Since the dawn of time, there’s been a dilemma about any situation where we expect an organization to both police and enforce rules.
The common English translation of the original Latin is: “Who watches the watchers?” Or: “Who will guard the guards themselves?”
When it comes to tap water safety and drinking water quality, that question is highly relevant.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG): Water Quality Watchdog Provides Real Water Standards
Groundbreaking. Controversial. Influential.
All those words describe the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, an activist group specializing in research and lobbying for and against toxic chemicals, drinking water pollutants, agricultural subsidies and corporate accountability.
In their own words: We’re advocates who won’t quit. We’re scientists that find solutions. We’re people trying to make the safest choices for our health. At the Environmental Working Group, we believe that you should have easy access to the information you need to make smart, healthy choices.
The EWG — not the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA — is where real water standards live.
Since 1970, the EPA has been tasked with monitoring, regulating and enforcing environmental protection matters. Stated simply on the agency’s own website: “̌The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.” And the cleanliness of American drinking water falls under that. Unfortunately, the EPA’s guidelines on many tap water contaminants, including PFAS or forever chemicals, fall far short of what’s safe.
That’s what the EWG is for.
EWG Tap Water Database Details Contaminants in Almost 50,000 Water Utilities In All 50 States
“User-friendly” and “comprehensive” aren’t necessarily words to describe government-run resources.
Luckily, there’s an alternative. EWG administers a free, comprehensive, user-friendly database called the Tap Water Database. It’s widely considered to be the most comprehensive consumer resource available on drinking water quality in the U.S.
What does the Tap Water Database expose that EPA standards don’t?
For starters: unhealthy pollutants like PFAS, pesticides, arsenic, hexavalent chromium — and their shocking quantities in the water that millions of Americans drink.
Tap Water Database Pulls Together Water Quality Tests From A Variety of Locations
Usability and accessibility are key elements of everything that EWG produces. This focus on user experience makes it easy for even lay people to understand what’s in their water.
EWG has set up the Tap Water Database to be searchable by location, community name or contaminant. To arrive at this information, EWG analyzes tens of millions of test results for hundreds of different contaminants or contaminant groups. The result is extremely comprehensive.
Why should the average American care? In the words of famed public health advocate Erin Brockovich: “Widespread pollution threatens the integrity of drinking water supplies across the country, and the levels of these contaminants detected in finished tap water, though often below the legal limit, may not be safe to drink.”
Yikes!
Legal Limits Aren’t a Good Enough Standard For Measuring Water Pollutants
Water is the basis of life.
It may sound like a cliche. But the truth is that because so much of our brains and our bodies are water, and harmful contaminants in what we drink, cook with and bathe with can impact ourselves and our loved ones in shocking ways.
For example, scientists recently made the shocking discovery that forever chemicals, or PFAS, can be found in women’s breast milk. ;In the study, every single submitted sample of breast milk was found to contain PFAS, and the contamination level was up to 2,000 times higher than the level advised by the EWG.
For reference, the EWG advises that drinking water should contain no more than one part per trillion of PFAS. (As discussed elsewhere, the EPA has not published a legally allowable limit for PFAS in drinking water.)
The presence of dangerous pollutants in breast milk is just one example of how pollutants in tap water can impact even those who are not its primary consumers. Pets and children may also be at risk of harm from tap water contaminants. This is made worse by the fact that the government isn’t equipped to set standards based on anything but a generic, “average” consumer — that is, an adult of about 180 pounds. But the problem with averages is that they don’t address people who don’t fit the mold, making those people particularly vulnerable.
