Getting The Home’s Water Tested

Right around the time we announced that we were expecting there were a number of friends and family members who also revealed that they had a bun in the oven… and people consistently joked that there must be something in the water. The ironic thing is that ever since that bad joke popped up a few dozen times many months ago I have been wondering: what IS in my tap water anyway? Then I lately caught the end of a Dr. Oz show where he was talking about lead in your water- and when he mentioned that pregnant & nursing women need to be careful when drinking from pipes in older homes which could have lead (a quite bad neurotoxin for developing babies) I practically spit the water that I was drinking out all over myself. Eeks! It was certainly time to get to the bottom of the whole what is-in-the-water mystery.

We had thought about the possibility of lead paint during our bathroom reno (you can read about a bunch of protective simply-in-case methods that we used here) and even checked an old thrift store chair for lead after we chose to use it for our nursery (read about how we did that plain lead test here) but I cannot believe I never stopped to think that our home’s original plumbing might have more than simply water running through it on a daily basis.

The good news is that after further research I learned from the EPA that “the age of your home is a major contributing factor. Older homes with plumbing installed prior to 1930 are likely to have lead pipes. In addition, plumbing with copper pipes installed before 1988 may contain lead solder. Today lead pipes and materials are prohibited from being used in plumbing that leads to drinking water taps.”

That is comforting to hear since our house is a product of the 50’s and has galvanized steel piping (as opposed to lead or copper ones). But your home’s pipes are only half the battle. Did you know that lead can in fact be present in trace amounts in your city’s water? Not the most comforting thought. Doctor Oz in fact urged his audience to call their local jurisdiction and request a copy of their annual water quality report. Being the paranoid mother hen that I am, I was on the phone before Dr. Oz wrapped up his sentence. For any locals wondering exactly who I contacted, I called the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services at 804.648.4480 and later talked to Gigi Meyers at 804.864.7491 to assist me decipher my results.

No matter where you live, a few calls to your city council or any other office (simply google around for the main number) should hopefully direct you to the right department (I was bounced around about ten times before getting the right person, so it felt like a mini victory simply to find someone who knew what I was talking about in the end). I may have had to work for it a little, but it was well worth the effort and the piece of mind. A few days later my official water analysis arrived in the mail and although I could not understand a smidge of it (plenty of greater than and less than symbols with abbreviations like PMCL and SMCL), calling Gigi Meyers at the lab for assist interpreting the data at last put my mind at ease. So once you receive your report you might want to call the number on that report to get someone to assist you descipher your results.

The fabulous news is that our county’s water met or exceeded all EPA guidelines, so although it may possibly possess trace amounts of a bunch of scary chemicals (arsenic! lead! mercury!) they were all well below the limits that are known to be dangerous (in short Gigi explained that they could not definitively say zero for any category so they select a range like “less than .002 PPM” which is especially minute amount and possibly zero). Whew.

Plus we cannot forget that we installed an under-sink water filter a while back, which “reduces sediments, chlorine tastes, and odors” simply like a Brita pitcher would (it is also NSF and ANSI certified to be especially safe and free of phthalates and other leeching hazards). I guess we were doing more things right than we realized (although we can hardly take credit for our house being “new” sufficient to avoid lead piping and our county being lucky sufficient to have water that exceeds all of the safety standards set in place by the EPA).

The lesson: if you fear that there is something in the water at your house, there is plenty you can do. There are kits you can buy at any home improvement store to test your water for lead. You can also install a filtration system to further cut down on unwelcome toxins. And of course you can call your county to get information and make a stink if your water does not meet the standards that it should (the county is obligated to send you an honest report, but the shocking thing is that it is simply mandatory that they tell you what is in the water, and not necessarily mandated that they do anything immediately to rectify any high levels of anything – apparently budget issues and review boards can take years for any clean-up efforts to take effect). So that means if you see anything on your results that do not sound good it is certainly worth writing to people and even starting a local petition to educate and empower everyone in the community and hopefully get your tap water cleaned up swiftly!

Oh and if you are looking for more information, the Environmental Working Group lately put together a nationwide database of drinking water test results where you can go to look into the water rankings in your area (the New York Times even asked to use it in a series about what is wrong with America’s drinking water, so it is a trusted source for this sort of info). The good news is that they found that “when the Environmental Protection Agency sets mandatory water quality standards, the tests show that local water suppliers meet them 92 percent of the time.” Plus they ranked all the big cities for water safety so you can see where your area falls among the spectrum from best to worst (Richmond in fact made the top 11- wahoo!). The bad news? They still think “standards need to be tougher to protect young children and pregnant women.” We are glad they are fighting the good fight and providing plenty of enlightening info along the way.

We also learned a few more plain “rules of thumb” that should be used in protecting your family from contaminated tap water (as listed here):

1. Flush your pipes before use. Prior to using water for cooking or drinking, run the tap water until it becomes as cold as it will get.*
2. Use only cold water for drinking & cooking – hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead.
3. Inspect your plumbing system to detect lead. Lead pipes and solder are dull gray, when scratched they will look shiny.
4. Test your water with a lead detection product, such as PRO-LAB’s Lead in Water Test Kit, that utilizes U.S. EPA recognized laboratories. If your lead test comes back positive, the best way to handle the problem is to determine the source and remove it.

*The worst part of the pointers above was the whole “flush your pipes” since we hate watching wasted water literally go down the drain. We have found that whenever we feel the need to flush our pipes (if we have been away on a vacation for a week or so) we use a big basin to catch the water we are “flushing” and then use it for everything from watering the plants to washing the car and even doing other household cleaning like windows/floors, etc.

So that is what we learned in our little foray into what I like to call “find out what the heck we are ingesting on a daily basis.” These days I am chugging water like nobody’s business (nursing will do that to ya) so you will have to excuse me for getting all Erin Brockovich on you. We simply thought our witch water hunt might assist anyone else out there who squints at their glass and wonders what the heck is in there. And now we know… sort of.

Of course we’d enjoy to know what you folks do to keep your water as pure as possible. Do you use filters or check out your annual water report? Do tell.