Unwell: The Public Health Implications of Unregulated Drinking Water
Abstract
Roughly one in seven U.S. residents relies on a private well for drinking water. Unlike the rest of the population served by the nation’s many public water systems, these 44.5 million Americans are not protected by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, which regulates 87 biological and chemical contaminants. This has significant implications for public health, according to the authors of a new review in Environmental Health Perspectives, and although solutions exist for ensuring that well water is safe to drink, it is unclear how and whether they can be implemented. At best, private wells receive minimal oversight from local and state authorities, such as limited testing upon installation and, in some states, when properties change hands, write authors Jacqueline MacDonald Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kelsey Pieper of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Many wells escape regulation altogether, leaving the onus entirely on individuals to screen for pollutants and to mitigate them when they are discovered. Although precise statistics are not available, most well owners do not perform or pay for recommended tests at regular intervals, MacDonald Gibson says. This neglect is partly due to a simple lack of knowledge: “A lot of people assume that if their water looks and tastes okay, that the water is safe,” she says. But common contaminants such as bacteria, arsenic, and nitrate are colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and they can…
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