Healthy Homes Need Healthy Water – GreenBuildingAdvisor

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How water testing and treatment are critical to ensuring clean, safe water from your faucets

Water is the quiet hero behind our lives—we drink it, prepare food with it, give it to our pets, bathe with it, and clean with it. But often we don’t give the water coming out of our sinks and faucets much thought beyond adjusting the temperature. Many of us take our water for granted, basing our usage upon the assumption that when we drink or use water out of the tap, it’s safe. But is it?

Clean water should be prioritized as integral to a healthy home. When it comes to our homes, concerns over water quality reach far beyond the health concerns of the pollutants, chemicals, and carcinogens that might be lurking in our water. Polluted water also presents significant durability risks to plumbing systems and fixtures, contributing to potentially catastrophic leaks and home damage.

Understanding water quality can be complex and intimidating—especially when it comes to interpreting a long list of test results or deciding on treatment options ranging from simple sediment filters to complex multiple-stage whole-house reverse osmosis treatment units.

I’ve spent over 25 years specializing in residential environmental consulting and have performed thousands of home investigations involving water quality. I also founded my company, My Healthy Home, to bridge the gap between building professionals, physicians, and homeowners and promote healthy living spaces for all. In this article, I’ll discuss the basics of water testing and treatment and share my experience to help put you on the right path to better water quality.

Public Water Woes

About 90% of U.S. households get their water from public water systems, while roughly 10% rely on private wells. Public systems are governed by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), enacted by Congress to set regulatory standards for tap water. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)…