Analies Dyjak @ Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 12:19 pm -0400
Analies Dyjak | Policy Nerd
October 16, 2018: Windham, Ohio issued a “do not drink advisory” for Village Water Plant residents. Manganese was detected at concentrations over the Health Advisory Level. We wanted to discuss what exactly manganese is, potential health effects, and how it enters drinking water.
What Is Manganese?
Manganese is an extremely abundant earth metal. It’s naturally present in the environment, but is also used in iron and steel manufacturing.
Is Manganese Good For You?
In low doses, yes! According to the FDA, it’s important for bone mineralization and metabolic regulation in children. It also helps with cartilage and bone formation. It’s naturally found in foods such as beans, nuts, pineapples, spinach, sweet potatoes and whole grains. You’ve also most likely seen manganese tablets in the supplement isle of the grocery store!
What Are The Negative Health Effects of Manganese In Drinking Water?
Manganese can cause adverse health effects when concentrations exceed the Lifetime Health Advisory Level of 0.3 parts per million. Reports have concluded that chronic ingestion of water containing manganese may lead to neurological effects in older adults and infants. Long term exposure can cause lethargy, muscular weakness. In Windham, EPA set a “do not drink” advisory for infants under 1 year old and nursing and pregnant women. This is in part do to the fact that infants are the most sensitive population to any type of contamination.
What Causes Manganese In Drinking Water?
Clogged water lines typically cause concentrations of manganese to increase, which is what happened earlier this month in Windham, Ohio. Clogs prevent chlorine from entering the distribution system. Chlorine is an oxidant, and is typically used to treat manganese in drinking water. Water utility providers typically use chlorine to treat biological contamination, but it’s also used to reduce the concentrations of iron and manganese in drinking water. Exposure of high concentrations of manganese is possible if treatments (such as chlorine) fail. Private wells are not regulated and therefore not required to meet federally mandated drinking water standards. If you use a private well for drinking water, it’s important to keep this in mind for all types of contamination.
Will Boiling My Water Remove Manganese?
No. Boiling your tap water will not remove manganese, or other metals from drinking water. Boil advisories are typically issued if biological contamination is thought to pose a threat to a drinking water supply. People should always take drinking water advisories seriously, and listen to recommendations from city officials.
Manganese in drinking water is not a huge cause for concern, but it's important to be aware of the potential adverse health effects. It's also important to listen to boil advisories and other information regarding drinking water in your community.
Analies Dyjak @ Monday, October 1, 2018 at 1:10 pm -0400
Analies Dyjak | Policy Nerd
Lead contamination in drinking water is a huge problem for municipalities with an older infrastructure. Lead contamination occurs when water comes in contact with lead pipes. This article discusses a common additive used to combat lead pipe corrosion.
What is Orthophosphate?
Orthophosphate is a common corrosion inhibitor used by water suppliers to prevent lead pipes from leaching. When orthophosphate water treatment is added to a water source, it reacts with lead to create a mineral-like crust inside of the lead pipe. This crust acts as a coating which prevents further lead corrosion. The use of orthophosphate treatment in drinking water became popularized in 2001, during the lead crisis in Washington, D.C. Lead contamination in many cities including D.C. and Flint, occurs when a city’s water becomes more corrosive, which can allow for lead from pipes to leach into the drinking water supply. When the lead problem initially occurred, cities such as Flint, Michigan, Durham and Greenville, North Carolina, and Jackson, Mississippi didn’t learn from D.C’s mistakes and all had lead outbreaks.
Does Orthophosphate Fix Lead Contamination?
It certainly can. Once the protective layer is formed, cities can find that lead concentrations in the water drop by 90%. However, Orthophosphate is somewhat of a bandaid to temporarily fix the presence of lead in drinking water. For example, if the protective layer is corroded away or otherwise disturbed (e.g. in the case of a partial service line replacement or the water’s corrosivity changes), lead can leach back into the water. Finally, not all municipalities are adding orthophosphate to drinking water because of its cost. If you have any questions regarding lead prevention in drinking water, send us an email at hello@hydroviv.com.
Analies Dyjak @ Tuesday, October 30, 2018 at 4:10 pm -0400
*Updated 3/2/22 to include recent study*
Analies Dyjak | Policy Nerd
Heavy rains and snowmelt can carry a lot of unwanted contaminants into drinking water sources. Here’s how stormwater runoff can affect your water.
How Does Stormwater Affect Drinking Water?
