Category: Water Contaminants

Arsenic is the quietest contaminant in this series. It has no taste, no smell, and no color — your senses give you zero warning. The only way to know it’s in your water is a lab test. That’s the first thing to understand, because everything else follows from it.

This isn’t a factory-spill story. Most arsenic in drinking water is natural — it dissolves out of bedrock into groundwater. If you’re on a private well, that’s the pathway. The hotspots in the U.S. are bedrock wells in New England, the Southwest, the Great Lakes region, and the upper Midwest — and yes, New Jersey has its own piece of this: arsenic is the second most common contaminant to exceed drinking-water standards in NJ private wells, with the Piedmont region carrying the highest risk. (Some arsenic does come from people — old arsenical pesticides, mining and smelting waste — but geology is the main source.)

The health picture, honestly

Arsenic is an IARC Group 1 carcinogen. As the series rule goes: Group 1 is a hazard classification — it means arsenic can cause cancer, not that any dose will. The cancer evidence comes from people who drank high-arsenic water for years, mostly in studies from Taiwan, Chile, and Bangladesh.

Here’s what long-term exposure to elevated inorganic arsenic actually does. The most characteristic effect is a pattern of skin changes: patches of darkened or lightened skin, and thickening — small “corns” or warts — on the palms, soles, and torso. These can show up after years of exposure and can precede non-melanoma skin cancer. The cancer picture from the research: increased risk of skin, lung, and bladder cancer, with liver, kidney, and prostate cancers also implicated. Studies also link chronic exposure to cardiovascular disease, nerve damage (a “pins and needles” numbness in hands and feet), and type 2 diabetes.

The honest framing: this is about years of drinking water over the limit, not a glass from the tap. EPA’s federal limit is 10 parts per billion (micrograms per liter) — and its health goal is zero, meaning there’s no level considered risk-free. New Jersey doesn’t wait for Washington here: our state standard is 5 ppb, half the federal limit, and it’s held that number since 2006. If your water is at or under 5, you’re in good shape.

How to test

No dip strip, no home kit for real answers — arsenic needs a certified lab. If you’re on city water, your utility tests it and reports it on your annual water-quality report. If you’re on a private well, that test is on you: use a state-certified drinking-water lab. Test before you treat, test again after you install anything, and retest yearly. Arsenic levels in a well can shift, and filters wear out.

One more NJ note: if you’ve bought or sold a house here, arsenic is part of the Private Well Testing Act — it gets tested at real estate transactions. Check the paperwork.

What actually removes it

Several proven methods — but with one catch that matters, so read this section twice. Arsenic comes in two forms: As(III) and As(V). Some treatment only handles one of them.

• Reverse osmosis. The workhorse. An under-sink RO handles both arsenic forms, and EPA’s own testing program found RO knocking out roughly 99% of total arsenic. This is the default recommendation for drinking and cooking water.
• Anion exchange. Effective — but only against As(V). If your well water has a big share of As(III), the water needs an oxidation pre-treatment step to convert it to As(V) first. This is why you need a full lab analysis before buying a system, not just a number.
• Adsorptive media (activated alumina and iron-based). Solid whole-house options — iron-oxide media in particular can handle As(III) too, which makes it a good fit for some well chemistries.
• Distillation. Works — boils the water, leaves the arsenic behind. Slow and energy-hungry for whole-house use, but legitimate.

Whatever you choose, look for NSF/ANSI certification with arsenic listed on it. Uncertified claims are just marketing.

What does NOT remove it:

• Carbon filters — your pitcher, faucet, or fridge filter. Carbon-based pitcher filters do not remove arsenic, period. (A rare few pitchers are NSF-certified for arsenic — unless the box says exactly that, assume it isn’t.)
• A water softener. It swaps hardness minerals; arsenic sails through.
• Boiling. Makes it worse — water evaporates, arsenic stays, concentration goes up.
• UV, chlorine, and sediment/particle filters. They disinfect or clarify; arsenic is neither.

One thing you can relax about: arsenic is barely absorbed through skin. Showering, bathing, washing clothes — fine. Protect the water you drink and cook with, and you’ve handled the exposure.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: an under-sink reverse osmosis system, NSF/ANSI 58 certified, with arsenic on the certification sheet — it handles both arsenic forms, no pre-treatment chemistry to fuss over, and it knocks out plenty of other things in the same pass. For a well with mostly As(III) and a whole-house approach, an iron-oxide adsorptive media system, sized to your water test, is the other legitimate play. Either way: test first, install second, retest after.

The bottom line

Arsenic is the argument for testing your well even when everything seems fine — because with this one, fine is exactly what dangerous looks like. New Jersey’s 5 ppb bar is stricter than the federal one, so check your number against that. If you’re over, the fix is real and proven: RO for the kitchen, adsorptive media for the whole house, nothing else sold as a shortcut.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

Legionella is the odd one in this series, so let’s get the biggest misconception out of the way first: you cannot get Legionnaires’ disease from drinking water. Not from your tap, not from your fridge. You get it from breathing in tiny droplets of contaminated water — shower mist, a hot tub’s steam, mist off a cooling tower or a decorative fountain. That’s the whole exposure story. Drink a glass of water with Legionella in it and nothing happens; stand in a mist of it and you could get sick.

It’s why the headline is the Bronx right now. In September 2026, New York City’s Health Department announced a community cluster of Legionnaires’ disease in Melrose and Morrisania in the South Bronx — 14 confirmed cases and 2 deaths — traced toward building cooling towers, ten of which tested positive for the bacteria and were ordered cleaned and disinfected. This is a bacteria that lives in buildings, not in reservoirs.

