Mine isn't doing too well: [www.ewg.org]

28 total, of which 10 exceed their guidelines ... and of these, three contaminants over 100x their recommended limit... and almost all the contaminants potentially causing cancer.

(this is the same treatment plant that President Biden just visited not too long ago)

You can search for your own zip code here: [www.ewg.org]

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2021 08:19PM by PeterB.

PeterB, thanks for the link. Eight total, two over a hundred times their guidelines. All meet or exceed federal limits.

---

Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

What gets me about the results for my area ... many of the contaminants are by-products of the chlorination process, which I suppose is unavoidable in order to make sure the water is free of microorganisms. But then there are also a couple of radioactive compounds, which I don't think will easily be filtered out except with an expensive reverse-osmosis system.

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

16 present, 8 exceed, all of the 8 cause cancer. Most look like treatment byproducts (bromo/chlor stuff). We pull ours from the river, full of combined sewer outflows, so yeah, lots of treatment needed.

Bottoms up!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2021 08:44PM by Acer.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2021 08:44PM by Acer.

Folks up in West Virginia really have it bad...
Majority of West Virginia counties rank worst in US for water quality
2019: World Socialist Web Site
(take WSWS 'opinions' w/ a grain of salt or two)

2018 Independent Lens: What Lies Upstream [www.pbs.org]

Quote
PBS -
...investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to
study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000
Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. There he uncovers a
shocking failure of regulation from both state and federal agencies and
a damaged political system where chemical companies often write the
laws that govern them. While he’s deep into his research in West Virginia,
a similar water crisis strikes Flint, Michigan, revealing that the entire
system that Americans assume is protecting their drinking water is
fundamentally broken.

---

39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

I can't help but wonder if the info being provided is a bit alarmist.

---

Maybe ... on the other hand, I'm happy that I'm drinking filtered water.

Edit: here's some data from WV, since they were mentioned: [www.ewg.org]

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2021 10:13PM by PeterB.

We are lucky here in that we have just about the best tapwater in the country. Strangely, some people here still filter their water even though there's nothing to filter out. Even stupider is that some people refuse to drink tapwater and buy bottled water (which often does contain contaminants) instead. There's no logic to it...It's like a religion.

---

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

35 total, 14 exceeding in SA TX

---

San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Eli Weisel

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." - Billy Graham 1981

"Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise" - Barry Goldwater

8 Exceeding
17 total
I have been getting a legal amount of lead in my water, I get statements from the water company yearly.

---

In tha 360. MRF User Map



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2021 11:00PM by Filliam H. Muffman.

The county utility has four contaminants, but they don't service my home. My area is all on individual wells. So ignorance is bliss.

---

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

I have trouble believing a site whose purpose is to sell filtration systems. My water system sends us their report.

Quote
cbelt3
I have trouble believing a site whose purpose is to sell filtration systems. My water system sends us their report.

Exactly. Our utility sends us an annual report on water quality.

Cbelt,

Glad to see you have trouble with Environmental Working Group (EWG). Based on everything I've read on its site and delved further into as a result of what they've said, you can't take anything offered by them at face value. I believe they are an activist organization, not a scientific organization.

[mediabiasfactcheck.com]

Robert

Quote
macphanatic

Quote
cbelt3
I have trouble believing a site whose purpose is to sell filtration systems. My water system sends us their report.

Exactly. Our utility sends us an annual report on water quality.

So does ours, but the S&WB here is not known for their truthfulness in reporting, and it's generally assumed that they're fudging the numbers. So it's good that an outside agency is monitoring... and as I understood it, that site is a non-profit (thus the .org) and so I'm not sure they can make money off of anything.

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

Peter,

Take a look at the criticism of EWG. Here are some places to check out first:

[www.acsh.org]

[chemistscorner.com]

[www.theecowell.com]

[www.forbes.com]

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Robert

I took a look on their site. Hmmm….

I haven’t delved into it, and my first impressions are:

1. Who are these folks? As belty mentioned, anyone who is selling filtration systems will give numbers that support buying their systems.

2. I checked my city’s water through them. They make it seem like water isn’t something that is checked. Well, it IS checked through the county health department on a continuing basis (the sig other had the job while we were in Texas) and the water must pass EPA regulations for the specific contaminants and how often to test, as well as the method of testing. These are regularly reviewed as to the limits, and are changed as appropriate.

3. The site claimed that we use surface water here. If so, we cannot achieve the amounts of arsenic normally found without someone adding it to the water supply. In fact, surface water is only some of what we use as it isn’t available in the quantities we need and the rest is obtained by wells drilled into the aquifer below us. That one (the Ogallalah I think) has pockets of sandstone that contain high levels of arsenic and thus water pumped from such will be higher in arsenic than other areas, and so the city periodically pulls water from such wells and mixes it with other water thereby diluting the contaminants, thereby supplying the amount of water needed and still remaining under the limits. Such arsenic is (a) naturally occurring and (b) only wells high(er) in arsenic are used as needed. Otherwise such wells are on standby.

