Tap Water Contaminants

Agricultural Pollutants Impair
Rivers and Streams

Agricultural chemicals add to Tap Water Contaminants. EWG's analysis of water suppliers' tap water test results shows that water contaminated with 83 agricultural pollutants, including pesticides and fertilizer ingredients, are served to 201,955,000 people in 41 states.

Agricultural Tap Water Contaminants

* 15% of the people above were served water with one or more agricultural contaminants present at levels above non-enforceable, health-based limits.

* 54 of the agricultural chemicals detected in tap water are are unregulated, without a legal, health-based limit in tap water.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Figures

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, in 2002 the agriculture industry:

* Spread commercial fertilizer over one-eighth of the continental U.S. — 110 billion pounds of fertilizer over 248 million acres altogether (USDA 2002;

* Crop production on those lands was supported by herbicide applications spread over literally one-tenth of the lower 48 states (USDA 2002).

* In between farmed land tracts are what EPA estimates to be 238,000 concentrated feed lots for cattle and pigs — the equivalent of 75 in every U.S. county — that collectively produce 500 million tons of manure yearly (EPA 2004a).

Tap Water Contaminants Runoff

Water runoff from these farms and feed lots can be laden with sediment, disease-causing microorganisms, pesticides, and fertilizer ingredients that can can widely contaminate water supplies.

In fact, in its most recent in a series of mandated biannual investigations on national water quality, EPA found that agricultural pollutants impair nearly one of every five miles of rivers and streams across the country (EPA 2000).

Despite the widespread pollution, EPA has failed to set pollution prevention standards for agricultural operations, as mandated under the Clean Water Act.

In the meantime, water suppliers must strip pesticides and related pollutants from tap water supplies, often relying on additional processes such as carbon treatment to increase removal efficiencies at a cost to taxpayers running into the millions of dollars.

Millions of Americans drink these residues despite the treatment.

Industrial Chemical Tap Water Contaminants

Industrial chemicals in tap water. EWG's analysis of water supplier's tap water test results shows that water contaminated with 166 industrial pollutants, including plasticizers, solvents, and propellants, are served to 210,528,000 people in 42 states.

56% of those people were served water with one or more industrial contaminants present at levels above non-enforceable, health-based limits. 94 of the industrial chemicals detected in tap water are are unregulated, without a legal, health-based limit in tap water.

U.S. industries manufacture and import approximately 82,000 chemicals, 3,000 of them at over a million pounds per year (GAO 2005, EPA 2005f).

The EPA approves an average of two new industrial chemicals every day, 80 percent them within three weeks of an industry's application, with or without safety studies (GAO 2005, EPA 1997).

A 1998 EPA study found that fully 43 percent of chemicals used in the highest volumes (more than one million pounds per year) completely lacked any of the seven most basic health and safety screening studies, let alone substantive information on the potential of the chemical to pollute tap water sources (EPA 1998).

Health officials do not know the full extent of industrial pollution to tap water supplies, and what the health consequences of exposures may be.

But health officials do know with certainty that some of these chemicals end up in rivers and streams that form the nation's tap water supplies, and that many of them persist all the way to the tap.

EPA's Toxics Release Inventory reporting program shows that in 2003 U.S. industries discharged 220 million pounds of 650 chemicals to rivers and streams (EPA 2003).

And EWG's analysis shows that water suppliers detected 166 industrial chemicals in treated tap water from 42 states between 1998 and 2003. But the vast majority of industrial chemicals remain untested and unregulated in tap water.

Tap Water Contaminants From Urban Areas

Chemicals from sprawl and urban areas. EWG's analysis of water supplier's tap water test results shows that water contaminated with 59 pollutants linked to sprawl and urban areas, including plasticizers, solvents, and propellants, are served to 202,697,000 people in 42 states.

53% of those people were served water with one or more of these contaminants present at levels above non-enforceable, health-based limits.

41 of the urban and sprawl chemicals detected in tap water are are unregulated, without a legal, health-based limit in tap water.

As the U.S. population continues to grow, water supplies are strained with increasing loads of wastewater and stormwater runoff laden with the signature pollutants of urban and sprawl areas.

Chemicals from automobile emissions, road surfaces, yards and homes, and from the wastewater treatment plants that dump effluent into waterways at a rate of 60 gallons per person, every day.

While growth benefits the national economy, growth without national, state, or local plans that recognize and control impacts to the environment strains the quality of local streams and rivers.

It burdens water suppliers with ever-increasing loads of pollutants. Government studies show that each new person joining the ranks of the U.S. population spurs development that consumes an average of just over an acre of countryside, for new housing, businesses, and infrastructure (USCB 2005, USGS 2003).

At current national growth rates of three million people each year, this translates into tainted runoff from new development over an area one and a half times the size of Yellowstone National Park, every year.

And it equates to an annual increased wastewater load of 66 billion gallons to U.S. waterways. Water suppliers sit at the equivalent of the tailpipe of this growth and its collateral pollution.

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