Where it comes from

Legionella is a naturally occurring bacterium — it’s in lakes and streams everywhere at low levels. It becomes a problem when it gets into warm, stagnant man-made water: hot tubs, cooling towers, decorative fountains, and plumbing systems where water sits in the “Goldilocks” range, roughly 77–124°F (25–50°C). It loves biofilm — that slimy layer inside pipes — and scale buildup. The danger spots in a building are showerheads, rarely-used faucets, and hot-water systems that run too lukewarm to suppress it.

The health picture, honestly

Two illnesses. Legionnaires’ disease is a severe form of pneumonia — fever, cough, shortness of breath, muscle aches. Pontiac fever is the milder version, flu-like, usually clearing up on its own. Neither spreads from person to person.

Here’s the honest math from the CDC: most people exposed to Legionella don’t get sick at all. Roughly 1 in 20 people exposed develop illness — and of those who get Legionnaires’ disease, about 1 in 10 die, usually people already at higher risk. The risk group is specific: age 50 and older, current or former smokers, and people with chronic heart, lung, kidney, or liver disease, diabetes, or weakened immune systems. If that’s not you or your household, your personal risk is low. If it is someone you live with, this one deserves your attention — and EPA’s health goal for Legionella in drinking water is zero organisms.

How to test

There is no dip strip for this. Legionella is tested by environmental/water-quality labs using culture assays — the most common method — and PCR testing, the same approach NYC’s Health Department used on the South Bronx cooling towers (PCR finds the bacteria’s DNA but can’t tell live from dead, which is why confirmatory culture matters). For a homeowner, testing is usually a lab kit you order through a water-testing company. If you’re on city water, check with your water utility or local health department first — building-scale testing is their lane. Routine home testing is not standard; testing usually follows a known case or a concern about a specific source, like a neglected hot tub or a building’s cooling system.

What actually kills it

Heat and disinfection — not filtration alone. For a whole building or hot-water system, the proven methods per EPA and the CDC are:

• Heat. Superheat-and-flush: raise the hot water system above 140°F (60°C) and circulate it to kill the bacteria throughout the system. At home, keeping your water heater set to 140°F suppresses growth — just use mixing valves or be careful at the tap, because 140°F scalds.
• Chlorine / chlorine dioxide. Hyperchlorination — shock-dosing the system — is a standard remediation method after an outbreak.
• UV sterilization. A properly sized UV disinfection system kills Legionella as water passes through. One honest catch: UV gives no residual protection, so water downstream of the unit can recolonize — it works best as part of a system, not a magic bullet.
• Copper-silver ionization and ozone. Professional building-scale methods; used in hospitals and large facilities.
• Point-of-use microbial filters. Filters with a pore size of 0.2 microns or finer can block bacteria at a faucet or showerhead — agencies recommend these during outbreaks and for high-risk settings like transplant wards. Quick micron lesson that matters everywhere: 0.2 micron absolute means every pore is that size; 0.2 micron nominal means only some pores are — for bacteria, absolute is what counts.

And the boring free fixes that do a lot: flush fixtures you rarely use, clean or replace old showerheads, and don’t let a hot tub or fountain sit stagnant and warm.

What does NOT remove it:

• Any pitcher, faucet, or fridge filter not rated for microbes. Most are certified for chlorine taste and odor — they don’t touch bacteria.
• An under-sink RO system protecting your kitchen tap — against Legionella, that misses the point: exposure comes through mist, not the drinking tap.
• A water softener. It swaps hardness minerals; it disinfects nothing.
• Letting water sit. Stagnation is what Legionella wants. Flushing — the opposite — is part of the fix.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: a whole-house (or shower point-of-use) UV disinfection system, sized for the home’s flow rate — it kills bacteria, including Legionella, without changing the water’s taste or adding chemicals. Pair it with a 140°F water heater setting and a habit of flushing rarely used fixtures. For a household with someone high-risk — over 50, smoker, immune-compromised — 0.2-micron absolute point-of-use microbial filters on the showerheads add a physical barrier at the exact spot the mist reaches the lungs.

The bottom line

Legionella is one of the few contaminants in this series that your drinking-water filter can’t protect you from — because drinking isn’t the exposure. It’s the mist. The defense is heat, disinfection, and not letting water sit warm and stagnant. If your building’s water system has been neglected, test it; if your household has someone in the risk group, the point-of-use options above are worth doing.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

October 2026 Update: New Jersey’s Legionella Law — the Deadline Is December 12, 2026

New Jersey now has one of the strongest Legionella laws in the country, and its big deadline is weeks away. The law (P.L. 2024, c. 66, originally Senate bill S2188, signed September 12, 2024) requires covered buildings to run a written Water Management Program built on ASHRAE Standard 188 — the industry blueprint for keeping Legionella from growing in building water systems.

Covered buildings include hospitals, nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, correctional facilities, residential high-rises of six or more floors with centralized hot water, hotels and motels with shared central water heaters, and any building with a cooling tower, spa, pool, ornamental fountain, mister, or humidifier. A home with four or fewer units is exempt — this law aims at buildings, not houses.

The dates that matter: programs had to be developed by September 12, 2026, and they must be fully operational by December 12, 2026, with records kept for at least five years. The penalties have teeth: up to $2,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for repeat violations, and $10,000 if a violation causes serious injury or death.

Across the river, watch New York City: a proposed Council bill (Int. 1094-2026) would make cooling-tower owners report Legionella results of 10 CFU/mL or higher to the Health Department — today, reporting only kicks in above 1,000 CFU/mL. It got a committee hearing in October 2026, with experts arguing both sides. It is a proposal, not a law — plenty of headlines blurred that line, so we’re drawing it clearly here.