4. A lot of this is well known. Scare tactics, anyone?

Diana

Edit: Forgot to add: Just because it is measurable doesn’t make it bad. Humans evolved with such “evil contaminants” regularly present in their environment and thrived. And as instruments evolve and get more sensitive we will see more stuff show up that we just couldn’t see before because the instrument used wasn’t able to see it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2021 10:44AM by Diana.

Thanks everyone. I had my suspicions about this website, but got taken in by the fact that they claim they're a non-profit and have the .org. I have seen some other websites say that the one good thing about EWG is that they're centralizing the data (which the EPA apparently hasn't done) and reporting contaminants that aren't being reported elsewhere. Obviously, I'm not going to buy anything from them or through their website, but I'm still happy to be using filters on my water. (If nothing else, the filters will apparently remove a lot of the byproducts of the chlorination process.)

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

Peter,

Municipalities are REQUIRED to send in their test results, if not to the Feds then to the state. Since it is the EPA that requires the testing using approved methods (and it’s more than just one, depending on what analyte or analytes they are looking for) with the approved instrumentation, I would be highly surprised if it isn’t Feds. There are fines for not doing so, you can bet on it. In fact, there have been pushes to tighten the requirements. If there weren’t then we wouldn’t have one of the safest water supplies in the world (with the exception of some places, granted). Water samples are collected from the water utilities and have a 24-hour lifetime; the only way to have caught places like Flint is if they had tested from the home spigot and very few people would be happy with government officials, even if local, coming into their homes on a regular basis.

I don’t know where this organization is getting their “limits” as not all places have the instruments that can see such small amounts. Additionally, the EPA is SUPPOSED to set their limits based on what the science says and has done such in the past. From a regulatory/legal requirement you used to only have to report it if it was above a certain level. That may have changed in the last 20 years since I did such work.

Diana

Though my water generally tastes pretty good, it apparently has 10 contaminants:

Haloacetic acids (HAA5) 400x
Potential Effect: cancer

Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) 300x
Potential Effect: cancer

Activated carbon is supposed to remove them, but apparently reverse osmosis and ion exchange is needed to cleanse the unknown quantities of:

Chlorate
Chromium (hexavalent)
Fluoride
Molybdenum
Strontium
Vanadium (ion exchange to remove this one).



anyone who is selling filtration systems will give numbers that support buying their systems.


As I was solely interested in seeing what I'm drinking, I missed Robert's and Diana's interesting comments, and the fact that EWG sells water treatment systems.

So yes, I'm suspicious of the site in general, and their scare tactics such as 'just because it's legal doesn't mean good'.

I do like filtering my water (activated carbon) because it does taste better than straight from the tap.

This was first noticed when I made orange juice (from concentrate) with filtered tap water (Instapur activated charcoal) and the slight 'tangy' metallic taste was gone.

Ahh, smoooooth.

---

I am that Masked Man.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

Quote
Diana
Peter,

Municipalities are REQUIRED to send in their test results, if not to the Feds then to the state. Since it is the EPA that requires the testing using approved methods (and it’s more than just one, depending on what analyte or analytes they are looking for) with the approved instrumentation, I would be highly surprised if it isn’t Feds. There are fines for not doing so, you can bet on it. In fact, there have been pushes to tighten the requirements. If there weren’t then we wouldn’t have one of the safest water supplies in the world (with the exception of some places, granted). Water samples are collected from the water utilities and have a 24-hour lifetime; the only way to have caught places like Flint is if they had tested from the home spigot and very few people would be happy with government officials, even if local, coming into their homes on a regular basis.

I don’t know where this organization is getting their “limits” as not all places have the instruments that can see such small amounts. Additionally, the EPA is SUPPOSED to set their limits based on what the science says and has done such in the past. From a regulatory/legal requirement you used to only have to report it if it was above a certain level. That may have changed in the last 20 years since I did such work.

Diana

Some of what I was saying is based on this part of their website -- if anyone can support or deny:

[www.ewg.org]

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

Good news. My public water appears to have a high concentration of Bourbon. Guess I'll be drinking more "water."

My water utility isn't on the list. And I live in a fairly large suburb of a large city.

My inlaws live in WV, but they're on a well. They have a huge filtration system in their garage. The water actually tastes pretty good there.

My area says that we have 100s of x Arsenic allowable...

I once bumped into an epa scientist out in the field in the wetlands north of town. HE was stomping around in the marshes collecting water. I asked him what he was doing. 'Sampling water'. What are you expecting to find - 'Arsenic mostly - this area is downstream of mining that has been going on for 150 years - there is all kinds of contaminates in the water from mining.'

What about the fish people catch? (I had seen signs telling people to not eat more than 2 fish/week - pregnant women should probably not eat any) - 'I wouldn't eat any fish caught around here...'

Nextdoor keeps sending me invites with special time sensitive codes, but I've never joined.