How Safe is Your Water: Testing Your Water

Water is absolutely necessary to stay healthy, but it can also make you sick: if your drinking water isn’t clean, it can cause all sorts of problems. It can be hard to tell just how safe your water is, though.

If there is a problem with your city’s water supply, you’ll hear about it fast. When bacteria were found in Downey, California’s water supply, the town’s public health officials got word to the 110,000 residents the same day through every channel they had access to — along with word of a recommendation to boil all water before drinking.

Not all problems with drinking water are so widespread, however. Your city may have clean water, but by the time it gets to you, it can become unsafe to drink. One of the biggest issues can be the age of your apartment building. If the pipes are old, your drinking water may become contaminated between entering the building and exiting your tap. Older buildings may still contain lead in their pipes. There are a number of warning signs that can indicate that there’s a problem with your water:

• • taste
• • color
• • odor
• • staining of fixtures
• • staining of clothes
• • gastro-intestinal illness

If you’re concerned about your drinking water, you can have it tested. The EPA suggests getting a copy of your annual water quality report first. If your water comes from a supplier — rather than a well — your supplier is required by law to issue a report explaining what contaminants have been found in your tap water and at what levels. This information will give you a baseline to compare your apartment’s water to. You can access many annual reports through the EPA’s website, or contact your water supplier directly.

Once you’ve looked over your annual water quality report, you can have your water tested, either through your county health office or through a local laboratory. You’ll want to decide ahead of time what contaminants you want to test for. Depending on how many you want a lab to look for, your water test can cost anywhere from $15 to hundreds of dollars. Depending on what problems, you’re having, you can narrow down the tests you want to run:

• • Gastro-intestinal illness? Test for coliform bacteria
• • Stained plumbing fixtures? Iron, copper and manganese
• • Strange taste or smell? Hydrogen sulfide, corrosion and metals
• • Corrosion of plumbing fixtures? Corrosion, pH and lead

There are a number of other tests that a lab might want to run, based on what’s located near your apartment building. If, for instance, you live near a gas station or buried fuel tanks, you might be asked to consider a volatile organic compounds test.

Have you had experience with potentially unsafe water and went through the steps to have your water tested? Share your experiences below.