Why a homeowner should care: Legionella grows in warm, still building water — the same conditions created by water heaters set too low and taps that sit unused. The law governs big buildings, but the biology doesn’t care how many units you have. Keep your water heater at 120°F or higher, flush taps that sit, and be careful with anything that makes a mist.

Update — October 2026: New York City’s proposed Legionella law, Intro 1094, has now had its City Council hearing. As proposed, building owners would have to report Legionella test results of 10 CFU/mL or higher to the city health department within 24 hours and take corrective action — today, owners don’t have to notify the department until a result reaches 1,000 CFU/mL. At the hearing, industry groups cautioned against triggering corrective action on a single low reading. The bill has not passed — I’ll update this page again when it does.

Lead in your tap water almost never comes from the reservoir or the well. It comes from the last stretch — your pipes.

If your home was built before 1986, you may have a lead service line (the pipe from the street to your house), lead solder on copper pipes, or brass faucets and fixtures that contain lead. When water sits in those pipes, especially if it’s acidic or low in minerals, it corrodes the metal and lead leaches in. Hot water leaches faster than cold. First-draw water in the morning is typically the worst.

You can’t see it, taste it, or smell it. That’s the problem.

The health picture, honestly

Lead is a neurotoxin. The EPA and CDC agree there is no known safe level of lead in a child’s blood. The EPA’s health goal for lead in drinking water — the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal — is zero, because the science shows no safe level of exposure.

That doesn’t mean one glass will hurt you. It means there’s no threshold below which we can say “this is fine,” especially for kids under six, infants on formula, and pregnant people. In children, even low levels are linked to brain and nervous system effects, lower IQ, learning and behavior problems, and hearing loss. In adults, it’s tied to higher blood pressure, kidney problems, and cardiovascular effects. Lead also accumulates — it’s stored in bone and can be released years later.

The number you’ll hear most is 15 parts per billion (ppb). That’s the EPA action level under the Lead and Copper Rule: if more than 10% of tap samples in a system exceed 15 ppb, the utility has to take additional steps like corrosion control and public notification. It is a trigger for the utility to act — it is not a “safe/unsafe” line for your faucet. Zero is the health goal. Fifteen is the management trigger. Don’t confuse them. And that trigger is tightening: under the 2024 Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, the action level drops to 10 ppb effective November 1, 2027.

Flint: the cautionary tale

In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan switched its drinking water source to the Flint River — a cost-saving move. The critical mistake: the new water wasn’t treated with corrosion control. Flint River water was more corrosive than the previous supply, and it stripped the protective mineral coating inside the city’s lead service lines. Lead poured into thousands of homes.

Children were exposed to elevated lead levels. An outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease followed — eventually tied to the same water change. Officials dismissed residents’ complaints for over a year before the state acknowledged the crisis. It became a national scandal, criminal charges, and a federal emergency declaration.

The lesson for your home: Flint’s source water wasn’t full of lead — the pipes were. Change the water chemistry without corrosion control and safe pipes turn dangerous. That’s why corrosion control is now federal law under the Lead and Copper Rule, and why this article keeps coming back to the same point: lead is a plumbing problem. Your pipes, your water chemistry, your test.

Newark did it right — and fast

Closer to home: Newark had its own lead crisis in 2017, when the city’s corrosion control faltered and lead levels spiked in household tap water. The city responded with new corrosion treatment — and then went further.

Under Mayor Ras Baraka, Newark committed to replacing every lead service line in the city — more than 23,000 of them — starting with a $120 million investment at no cost to property owners. The final program cost is usually quoted around $190 million, though with funding coming from several sources and the scope growing as crews found more lead lines than the original estimate, nobody quotes a single exact figure. Done block by block, in under three years: a job experts said would take a decade.

The city’s own flyers explained the science plainly: running your water each day moves orthophosphate through the system, forming a protective coating inside pipes that keeps lead from leaching. That’s corrosion control in one sentence.

I sat in on a meeting at the center in Newark. The lesson I took home: replacement is the permanent fix, and it can be done fast when a city decides to do it. Until your street gets its turn, a certified filter at the tap is what protects your family tonight.

How to test

Start free: ask your water utility if you have a lead service line and check your annual water quality report. Many utilities will test your tap for free or for a small fee if you ask.

For your own result, use a certified lab. Collect a first-draw sample (water that’s sat in the pipes 6+ hours, usually first thing in the morning) and a flushed sample — the difference tells you if it’s your plumbing. Home strips are not reliable for lead at these low levels. Spend the money on a lab test once; it’s the only number worth acting on.

While you wait: run the cold tap 30 seconds to 2 minutes after long stagnation, always use cold water for drinking and cooking, and clean your faucet aerators regularly — they trap lead particles. If you have — or might have — a lead service line, flush longer; some utilities advise up to 5 minutes, so follow your utility’s guidance for your line type.

What actually removes it

Certified carbon block filters (NSF/ANSI 53 for lead reduction). Look for the certification specifically for lead — not just “taste and odor.” Pitcher, faucet-mount, and under-sink carbon blocks certified to Standard 53 are proven to reduce lead to 5 ppb or less — that’s the current NSF/ANSI 53 pass level, tightened from the old 10 ppb. Carbon blocks that pass this test are typically built around a 0.5-micron pore size — fine enough to trap lead particles a standard 1- or 5-micron filter misses. One distinction worth knowing: an absolute rating means the filter catches 99.9% of particles that size, while a nominal rating means only most of them — for a health claim, absolute is the number that counts.