Heavy rain storms create a rapid influx of water, which can cause a host of health and environmental issues. Rainwater travels to low-lying bodies of water, including oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and aquifers. Both surface and groundwater are susceptible to contamination from stormwater runoff, both of which are sources of drinking water. As water travels, it picks up loose debris, pesticides, herbicides, oil, and other types of pollution in its path. This cocktail of contaminants is then dumped into a nearby waterway. Some municipal water treatment facilities are equipped to deal with these types of contamination, while others are not. 86% of the U.S. population gets their drinking water from surface water sources, so maintaining clean lakes and rivers is extremely important for managing stormwater runoff pollution in drinking water.
Road Salt and Drinking Water Contamination
70% of the US population lives in areas that experience ice and snow, and rely heavily on road salts and other deicing techniques to maintain road safety. Road salts are crucial for decreasing automobile accidents, but they can have some unintended consequences on the environment. A recent study found that freshwater contamination from these deicing materials causing significant increases in the salinity of the freshwater, resulting in issues with native wildlife and widespread contamination of drinking water supplies. The contamination is primarily from excess chloride and sodium, which affects both surface water and groundwater, for municipal water suppliers as well as private wells. In addition, deicing salts can leach heavy metals (such as mercury, lead, cadmium, copper, and zinc) from sediment and plumbing pipes into the drinking water. In groundwater, sodium can also mobilize dissolved radium, increasing the risk of radon exposure to homeowners.
What Are Combined Sewer Overflows or CSO’s?
Combined Sewer Overflows or CSO’s, are a system of underground canals that collect stormwater runoff, industrial wastewater, and sewage all in the same pipe. Under normal conditions, stormwater and sewage travels to a wastewater plant where it’s treated before being discharged into a body of water. During heavy rain events, the large influx of stormwater causes pipes to exceed the capacity of the the system. Untreated wastewater, including sewage, overflows into nearby oceans, lakes, rivers or streams or wherever a stormwater discharge output exists. CSO’s were used as early as the 1850’s, and were the only system in place to deal with such high volumes of water. Many cities have replaced CSO’s with advanced infrastructure, but cities such as Portland, Maine and Cambridge, Massachusetts still use them.
Impervious Surfaces and Stormwater
Impervious surfaces are developed areas where water is unable to infiltrate into the earth. This typically refers to paved roads, roofs, and sidewalks. When water is unable to infiltrate, it flows into the nearest body of water or wastewater system. Impervious surfaces are of concern because water picks up and carries dangerous contaminants, then deposits pollution into drinking water sources. Impervious surfaces also increase the impacts from floods. Unable to percolate, water sits on top of paved roads, increasing the flood potential and presence of biological contamination. As communities continue to develop, the area of paved or impervious surface increases as well.
Wetlands: Important for Stormwater Retention
Wetlands offer remarkable protection from the impacts of flooding and other stormwater damages. Wetlands absorb incoming water and release it slowly, acting as a natural sponge. According to the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, the state wetland conservation along the Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts saved approximately $17 million in potential flood damage. Additionally, wetlands naturally filter stormwater runoff pollution. The fast-moving water is slowed by vegetation, which allows suspended sediment and pollution to fall to the bottom.
Analies Dyjak @ Friday, January 4, 2019 at 1:59 pm -0500
Analies Dyjak, M.A | Head of Policy and Perspectives
Whenever severe water contamination impacts a community, people (and media outlets) tend to jump to bottled water as the only water contamination solution. The bottled water industry has managed to convince vulnerable consumers that their product is inherently safer than what’s coming out of their taps. Oftentimes, this isn’t the case. So why is bottled water bad? The reality is that bottled water is associated with a host of ethical, environmental and regulatory problems. Drinking bottled water is not a long-term solution to water contamination, and we should critically examine its role as water quality crises continue to pop up across the country. Here are our main problems with the bottled water industry to give you a better idea of why bottled water is bad.
1) Bottled Water Companies Use The Same Source As Tap Water
According to the FDA, bottled water companies are permitted to package and sell water from municipal taps, artesian wells, mineral water, natural springs, and drilled wells. Surprisingly enough, they aren’t required to disclose the source water itself. If you’re looking for transparency, municipal systems are required to publish an annual Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) that discloses characteristics about the source water, treatment techniques, and other distribution information. The bottled water industry also frequently packages and distributes groundwater from dug wells. Groundwater can often be more susceptible to pollution than surface water because it’s not regulated by the federal government. Groundwater acts as a catchment for surface water runoff and agricultural pollution, not to mention its increased risk of arsenic contamination.
