggerated as I was reading. Like the first thing I thought was strange is how they sampled a single home in a given geographic area. It’s critically important to find out whether tainted water is coming from the city’s water facility or getting polluted in the pipes along the way. Sampling at the water treatment facility would reveal that. Sampling several homes would do it to. It also seems to lack a lot of comparative context needed to actually understand how levels of chemical compare, how much is in bottled water, how much is in other countries, how much is in “clean” water systems. Anyway, I got to the bottom and saw the line about funding of the series and suddenly thought maybe some industry was funding this. I googled for a minute and didn’t see any donor lists, but I did immediately bump into this article by the American Council on Science and Health: (Is this a reputable organization?) “Toxic America: The Guardian Spreads Chemophobia And Anti-Americanism” https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/01/toxic-america-guardian-spreads-chemophobia-and-anti-americanism-14128 https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/01/toxic-america-guardian-...

ping_pong 6y ago
I actually donate to ACSH because during the Pandemic, they had the most level-headed and accurate reporting of any source that I could find. But they do tend to pooh-pooh any anti-chemical reporting. They are very data-driven so they don't "worry" about things like PFAS because there hasn't been any proven deaths from it, which I find a bit too arrogant. They are also very pro-GMO, which I disagree with. However, I still support them with my donations because we need level-headed reporting like this. Here's an article from today that I just read that shows their philosophy on anti-hysteria media. https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/04/01/abc-news-terrible-scary-and-inaccurate-vaccine-headline-15448 https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/04/01/abc-news-terrible-scary...
cowmoo728 6y ago
Given that ACSH documents leaked in 2013 indicated that they were offering to put out industry-friendly press releases in exchange for cash, I would wager that they're not a reputable source. They also seem to be vociferously anti-Obama and weirdly pro tobacco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_and_Health#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_an...

yabones 6y ago

PFAS is a pretty serious problem with US (and global) water supplies. There was a great documentary a couple years ago that covered it [0]. Even though they 'stopped' using these chemicals in manufacturing 10-15 years ago, there's still an incredible level of contamination - 26,000 sites listed by EPA [1]. But that's sort of irrelevant, because these compounds don't break up over human time scales. Eventually every place in the world will be contaminated, and with how harmful they are it's not clear if the old adage "the solution to pollution is dilution" will hold up. It's hard not to be alarmist about this, PFAS contamination is genuinely terrifying. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Is there a way to break them down? Let's say I have X liters of contaminated water I want to drink, how can I clean it, preferably without expensive or difficult to obtain equipment?
- voisin 6y ago
  Distillation?
  - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    Yep, that is the right answer. Some volatile compounds may get through though.
- hammock 6y ago
  RO removes most of it. Cannot really be broken down easily, that's part of the problem.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  I think Brita and such can filter it out. Seemed like it last time I researched?

citizenpaul 6y ago

This will only get worse and worse. AVG Disability Check $1,200mo AVG Unemployment Check $300week Current CARES Unemployment bonus $600 week. Total,30k Per year w/o CARES, $61K per year w/CARES. AVG Salary of a dangerous physically challenging job at the water department. $25K-$35k per year Gee I wonder why we have these problems when you can be paid more to sit at home and level up in World of Warcraft or whatever. All of these totals of course vary quite a bit depending on state but they overall the story I am telling remains disturbingly consistent. So basically your drinking water is prepared exclusively by people that are too honest or too stupid to manipulate the system.