Reverse osmosis (NSF/ANSI 58). RO is the other proven route and removes lead very effectively, along with a wide range of other contaminants. Good choice if your test shows multiple issues, not just lead. For scale, RO membranes run about 0.0001 micron — roughly ten thousand times finer than that 0.5-micron carbon block.

What does NOT remove it:

• Boiling. Boiling does not remove lead — it concentrates it as water evaporates. Never boil to “fix” lead.
• A basic sediment filter or water softener. Neither is designed or certified for lead.
• A standard carbon filter certified only for chlorine taste and odor (Standard 42). If it doesn’t say Standard 53 for lead, don’t assume it does the job.
• Letting it sit. Unlike chlorine byproducts, lead doesn’t off-gas.

Replacing lead pipes and fixtures is the permanent fix, and utilities are now required to replace lead service lines under the 2024 Lead and Copper Rule Improvements — but that timeline runs for years. A certified filter at the tap protects you now.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: an NSF/ANSI 53-certified carbon block filter for lead reduction (pitcher or under-sink, depending on your flow needs) — or a reverse osmosis system certified to NSF/ANSI 58 if you want broader coverage.

The bottom line

Lead is a plumbing problem, not a source-water problem — which means your house, not the city report, decides your exposure. Test first-draw, filter with something actually certified for lead, and don’t boil it. That’s the whole game.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

PFAS is a family, not a single chemical. It stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — thousands of man-made chemicals (the U.S. Geological Survey puts the count at more than 12,000) used since the 1940s because they repel water, oil, and grease and resist heat. The two you’ve heard of are PFOA and PFOS. They’re the most studied, and they earned the nickname “forever chemicals” for a simple reason: they barely break down — in the environment or in you.

You can’t see them, taste them, or smell them in water. The levels we’re talking about are parts per trillion. One part per trillion is roughly one drop in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Where it comes from

PFAS went into nonstick cookware, food packaging, waterproof clothing, stain-resistant carpet and furniture, and firefighting foam used at airports and military bases. Factories that made or used them, landfills, and wastewater all release them. From there they move into soil and groundwater and stay there.

This isn’t a one-town problem. In a nationwide USGS study (tap water from 716 locations, sampled 2016–2021), scientists estimated that at least one PFAS could be detected in about 45% of U.S. tap water — public supplies and private wells at similar rates. That study tested for 32 PFAS. It doesn’t mean your tap has them, and it doesn’t tell you your level. It means testing is the only way to know.

The health picture, honestly

Here’s what the federal health agencies actually say, without the scare headline. The CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) finds associations between higher exposure to certain PFAS and: increased cholesterol, lower antibody response to vaccines in children, small decreases in birth weight, pregnancy-induced hypertension and preeclampsia, changes in liver enzymes, and increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer (strongest for PFOA).

Two honest qualifiers. First, “associated with” comes mostly from studies of higher exposures — workers and communities near contaminated sites — and risk at the low levels in most tap water is still being worked out. Second, a cancer hazard label tells you something can cause harm; it doesn’t tell you your risk from a given glass of water. Dose and years of exposure matter.

What EPA did with that science: in April 2024 it set the first national drinking water limits — a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 4.0 parts per trillion each for PFOA and PFOS, with a health goal (MCLG) of zero. That zero goal is EPA saying no level is known to be risk-free; 4 ppt is the enforceable line, set at the lowest level treatment can reliably hit. Public systems must complete initial monitoring by 2027 and, under the original rule, install treatment by 2029 where they exceed the limits. (EPA has since proposed extending that treatment deadline to 2031 — still a proposal, not final.) Private wells aren’t regulated at all: if you have a well, testing and treatment are on you.

How to test

On city water, start free: check your utility’s annual water quality report, ask the utility directly, or search EPA’s PFAS monitoring database for your system.

If you need your own number — especially on a well — use a state-certified lab running EPA Method 533 or 537.1. Expect a few hundred dollars per sample. PFAS sampling is fussy: the chemicals are in cosmetics, waterproof jackets, and fast-food wrappers, and sloppy sampling contaminates the sample. Follow the lab’s instructions exactly — gloves on, no personal-care products that morning, only the containers they send you. Cheap dip strips do not exist for PFAS at parts-per-trillion levels; anyone selling one is selling you a guess.

What actually removes it

EPA names three technologies that work. The filter has to be certified for PFAS specifically — look for NSF/ANSI 53 (carbon and ion-exchange units) or NSF/ANSI 58 (reverse osmosis) with a PFOA/PFOS or “Total PFAS” reduction claim, and confirm the exact model in the certifier’s listing (NSF, IAPMO, WQA, UL, or CSA).

• Reverse osmosis (RO). Forces water through a membrane that PFAS can’t cross. Broadest coverage, including short-chain PFAS that carbon struggles with. Usually one tap — your kitchen sink. This is the safest bet when you don’t know which PFAS you have (and most people don’t).
• Granular activated carbon / carbon block (GAC). Traps PFAS as water passes through. Works well on long-chain PFOA and PFOS; weaker on short-chain compounds. One honest catch EPA flags: as of April 2024, certification testing wasn’t yet aligned to the new 4 ppt standard, so a certified filter reduces PFAS — it may not promise “below 4 ppt.” Reduction still lowers exposure, which is the point.
• Anion exchange resin. Charged beads pull PFAS out of the water. Strong performer, often in whole-house or professional systems.

Maintenance is not optional with any of these. An exhausted carbon filter stops working silently — set a replacement reminder the day you install it.

