Many of us wisely choose tap over bottled water as a strategy to keep our landfills free of tons of bottles. Some of us filter or distill our tap water, some drink it straight from the tap. Here is a response to a question I asked about the quality of Columbus’ drinking water and a website consumers often visit called Environment Working Group (EWG). Thank you to Scot Folz for his immediate response:

I am the manager of the section that is responsible for regulating public drinking water systems in central Ohio.  I took a look at the EWG web site and the report in general has some good information however I don’t always agree with their interpretation or presentation style.  The ranking appears to be based on detection of contaminants regardless of source, concentration or known health affects.  Ohio is more densely populated and industrialized state so one would expect to see some increase in detectable contaminants.  This alone does not provide a reasonable indicator of health and safety.  I agree with you in that “healthy, clean, and safe” are subjective and do not provide sufficient information on the quality of water.  As a regulator we use the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the regulatory limits established under it as the measure of quality.  There are as many opinions as to whether the regulatory limits are sufficient or not as there are experts.  Many groups such as EWG feel that the regulatory standards need to be tighter and include many more contaminants.  We all want the cleanest water possible and water systems can, with sufficient funding, improve water quality in most cases.  The costs associated with water treatment is quite high and the regulatory limits do take into account the ability of water system, and therefore their customers, to pay for the level of treatment required to maintain water in compliance with the limits.  A recent example of this was with the change in the Arsenic limits.  The old limit was 50 ug/l (parts per trillion) and there were proposals to lower the limit somewhere between 2 to 10 ug/l.  Health effects, available treatment technology, cost associated with treatment and laboratory detection capability were all considered in where the new limit would be set.  I think we all would agree that we don’t want any arsenic in our water however the cost associated verses the improvement in public health protection didn’t support setting a regulatory limit of 2.  The current arsenic limit is 10 ug/l.  To a large extent what is “healthy, clean, and safe” is a matter of opinion and should be formed on a solid base of factual information.  Those with compromised or weak immune systems (infants, elderly, cancer patients, etc.) should take extra care.  The distiller unit you are using, assuming it is a quality unit that is certified by a third party such as the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), should remove about everything from your water.  I too drink water from the City of Columbus and without any concern.  The City takes the treatment and safety of the water very seriously.  If you have specific questions about the US EPA rule writing and standards setting I encourage you to call the Safe Drinking Water Act Hotline at 800-426-4791.  For any questions regarding public water systems in Ohio feel free to contact me. Scot Folz