A new survey of the nation's tap water has found that millions of Americans inadvertently drank water that contains an "invisible toxic mixture" of chemicals linked to cancer, according to The Hill.
The 2021 tap water database, released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), has revealed contamination from toxins such as arsenic and lead and forever chemicals such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAS) found in drinking water for tens of millions. of households in all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C.
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water has proven for decades completely unable to stand up to the pressure of water utilities,” said Ken Cook, president of the EWG, in a press release. “There are dozens of toxic pollutants in America’s drinking water.”
To compile the database, EWG researchers and scientists spent two years collecting and analyzing water pollutants in the United States from nearly 50,000 water systems, according to a press release from the group.
The researchers attributed their findings to “outdated infrastructure and rampant source water pollution,” as well as outdated regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that rely on “old science and allow unsafe levels of toxic chemicals in drinking water.”
While compiling the database, the researchers also identified 56 new pollutants in America's drinking water, which generally fall into two categories; The two groups mostly include PFAS compounds and chemicals found through the EPA's Fourth Unregulated Pollutant Surveillance Analysis, which collected data on suspected drinking water pollutants that do not yet have health standards.
To view information on pollutants in a specific area, users can log into the database and enter their zip codes, then scroll down to select the utility that serves their community. That area does not necessarily mean safety.”
The database warns that “having a passing score from the federal government does not mean that water meets the latest health guidelines.” For example, Washington, D.C., has 13 pollutants that exceed EWG health guidelines, even though the area does not comply with legally required federal standards .
Capital Water and Sanitation Authority drinking water contains 58 times the amount of arsenic that the EWG considers safe, 1,200 times the amount of bromochloroacetic acid, 328 times the amount of bromochloromethane, 116 times the amount of chloroform and 4.3 times the amount of hexavalent chromium, according to the database.
The EWG has called for significant federal investment to help solve tap water problems in the United States, such as removing toxic lead service lines and cleaning up PFAS contamination, both of which are included in the Biden administration's infrastructure spending plans that are still under discussion.
Although the Drinking Water Act of 1974 gave the Environmental Protection Agency authority to oversee the quality of tap water in the United States, and the agency has set maximum contaminant levels of more than 90 pollutants, the water supplied by most water systems is not actually safe, according to EWG Group.
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