What does NOT remove it:

• Boiling. PFAS are not destroyed by boiling; you can concentrate them as water evaporates.
• A basic sediment filter or a standard water softener. A softener swaps hardness minerals; that’s different chemistry from the anion exchange above.
• Any pitcher, faucet, or fridge filter that isn’t certified for PFAS reduction. Many fridge filters are certified only for chlorine taste and odor. If the listing doesn’t claim PFAS, assume it doesn’t touch them.
• Letting water sit. PFAS don’t evaporate or settle out.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: an under-sink reverse osmosis system certified to NSF/ANSI 58 for PFAS reduction, treating the one tap you drink and cook from. It’s the broadest, most forgiving choice when your exact PFAS mix is unknown. If a certified lab test shows only low PFOA/PFOS and budget decides it, an NSF/ANSI 53-certified carbon block filter is a reasonable second choice — with filter changes on schedule, no exceptions.

The bottom line

PFAS is a real contaminant with a real federal limit now — 4 parts per trillion — and real filters that reduce it. It’s also a contaminant where your actual risk depends on your actual level, which nobody can guess from a headline. Test first, then buy the certified treatment that matches the result.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

One member of the PFAS family deserves its own article: TFA, the smallest of the forever chemicals, which forms in the atmosphere and falls with the rain. Researchers at NJIT found it in more than 91% of the New Jersey tap water samples they screened. Read the full story: TFA in Drinking Water: The PFAS That Falls From the Sky.

October 2026 Update: PFAS in 91% of New Jersey Waterways Tested

A report released this month by the Environment New Jersey Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group — PFAS in America’s Rivers and Lakes — pulled together federal testing data from the EPA’s Water Quality Portal, from samples collected between 2022 and 2024. In New Jersey, PFAS turned up at 78 of the 86 waterway locations tested — 91% — with as many as 20 different PFAS compounds found across the state. In the Raritan River watershed, every location with data came back positive, and all of them sit upstream of the drinking water intake at Bridgewater.

Read the headline the way a lab would: this testing was of rivers, streams, and lakes — the source water — not finished tap water. Nobody tested 86 kitchen taps. What the number actually tells you is that the water arriving at treatment plants across New Jersey carries PFAS in it — and what reaches your glass depends on how well your utility removes it.

The standards show why removal matters. New Jersey’s own drinking water limits — the first in the nation — allow PFOA at 14 parts per trillion, PFOS at 13, and PFNA at 13. The federal EPA limits are tighter: 4 parts per trillion each for PFOA and PFOS. Same chemicals, two different yardsticks — and the federal one is the stricter.

The home answer hasn’t changed: granular activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and ion exchange are the proven tools — and a water test tells you which one your home actually needs.

New Jersey’s Drinking Water Ranks #2 — for the Wrong Reason

The waterways are only half the picture. An analysis by ABC’s data journalism team, reported by WABC (ABC7) in its Our America: Trouble on Tap investigation, found that New Jersey is the number 2 state in the country for contamination of its drinking water with certain PFAS chemicals. That ranking is about drinking water itself — the treated water in public systems — not just the rivers and reservoirs it comes from.

New Jersey didn’t wait for Washington to act. The state adopted its own enforceable PFAS limits — for PFNA in 2018, and for PFOA and PFOS in 2020 — years before the federal drinking-water standards existed. A #2 ranking is exactly why those early rules matter, and why testing your own tap is still the only way to know what’s in your glass.

And the Reported Numbers May Be Half the Real Ones

A study published October 23, 2026 in Cell Reports Sustainability (Texas Christian University) modeled more than 1.8 million PFAS test records from the EPA’s national monitoring data. Here’s the trick in the official numbers: when a result comes back below the lab’s minimum reporting level, it’s usually counted as zero — and 98% of results fall below that line. The model estimates that counting them as zero captures only about 44% of the average PFAS concentration across nearly 10,000 community water systems. For the six PFAS the EPA actually regulates, the reported national average is about 2.6 parts per trillion; the modeled estimate is 5.2 — double.

The researchers are careful, and I’ll be too: this is about how the numbers get summarized, not proof that every below-limit result is a health risk. But remember what “not detected” really means — below the reporting limit, not zero. It’s one more reason the test of your own tap beats the headline average.

Update — October 24, 2026: Pennsylvania Bans PFAS Firefighting Foam

Pennsylvania just acted on one of the biggest PFAS sources of all: firefighting foam. On October 22, Governor Shapiro signed a new law (Senate Bill 804, now Act 98 of 2026) that bans the manufacture, sale, and distribution of PFAS-containing Class B firefighting foam starting July 1, 2027, and bans its use starting January 1, 2028, with narrow exceptions for places like airports and refineries. Fire departments can also get grant help to safely dispose of the foam they already have.

The timing is no accident. A recent report from the PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center found PFAS in 96% of Pennsylvania rivers and streams tested — and 91% of the ones tested right here in New Jersey. Foam sprayed at airports, military bases, and training grounds washes into the ground and stays there: one tire fire in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, back in 1986 left local wells contaminated for decades. Cutting off the source is how the numbers in our water finally start coming down — and one more reason to know exactly what your filter is certified to remove.

Federal Funding Update — October 2026

On October 22, 2026, Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced the Protect Clean Water Act, a bipartisan bill that would authorize $10 billion over five years for PFAS and other emerging-contaminant projects, delivered through the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds — the state programs that lend and grant money to local water and wastewater systems. The bill would replace the $5 billion the 2021 infrastructure law provided for the same work, which expired at the end of fiscal 2026. The American Water Works Association estimates that PFAS treatment for drinking water alone could cost $2.7 billion to $3.5 billion a year; without federal help, those costs land in local water bills. One caution: an authorization is a ceiling, not a check. The bill has only been introduced, and Congress would still have to appropriate the money before a single dollar reaches a water system.