adamcstephens 6y ago
So we should pay people in the water department more money, makes sense to me.
- citizenpaul 6y ago
  That was exactly my point. Too bad there is 0% chance that all of a sudden county/city governments across the nation suddenly decide to double to triple the pay for those positions so that they can be filled by competent people. IDC either way I already have my own way to produce clean drinking water.
ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
You live in a fantasy world. People who're on disability aren't living their best life at 60 or even 30k a year. Their main worry is whether they're going to be able to afford their medicine, rent and food, whether they're going to end up homeless in the near future, and whether they're going to receive their stimulus checks any time soon.
- citizenpaul 6y ago
  I knew your comment would be one of the first. lol. Even without that I illustrated that it is not difficult to make a quick distinction that you can make more money not working than actually working. especially at a job that is hazardous and physically difficult. Funny though that a job working around heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals (water works) is also going to put those workers in a high likelihood to be out on disability from the water job in question anyway. Not to mention that the government of the US itself has self admitted that the disability program is filled with "rampant abuse" and even casual investigation has shown roughly 1/3 of cases are fraudulent. Not that this diminishes those legitimately on disability.

s0rce 6y ago

Saying no detectable lead is a bit hard to interpret without also listing the lower limit of detection for the measurement. I assume based on the sig figs it might be less than 0.5 ppt or something around that. Is 1 ppt lead really bad for you? There is lead in everything, see: https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/lead-food-foodwares-and-dietary-supplements https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/lead-food-food..., note many of the LOD reported there are 1000x higher...

jeffbee 6y ago
There is not a known-safe level of lead.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  But there is a level where the cost of water treatment by far outweighs the health impacts of an atom of lead remaining... The question is where is that level?...
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Isn't that trade-off already made on the CDC guidance of 5µg/dL? This is pretty much an economic decision, because the reference value is changed to match the .975 quantile of blood lead observations. It was 10µg/dL until 2012.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Which is also a useless statement without knowing the lower threshold for measurement. There certainly exists an amount of lead that's safe. One molecule won't harm you. Two won't either. But where the limit is nobody knows. And nobody will know for a long time because current trends in lead exposure are rife with confounding factors (i.e. poverty) and the proliferation of statements like "no safe level" dis-incentivize research (finding a number won't matter if nobody cares about your number because "there's no safe level).
  - 6y ago

jandrewrogers 6y ago

The arsenic limits are unscientifically low and came about as part of a campaign to stop mining. Many parts of the world have natural environmental levels far exceeding these limits with no discernible impact on human health. Which makes sense since arsenic is a necessary micro-nutrient, albeit poorly understood, with a profile similar to selenium -- also highly toxic but also necessary in trace quantities, often from the water supply. The 3 ppb (or 10 ppb) limit the EPA wanted to use is pure scaremongering and is essentially unachievable in some geographies.

londons_explore 6y ago
There are also plenty of natural geographies with dangerous levels of some compounds. The question really is "what is the optimal level of this compound" followed by "how far are we happy to deviate from the optimal amount in either direction to make water production cheaper while having minimal health downsides?"

mondoshawan 6y ago

Seems like an opportunity for a hardware startup to develop a water quality tester that continuously monitors home water supplies. Can't seem to find anything on the market that can test any of these specific chemicals -- including lead. All I could find were TDS meters.

londons_explore 6y ago
There is a gap in the market in general for "health testers". I want a $1 chip I can put a bit of an Apple on and have it tell me how many pesticides, how organic, and stuff like that. It seems all the tech is possible for that kind of thing (microfluidics, micro gas spectrometry), but there isn't a big enough market to sell it all for rock bottom prices
- intrasight 6y ago
  Depends what is "rock bottom". I do believe there's a huge untapped opportunity. And I assume that some tech entrepreneurs will figure it out. We have the computers in our palms. We just need the sensors. I think there's be a strong demand at the $500 price point - assuming that the consumables don't cost too much.

nimos 6y ago

Is there any decent way to filter PFAS and other chemicals without a RO system? It seems like filter jugs at best filter heavy metals. Very hard to research with the amount of blog spam.

