A Guide to Learning About Your Water Quality
Water is essential for life and so important for your health, but water quality can be a surprisingly complicated topic. Although there’s plenty of public information available about your water quality, it can be hard to find — and hard to understand.
At Moen, your family’s water quality and experiences with water are important to us. That’s why we’re giving you tools and resources to help you better understand and improve the quality of drinking water in your home.
Why is Water Important?
Water does more than just keep you hydrated — drinking water provides numerous health benefits. According to the Harvard Medical School 6-Week Plan for Healthy Eating, water has many important jobs, including:1
- Carrying nutrients and oxygen to your cells
- Flushing bacteria from your bladder
- Aiding with digestion and preventing constipation
- Normalizing blood pressure and stabilizing your heartbeat
- Cushioning your joints
- Protecting organs and tissues
- Regulating body temperature
- Maintaining electrolyte (sodium) balance
It’s also important to ensure you’re drinking enough water each day to enjoy all the benefits. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends that men intake 3.7 liters (15.5 cups) of fluids per day, and women intake 2.7 liters (11.5 cups) per day.2
But it’s not just about how much water you drink, it’s also about the quality.
Where Does Your Water Come From?
Where your water comes from and who supplies it all depend on where you live, and it’s likely that your tap water comes from either surface water, groundwater or seawater.
Surface water makes up about two-thirds of the drinking water supply and comes from lakes, rivers, streams or ponds.3 This is where most municipal and city water systems source their water and it’s treated for drinking purposes to protect against contaminants from stormwater runoff, algal blooms, bacteria, wastewater discharges, agricultural chemicals and more.
Groundwater makes up 30.1% of global freshwater resources and is made up of water that flows underground from surface water sources into aquifers, or porous rocks that hold groundwater.4 Then, private wells — which about 10% of people in the U.S. rely on as their source of drinking water — draw the groundwater from the aquifers to supply their homes.5 Wells aren’t regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which means private well owners are responsible for the quality and safety of their own water.6 Similar to surface water, groundwater can also be saturated with man-made or naturally occurring contaminants, like bacteria, chemical spills, herbicides or pesticides, and naturally occurring heavy metals.
Seawater is another smaller source of drinking water that’s used primarily in dry regions, like California and parts of Florida.7 Through reverse osmosis filtration, seawater can be desalinated to remove the salt and minerals in order to produce freshwater.
As you’re learning about your drinking water, it’s important to keep in mind that there are many things that can affect its quality, including environmental and climate factors, like wildfires and extreme temperatures, or the infrastructure in your community.
- Wildfires are becoming larger and more frequent each year, and as they scorch forests and landscapes, the soil erodes, creating more runoff and contaminants that can enter surface water resources.8
- Droughts and rising temperatures are both significant causes of wildfires and can also affect crucial reservoirs and the water within them. Dry, loose soil in arid areas leads to more sediment runoff that can affect filtration in treatment plants, and high surface water temperatures can cause bacteria and algal blooms to grow.9
- Your community’s infrastructure and the service lines for your city water system are major factors for your home’s water quality. Many of the water mains and pipes that make up the U.S. water network were laid after World Water II, making them over 75 years old. As pipes age, corrosion can change the taste and color of your water while also releasing toxic metals, like lead.
How to Learn About Your Water Quality
If you’d like to learn more about the water quality in your region, it’s important to get the whole story. By checking a variety of sources, from your local utility’s Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) to national water databases, you can develop a better understanding of your area’s water quality.
If your water comes from a municipal or city water system:
Consumer Confidence Reports or Annual Water Quality Reports are published by your local water utility provider each year by July 1 and provide you with a snapshot of the average water quality in your area.11 You can find your utility’s Consumer Confidence Report online or subscribe to your utility company’s emails to receive the report via email each year. When reviewing your CCR, it’s important to keep in mind that the information reported is based on samples taken at the water treatment facility and not from someone’s drinking water in their home.
Your CCR will outline the source of your water, compliance with drinking water regulations, educational resources about water quality and a list of regulated contaminants detected. Nine out of ten American’s drinking water comes from one of more than 148,000 public water systems regulated by the EPA, which sets legal limits on over 90 contaminants in drinking water.12 A legal limit reflects the level that protects human health and that water systems can achieve using the best available technology.13
Your report will also include any drinking water violations, which may be based on a failure to meet reporting, monitoring, health or other requirements set by the EPA. Any violation of a health-based standard is included in your water supplier’s annual water quality report. To learn how to better understand your annual water quality report, visit epa.gov.
If your water comes from a private well:
When it comes to your drinking water, the best way to get the whole story is to test it. This is especially important if you have a well or older pipes, you’ve noticed a change in color, odor or taste, or if you just have questions or concerns about your local water quality.
Tap Score provides dozens of water tests that are specifically designed to assess contaminants from different sources of water, from city water to well and rainwater collection. You can order a test kit and after collecting a sample and sending it back to Tap Score, their labs will analyze the water and share a personalized report. Your report will include how your water ranks against local and federal safety benchmarks, a list of contaminants detected and recommendations on how to improve your family’s water quality. Once you know what’s in your water, you’ll have a better idea of what filtration options are right for you.
Learn More About Your Water Quality
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