Your city adds chlorine to your water to kill germs. Good. But chlorine doesn’t just disappear after doing its job — it reacts with natural organic matter in the water and forms a family of chemicals called trihalomethanes. The most common one has a name you probably know from movies: chloroform.

Yes, that chloroform. It’s in your tap water right now, most likely. Let me explain why that’s less alarming than it sounds — and what to do about it anyway.

How it gets there

Chlorine is added at the treatment plant. On its way to your faucet, it meets leaves, algae, soil runoff — natural organic stuff that’s always in source water. The reaction creates disinfection byproducts, and chloroform is the headliner. The more organic matter in the source water and the longer the water sits in the pipes, the more forms.

This is overwhelmingly a city-water issue. If you’re on a well with no chlorination, chloroform generally isn’t your problem.

The health picture, honestly

The EPA regulates total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) at 80 parts per billion. Your water utility has to stay under that, and most do.

But “under the legal limit” and “zero” aren’t the same thing. Long-term exposure to chloroform is linked to liver and kidney effects, and it’s classified as a probable human carcinogen. The risk builds over years of exposure, not from a glass today.

Here’s what most articles skip: drinking isn’t the only route. Chloroform is volatile — it escapes into the air. Hot showers, dishwashers, and boiling water all release it, which means you’re also breathing it and absorbing some through skin. The shower matters as much as the glass.

How to test

Your utility’s annual water quality report (the CCR) lists TTHM levels — that’s the easiest check, and it’s free. If you want your own numbers, a certified lab can test for trihalomethanes specifically. Home test strips won’t cut it for this one.

What actually removes it

Activated carbon — the answer. Carbon block or granular activated carbon (GAC) filters are highly effective at removing chloroform and other trihalomethanes. A good under-sink carbon block handles drinking and cooking water; a whole-house carbon system covers the shower too — which matters, given the inhalation route.

What also helps: aeration and letting water sit. Because chloroform is volatile, it off-gasses. (Don’t rely on this as treatment, but it’s why a glass left on the counter tests lower than one fresh from the tap.)

What does NOT specifically fix it:

• A basic sediment filter. Chloroform is dissolved, not a particle.
• A water softener. It swaps minerals; it doesn’t touch organics or byproducts.
• Boiling. It drives some off into the air — which just moves the exposure from your glass to your lungs.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: an activated carbon block or granular activated carbon (GAC) filter — under-sink carbon block for drinking and cooking water, or a whole-house carbon system if the shower inhalation route matters to you. Carbon is the answer for chloroform. A sediment filter, a softener, or boiling will not do this job.

The bottom line

Chloroform is the tradeoff baked into chlorinated water: the chlorine keeps you safe from microbes, and the byproducts are the cost. It’s a manageable one — carbon filtration takes it out, and your utility report tells you how much you’re starting with.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. You can’t taste it. And it might be coming out of your showerhead right now.

Radon is the contaminant nobody talks about at the kitchen table — because unlike chlorine or sulfur, it gives you no warning. But if you’re on a well, especially in northern New Jersey, it’s worth a few minutes of your attention.

What radon actually is

Deep underground, uranium in bedrock slowly decays. One of its decay products is radon — a radioactive gas. It dissolves into groundwater the way carbonation dissolves into soda, except there’s no fizz and no warning.

This is mostly a well-water problem. Water from lakes and rivers (surface water) is typically low in radon because the gas escapes into the open air. But groundwater — the water your well pulls from rock — can carry significant amounts, especially where the geology runs toward granite and shale.

Here’s the part that matters for New Jersey: the northern part of the state sits on the Reading Prong, a belt of uranium-bearing rock running through Hunterdon, Somerset, Morris, Sussex, and Warren counties. It’s one of the higher-radon zones in the entire country. If your well is in that belt, radon isn’t a theoretical concern — it’s a test-it-now concern.

The real danger isn’t drinking it

This surprises almost everyone. The main risk from radon in water isn’t from drinking the water — it’s from breathing the air.

Radon escapes from water the moment it’s agitated: showering, running the dishwasher, doing laundry. That released gas joins your indoor air, and you inhale it. The National Academy of Sciences estimated that about 89% of the cancer risk from radon in water comes from lung cancer caused by breathing it — only about 11% from stomach cancer caused by drinking it.

The rule of thumb the experts use: every 10,000 pCi/L (picocuries per liter) in your water adds roughly 1 pCi/L to your indoor air. That matters because indoor-air radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, and the EPA’s action level for indoor air is 4 pCi/L. A well with very high radon can meaningfully contribute to the air you breathe every day.

Nobody’s regulating this for you

Here’s the uncomfortable part: the EPA proposed a drinking-water limit for radon — 300 pCi/L — back in 1999. It was never finalized. There is no federal drinking-water standard for radon.

And if you’re on a private well, there’s no regulation at all. No utility tests your water. No agency sends you a report. It’s entirely on the homeowner to test. Most well owners test for bacteria and nitrates and never think about radon — which is exactly why it stays invisible.

How to test (it’s a special sample)

You can’t catch radon with a standard water test or a home test strip. It requires a dedicated radon-in-water sample, and the sampling technique matters: the bottle has to be filled with no air bubbles and no headspace, then rushed to the lab — because the gas starts escaping the moment the water is exposed to air.

Your state health department or a certified radon lab can tell you where to get the right kit. In New Jersey, the NJDEP’s radon program is a good starting point. If your well is in the Reading Prong belt, don’t wait for a reason — make this part of your regular well checkup.

What actually removes radon

Aeration — the gold standard. The most effective treatment is to get the gas out of the water before it enters your house. Aeration systems spray or agitate the well water in a vented tank, releasing the radon harmlessly outdoors. Removal rates are typically 95% or better. It’s simple physics: give the gas somewhere to go, and it goes.