Scoundreller 6y ago
activated charcoal works. It's cheap stuff and should be available as inline filters. Put a cheaper filter in advance of it to get more life out of it. https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-water-treatment-technologies https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa... Also, ion-exchange resins.

intrasight 6y ago

I'm not willing to buy bottled water. But I'm also growing concerned about the quality of my tap water. So I'd like to hear from others who have researched whole house water filters. I am familiar with Pelican and Rhino.

hashkb 6y ago
I'm on a well in the CO mountains. We have radon and high TDS. I installed a cheap carbon radon mitigator for the whole house and a Hague RO system for the kitchen. Tests went from scary to mostly zeroes. Water tastes amazing.
mleonhard 6y ago
Bottled water is just tap water from somewhere else with added micro-plastic.

js2 6y ago

The wirecutter recommends filters which are ANSI/NSF certified to remove these chemicals: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-under-sink-water-filter/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-under-sink-w... https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-faucet-water-filter/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-faucet-water... I have the Aquasana AQ-5300+ but the filters are expensive. It’s currently $75 to replace them and they last about six months. The convenience of a sink mounted filter is nice however.

Scoundreller 6y ago

The UK is pretty much a world leader in lead reduction: > The percentage of homes in the US with a lead service line, lead pipe or lead gooseneck has been estimated to be between 3 and 6% (Triantafyllidou & Edwards (2012). > The UK has the most accurate information and understanding of the extent of lead concentrations in drinking water as a result of widespread sampling at consumers' taps for over thirty years. > In contrast, many other European countries have very little knowledge of the extent of the problem because they have not routinely monitored at private residences, or have done so only after flushing the pipework (CIWEM, 2012). However, on the basis of evidence gained by an international research network (COST Action 637) it appears that problems with lead in drinking water are widespread in Europe (Hayes, 2014; H. C., 2009). > Estimates suggest approximately 25% of houses in the EU have a lead pipe, putting 120 million people at risk in today’s 27 member states. Overall, it has been estimated (IWA, 2010) that up to one in four children in Europe could be at risk from lead in drinking water (CIWEM, 2012). p. 13: https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/media/browser/2015-11-13/proposed_corrosion_control_plan.pdf https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/media/browser/20... No idea how things are outside of N. America and Europe. Given that you can install a machine at your water treatment plant to pump in orthophosphates to build a protective layer on supply/household piping to get a 90% lead reduction (takes a couple years), I'm not sure what the excuse is for any water system that has lead pipes/solder/brass fittings.

rich_sasha 6y ago

Without discounting the risks such chemicals cause, I often wonder how general environment toxicity changes over time. Victorian England for example sounds awful, with soot from burning coal everywhere, lead being used for babies’ dummies (its soft and all), and general lack of appreciation of hygiene. Dangerous chemicals like mercury and lead were used all over the place because they were cheap, and I guess no one knew any better. When we are now concerned about those toxic chemicals, to what extent is that an absolute concern, and to what a relative one?

deleted 6y ago

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sizzle 6y ago

Can someone please recommend the best method of filtering PFAS + Lead and other toxic crap from drinking water, is it a multi-stage filter with activated carbon and reverse osmosis? Or is it making distilled water + adding back in electrolytes and storing in a lead-free glass container? Someone make this into a startup and I’ll pay for verified toxin free tested water, is there a market for this? I’m on a mission to get the purest water at home and there is so much misinformation and outright fraud and snake oil salesmen in the water filter industry it is beyond absurd how they prey on emotions to get you to buy their crap. They don’t list where the raw filter materials were sourced (usually “made” in China), where the materials they are using inside the filters are mined from... any toxins leeching into my filtered drinking water here? No I won’t take your word on it, show me the safety data from a reputable lab with legit standards and what are all the raw materials used in production and methods to create these filters (injection molding high heat plastics? BPA and other chemicals here? otherwise it’s a black box I can’t trust. So I just drink my black box “filtered” water and hope I don’t get cancer in my 50’s from the unfiltered toxic industry byproducts in the filters themselves + PFAS types of things that aren’t filtered at all.

nolroz 6y ago
Based on "cptskippy"s comment below activated carbon filters sound like they may be effective.