Is My Water Safe?

Regular water testing is often overlooked, but is the only way to confirm whether your water supply contains lead, asbestos, radon, arsenic, uranium, VOCs, PCBs, and other environmental hazards that can cause serious health issues.

Wells are not regulated like the public supply is, and may contain toxins including arsenic, radon, carcinogenic pesticides, and heavy metals like lead. And even if it is regulated and comes from a public supply, your pipes and plumbing fixtures may contain lead and other toxins, which can leach into your water. Drinking and bathing in contaminated water causes chronic health issues, hair loss, stomach and joint pain, body numbness, skin rashes, and worse.

When to Test

Anyone can have contaminated water, whether you are on a public system or have a private well. You may mistakenly believe that because your drinking water comes from a well, it’s purer and safer than that from reservoirs. Whether you have a well or public water, it can become contaminated in a number of ways. It can contain a host of contaminants that cannot be identified by taste or odor, making it difficult for homeowners to know if the quality of their water is acceptable. Lead can leach from pipes or plumbing fixtures, bacteria can infiltrate a well after heavy rains or flooding, ground shifts can open up our water systems to contaminants – there are hundreds of things that can affect the quality of your water.

Test your water:

• If you are in an area that has experienced flooding;
• When you move into a new home;
• If you live in an older home or apartment that may have older pipes that could leach toxins into your water;
• If you are in an area that has shown elevated lead levels in water;
• If there are known issues in your area. The New York tri-state area has high levels of arsenic, radon, and heavy metals which contaminate wells.

How often should you test your water?

• At a minimum, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) recommends that you have it tested once each year for total coliform bacteria, VOCs, nitrates, total dissolved solids, and pH levels.
• Every few years you should test for additional contaminants.
• If you’ve experienced elevated levels of any contaminants, you may want to test every few months until the problem is under control and being properly managed and treated.

• Soil Testing
• The RTK approach to soil and water testing