Granular activated carbon (GAC) — effective, with a catch. A whole-house carbon system can remove radon from water. But here’s the thing nobody mentions in the brochure: the radioactivity doesn’t disappear — it accumulates in the carbon. Over time the filter media itself becomes radioactive, and replacing it can require special handling and disposal. For moderate radon levels it works; for high levels, aeration is the cleaner answer.

What does NOT work:

• A water softener. Radon is a dissolved gas, not a dissolved mineral. Softeners do nothing to it.
• Reverse osmosis. RO can catch some radon, but it’s far less effective than aeration or carbon and isn’t a recommended radon treatment. Don’t buy an RO system for a radon problem.
• Boiling, filtering pitchers, refrigerator filters. None of these address a gas dissolved in your water supply.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: a well-water aeration system — sprays or agitates the water in a vented tank before it enters the house, releasing the radon harmlessly outdoors. Gold standard, typically 95%+ removal. A whole-house granular activated carbon (GAC) system works for moderate levels, with the honest catch: the radioactivity accumulates in the carbon over time, so media changes need special handling.

The bottom line

Radon is the rare contaminant where the fix is straightforward but the awareness is near zero. Test your well — especially in northern NJ — and if the numbers come back high, aeration solves it. The invisible stuff is only scary when you don’t look for it.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

Imagine turning on your tap and tasting the ocean. Not quite the ocean — but close enough that your coffee tastes wrong, your ice cubes taste wrong, and you start wondering what’s happening underground.

That taste has a name: brackish water. And if you’re on a well near the coast, it’s a problem worth understanding, because the fix is specific and the wrong fix wastes a lot of money.

What “brackish” actually means

Water people classify water by total dissolved solids (TDS) — basically, how much stuff is dissolved in it, measured in milligrams per liter:

• Fresh water: under 1,000 mg/L
• Brackish water: 1,000 to 10,000 mg/L
• Seawater: around 35,000 mg/L

The EPA’s secondary guideline for drinking water is 500 mg/L TDS, and 250 mg/L for chloride specifically. (Secondary standards are about taste and aesthetics, not health — but trust me, you’ll notice.) Most people start tasting salt somewhere around 500–1,000 mg/L. By 2,000, nobody’s mistaking it.

Your well doesn’t have to be beachfront for this to happen. It just has to be near enough to the coast — or deep enough — that saltwater is pushing into the freshwater aquifer feeding your well.

Why a well turns salty: saltwater intrusion

Underground near the coast, freshwater floats on top of denser saltwater like oil on water. It’s a balance. Pump too much freshwater out — through your well and your neighbors’ wells — and the saltwater rises to fill the gap. Drought makes it worse. So does development: more wells, more pumping, more intrusion.

This isn’t theoretical. Saltwater intrusion into drinking-water aquifers is documented along parts of the Jersey Shore and in coastal communities up and down the East Coast. It usually shows up gradually — the water tastes a little off one year, noticeably salty a few years later. Some homeowners first notice it as white crust on fixtures, or soap that won’t lather right, or plants dying when watered from the hose.

Here’s the part that surprises people: it can also happen far from the ocean. Deep wells can tap into ancient brackish aquifers. Road salt can push chloride into shallow wells over decades. Fracking and industrial activity have salinized groundwater in some regions. Salt is salt — the fix doesn’t care where it came from.

How to confirm it

Don’t guess. Salt taste is a clue, not a diagnosis.

1. Get a TDS meter reading. A $15 handheld TDS meter won’t tell you what’s dissolved, but it tells you how much. If your well reads 300 mg/L and your neighbor’s reads 1,800, something’s going on.
2. Test for chloride specifically. Chloride is the fingerprint of saltwater intrusion. Home test strips exist, but a lab test is definitive.
3. Get a full lab panel. For a well going brackish, you want TDS, chloride, sodium, hardness, and iron at minimum. This is the number set that determines what treatment actually works.

Also worth doing: ask your neighbors. Saltwater intrusion is an aquifer problem, not a single-well problem. If three wells on your street all turned salty within a few years, that’s your answer.

What does NOT fix salty well water

This is where people lose money, so let me be blunt:

• A water softener will not fix it. Softeners swap calcium and magnesium for sodium. They do nothing about total dissolved solids. Running brackish water through a softener is like putting a screen door on a submarine.
• A carbon filter will not fix it. Activated carbon is great at chlorine, taste, odor, and many organics. Dissolved salt sails right through it.
• A basic sediment filter will not fix it. Salt is dissolved, not suspended. A sediment filter can’t catch what isn’t a particle.
• Boiling will not fix it. Boiling kills microbes. It concentrates salt.

If anyone tries to sell you a softener or a carbon system for salty water, they’re either misinformed or dishonest. Now you know the difference.

What actually works: reverse osmosis (small-scale desalination)

Here’s the honest truth: treating brackish well water is desalination, just on a household scale. And the technology that does it is reverse osmosis — the same process used in municipal desalination plants, shrunk down.

RO works by forcing water through a semipermeable membrane at the molecular level. Dissolved salts can’t pass. What comes out the other side is low-TDS water, regardless of how salty it went in.

Two things to know:

1. Standard under-sink RO may not be enough for very brackish water. Most residential RO systems are designed for municipal water under ~500–1,000 mg/L TDS. If your well is at 2,000–3,000 mg/L, you need a system rated for high-TDS or brackish feed water — higher pressure, tougher membranes, more frequent membrane changes. This is a “read the spec sheet” situation, not a “grab whatever’s on sale” situation.
2. Look for NSF/ANSI 58 certification. This is the NSF standard specifically for reverse osmosis systems. It means an independent lab verified the system’s contaminant-reduction claims — including TDS reduction — under standardized test conditions. A manufacturer can claim anything; NSF/ANSI 58 means somebody checked. When you’re spending real money to fix a real problem, that check matters.