2) Bottled Water and Tap Water Have Almost Identical Standards
People are often surprised to learn that there’s virtually no difference between the regulations for bottled water and tap water. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates tap water and the Food and Drug Administration regulates bottled water. The allowable concentrations of contaminants are identical for both, with the exception of lead. The standard for lead in bottled water is 5 parts per billion, as opposed to 15 parts per billion in tap water. This is because during bottling production, water should never come in contact with older lead service pipes the same way municipal water does. Arsenic can be present in groundwater as a result of natural weathering of bedrock. Exposure to arsenic in drinking water can result in cancers in various organs, including skin, bladder, lung, kidney, liver, and prostate. Non-cancerous health effects include neurological damage, such as peripheral neuropathy.
3) Impacts On The Environment
It’s well-documented that single-use plastic water bottles wreak havoc on the environment. Plastics are made from petroleum, which is a fossil fuel and a non-renewable resource. Companies often tout their commitment to reducing plastic consumption by weight, but this has no bearing on the volume at which it’s produced. You may be familiar with “Trash Island,” in the Northern Pacific Ocean. This phenomenon is the result of decades of poor waste management and excessive production of various types of plastic. According to a 2016 study by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish by the year 2050. Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is the main ingredient in plastic water bottles. PET takes over 400 years to decompose in the environment and its constituents can often take longer to degrade. Chemicals like Bisphenol A (BPA) have since been phased out of plastic production, but are still very much present in the environment and will continue to be released as older plastics degrade.
4) False Advertising
Marketing schemes deceive consumers into believing that companies use pristine source water. The packaging uses carefully curated images of mountain-top creeks and streams to suggest pure, untainted products. The reality is bottled water hardly ever comes from the sources depicted on the label.
5) Ethical Dilemma
Nestle, a company with a long track record of unscrupulous business practices, owns deep aquifers throughout California, a state which has been experiencing drought-like conditions for several decades. The expensive equipment purchased by Nestle allows the company to extract water in a way that tribes and municipalities cannot afford to do. Similar companies have been known to use their purchasing power to acquire land, pushing tribes and municipalities out of the conversation. Problems arise when drought-stricken or contaminated communities are unable to afford the same resources as bottled water companies.
Our Take:
While bottled water offers some measure of immediate relief to a severe drinking water crisis, it is in no way a long-term water contamination solution. Companies often sell the same water that’s feeding municipal systems. Not to mention, EPA and FDA have almost identical regulations for both tap and bottled water. There’s also an inherent cost associated with bottled water, which varies depending on the brand. Finally, a huge part of why bottled water is bad is that scientific data confirms the importance of reducing plastic pollution on a global scale. Municipal providers offer greater transparency and are required to disclose information about the source water.
Analies Dyjak @ Monday, July 30, 2018 at 10:07 am -0400
**Updated July 11, 2022 to include most recent water quality data
Analies Dyjak, M.A. | Hydroviv Research Analyst
Hydroviv's Water Nerds have updated our assessment of Las Vegas drinking water to include data from the latest Consumer Confidence Report. We looked at data from the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Environmental Working Group, and the US Geological Survey. Our Water Nerds then cross referenced these data with toxicity studies in the scientific and medical literature, as well as upcoming regulatory changes. The custom water filters that we build for our customers in Las Vegas are optimized with this research in mind.
Source Of Las Vegas's Drinking Water
90% of Las Vegas drinking water comes from Lake Mead. Lake Mead is supplied by snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, which flows into the Colorado River. The remaining 10% comes from a groundwater aquifer under the Las Vegas Valley. This aquifer is naturally replenished by precipitation in the Spring Mountains and the Sheep Range.
What are the concerns in Las Vegas Drinking Water?
Contaminants of concern in Las Vegas’ drinking water include Lead, PFAS, Arsenic, Disinfection Byproducts, Uranium, and Chromium 6.
Lead In Las Vegas Drinking Water
Lead enters tap water through older lead service pipes and lead-containing plumbing. When corrosion control measures put in place by the municipality fail (like what happened in Flint, Michigan), lead leaches into the drinking water, and can reach dangerous levels. Homes built before 1986 are most susceptible to lead contamination. According to the 2022 report, 10% of drinking water samples analyzed for lead in Las Vegas are over 3.9 parts per billion, with samples measuring as high as 5.6 parts per billion. Though Las Vegas water quality is currently in compliance with federal regulations,the EPA, CDC, and American Academy of Pediatrics have all made clear that there is no such thing as a safe level of lead, and of course, federal regulations cannot take into account levels measured at an individual tap. Hydroviv Drinking Water filters are NSF/ANSI Standard 53 certified to remove lead from drinking water.
