Water Quality Monitoring - Can It Assure Us Of Safe Drinking Water?

Water Quality Monitoring - Can It Assure Us Of Safe Drinking Water

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Water quality monitoring is a daunting and serious task that each state has to undertake. It sometimes boggles the mind that with so many ways for toxic contaminants to get into our water supply, here in the US, water supplies are one of the safest in the world. Having said that, this is no time to raise the champagne glass.

In recent years, there have been many stories in the media about the quality of the water supply. Stories such as "Traces Of Drugs In Drinking Water In 24 Major US Regions" and "Rocket Fuel Found In Drinking Water," have in many cases caused people to wonder if water quality monitoring should be 100% relied on.

Now, with the threat of terrorism a reality in the US, the tasks of the various water authorities have become even harder and more serious. Perhaps, no where is the threat more serious than in New York.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is responsible for ensuring that clean water gets to the 9 million people that live in the state and that the water supply is also protected from environmental terrorism. But even with the DEP's vigilance, there is no guarantee that levels of contamination found within the water supply will not violate state and federal laws.

In 2008, they collected 29,800 samples from the distribution system and completed 381,300 analytical tests on them. Some samples were found to contain excess turbidity, which the DEP deemed was seasonal and not serious.

However, they were cited by the New York Department of Health for not doing follow up tests since turbidity can be caused by the presence of harmful pathogens in the water supply.

In about 10% of the samples, lead was detected and found to be in excess. This lead was also found at the tap, which could indicate that pipes leached some lead into the tap water.

160 samples were tested for cryptosporidium and giardia cysts. Giardia was found in 111 and crytosporidium found in 18.

Now, fortunately, there were no reports of stomach illnesses as a result of presence of these micro-organisms. However the question must be asked again, can we totally rely on water quality monitoring to ensure that harmful contaminants don't get into our water supply? The answer is clearly "no"!

As consumers, we have to be proactive in making our tap water cleaner and safer. The best way to do this is to secure water filtration systems for our homes. Depending on the systems used, these devices can remove a variety of contaminants from our tap water that municipal water filtration missed.

However with so many types of water filter units on the market, we need to educate ourselves as to the best choices and on how to determine quality.

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