For whole-house brackish treatment, you’re looking at larger RO setups or working with a water treatment professional who can size the system to your actual TDS numbers — which is why the lab test comes first. Treatment follows diagnosis, always.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: a well-sized RO membrane setup — or a working session with a water-treatment pro sized to your actual lab numbers (TDS, chloride, sodium, hardness, iron). Only a membrane takes salt out. Do NOT let anyone sell you a water softener for a salt problem — a softener swaps minerals and does nothing about salt.

The bottom line

Salty well water isn’t a mystery and it isn’t a death sentence for your well. It’s chemistry: salt got in, and only a membrane can take it out. Test first, get real numbers, and don’t let anyone sell you a softener for a salt problem.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

You’ve seen the movie. Julia Roberts, 2000, the legal clerk in the tiny skirt who takes down a giant utility company. Great film. Here’s the part that should bother you: the story was real, the chemical is real, and it’s probably in somebody’s tap water within a few miles of you right now.

What actually happened at Hinkley

Hinkley, California is a small town in the Mojave Desert. For about 30 years, Pacific Gas & Electric ran a compressor station there, and to keep the cooling towers from corroding, they used hexavalent chromium — chromium-6. The wastewater went into unlined ponds. It seeped into the groundwater. People drank it for years.

Erin Brockovich was a file clerk at a law firm who noticed something wrong in the medical records of Hinkley residents — a pattern of cancers and illnesses. She dug in. The case she helped build ended in 1996 with a $333 million settlement for around 600 residents, the largest direct-action settlement of its kind in American history at the time.

That’s the Hollywood ending. Here’s what didn’t make the movie: the chemical never went away.

What is chromium-6, exactly?

Chromium comes in flavors, and the flavor matters. Chromium-3 is a nutrient your body actually uses in tiny amounts. Chromium-6 — hexavalent chromium — is the evil twin. It’s a known carcinogen. A two-year National Toxicology Program study found it caused cancer in lab rats and mice that drank it in their water. It’s also been linked to liver damage and reproductive problems.

It’s odorless. It’s tasteless. It’s colorless in water. You cannot detect it with your senses, which is exactly why the people of Hinkley drank it for decades without knowing.

It gets into water two ways: industrial pollution (metal finishing, chrome plating, cooling towers, wood preservatives) and, in some regions, natural erosion of chromium-bearing rock. Either way, once it’s in the aquifer, it stays.

The part Hollywood didn’t tell you

In 2016, the Environmental Working Group analyzed federal drinking water data and found chromium-6 in the tap water supplies of more than 200 million Americans — in all 50 states. Their later Tap Water Database put the number even higher, around 250 million. Let that sink in: the “Erin Brockovich chemical” isn’t a Hinkley problem. It’s an everywhere problem.

And here’s the kicker: there is no federal drinking water limit specifically for chromium-6. The EPA regulates total chromium at 100 parts per billion, but that’s a blunt instrument — it doesn’t distinguish between the harmless chromium-3 and the carcinogenic chromium-6. California set a public health goal of 0.02 parts per billion for chromium-6. Read that again: 0.02. The federal total-chromium limit is 5,000 times higher than what California scientists consider a negligible-risk level for chromium-6.

So your water can be 100% legal and still contain chromium-6 at levels that worry scientists. “Legal” and “safe” are not the same word.

How to find out if it’s in your water

Three ways, easiest first:

1. Check your water utility’s annual report. Every community water system must publish a Consumer Confidence Report by July 1 each year. Look for chromium — though remember, most report total chromium, not chromium-6 specifically.
2. Search EWG’s Tap Water Database (ewg.org) by your ZIP code. It shows what’s actually been detected in your area, including chromium-6.
3. Test it yourself. A comprehensive lab test or a quality home test kit that covers heavy metals will tell you what’s coming out of your own tap, which is the only number that really matters.

What actually removes chromium-6

This is where I save you money: a standard pitcher filter or fridge filter with basic activated carbon will not reliably remove chromium-6. If that’s your defense, you don’t have one.

What works:

• Reverse osmosis. Certified RO systems (NSF/ANSI 58) are the gold standard for chromium-6 removal. This is the most practical option for most households.
• Ion exchange. Effective, but typically a whole-house or specialized setup — more complex and more expensive.
• Distillation. Works, but slow and energy-hungry for daily drinking water.

If chromium-6 shows up in your water test, reverse osmosis is where I’d point you. It’s the same technology that handles lead, fluoride, arsenic, and most of the other heavy hitters — one system, many problems solved.

Why this story matters

Erin Brockovich didn’t have a science degree. She had curiosity and a refusal to look away. The people of Hinkley trusted that their water was fine because nobody told them otherwise — the same trust most of us extend to our taps every single day.

You don’t need to be an activist to protect your household. You just need to know what’s in your water. That’s the whole reason this site exists.

Start here: What’s In Your Water? — learn how to read your water report and test your own tap.

Chromium-6 data cited from the Environmental Working Group’s tap water research (ewg.org). EWG is an independent nonprofit; iPhilter is not affiliated with or endorsed by EWG.

What I’d buy

Treatment type: a reverse osmosis system certified to NSF/ANSI 58 for chromium-6 reduction, treating the tap you drink and cook from. Certified RO is the gold standard here — it’s the same technology that also handles lead, fluoride, and arsenic, so one system covers multiple heavy hitters at once.