PFAS in Las Vegas Drinking Water
Per and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) are a category of emerging contaminants commonly used in firefighting foam, Teflon, non-stick surfaces, stain-resistant surfaces, and food packaging. TheAgency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has determined thatPFAS exposure is associated with various adverse health effects, including an increased risk of cancer, lowered fertility rates, and developmental issues in infants and young children.
Testing that was done by the Environmental Working Group detected PFAS in groundwater at military bases in and near Las Vegas, including Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, where groundwater on base had PFOA + PFOS levels as high as 47,400 parts per trillion (ppt), and Creech Air Force base in Clark County, NV, which had PFAS levels as high as 21,066 ppt. On April 10, 2024, the US EPA has announced drinking water standards to limit exposure to 6 types of PFAS chemicals, including 4 ppt for PFOA and PFOS.Not all water filtersare designed to remove PFAS from tap water. If you'd like to find water filters that remove PFAS from tap water, check out thisDuke/NC State PFAS study.Hydroviv filters are NSF/ANSI Standard 53 certified for PFOA/PFOS removal.
Arsenic in Las Vegas Drinking Water
Arsenic is a hazardous heavy metal that can cause cancer and other health problems. Arsenic originates in source water naturally. In the Las Vegas Valley Water District, varying amounts of arsenic were detected in the different distribution areas, ranging from 0.7 ppb to 4.0 ppb. While Las Vegas’ Arsenic levels were not in violation of EPA water quality standards, consumers should know that the U.S. EPA's standard balances toxicity against the costs of removing arsenic from drinking water. We strongly suggest that tap water with levels higher than 1 part per billion be treated to remove arsenic, especially in homes with children.
Disinfection Byproducts (DBPs) In Las Vegas Drinking Water
DBPs are a category of emerging contaminants that form when chlorine-based disinfectants (added to the water supply to protect consumers) react with naturally-occurring organic matter. EPA regulates two categories of DBPs: Total Trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and Haloacetic Acids (HAA5). The EPA has stated that DBPs have been associated with increased risk of bladder cancer, as well as kidney, liver, and central nervous system problems. Haloacetic Acid levels in Las Vegas water ranged between 35 - 45 parts per billion. Total Trihalomethane levels ranged between 68 to 82 parts per billion, which exceeds the EPA Maximum Contaminant Level of 80 parts per billion.
Uranium in Las Vegas Drinking Water
Uranium is a naturally occurring radioactive substance normally found in rocks, soil, air and water. Uranium enters water by leaching from soil and rocks, or in releases from processing plants. Uranium has demonstrated toxic effects on human kidneys leading to their inflammation and changes in urine composition. Uranium can decay into other radioactive substances, such as radium, which can cause cancer with extensive exposure over a long period of time. Uranium levels in Las Vegas water ranged from 2 to 4 parts per billion.
High Chromium 6 Levels In Las Vegas Drinking Water
Chromium 6 is a toxic metal that is not regulated by the EPA. Las Vegas tap water had Chromium 6 levels ranging from 54 parts per trillion to 850 parts per trillion. California has determined that 20 parts per trillion is the contaminant level below which there is minimal health risk. The Chromium 6 levels in the Las Vegas water system range from nearly 3 to over 40 times the level generally accepted as safe.
How Can Hydroviv Help Me?
Hydroviv is a water filtration company that uses water quality data to optimize water filters for each customer's water. The contaminants that we list above are what we consider to be major “points of emphasis” that we use to build water filters that are built specifically for Las Vegas' water, but all of our filters also include broad protection against a wide range of contaminants.
If you’re interested in learning more about water filters that have been optimized for Las Vegas tap water, or just have questions about water quality in general, feel free to visit www.hydroviv.com, reach out by email (hello@hydroviv.com) or through our live chat. We post water-related news on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Hydroviv's drinking water filters carry NSF certifications to Standard 42 (aesthetic effects--Chlorine Removal) and Standard 53 (health effects--Lead, VOCs, and PFOA/PFOS removal), and are independently tested to remove hundreds of contaminants.
