Conclusion
excerpted from The Water You Drink: Safe, or Suspect?, published in 2004 by New Society Publishers.

Currently most tap water meets North American standards for safe drinking water, so there is no need to panic about the quality of your water. In most cases, the health risks of drinking water are quite small, especially compared to smoking, driving a car, or even breathing urban air. In fact, our drinking water systems are a tremendous accomplishment, both in terms of engineering and public health.

Does that mean they are perfect? Absolutely not. It's worth being concerned about the quality of your tap water. Good water is vital to human survival, and it's not something to be taken for granted.

Start by finding out what's in your tap water. If you live in the United States, read the Consumer Confidence Report that your water supplier should send you each year. In Canada, getting information may not be quite so simple. If your water supplier can't help, try your provincial Ministry of Health or Environment.

So what do you really need to be concerned about? If you're living in a small town that doesn't have the financial resources or technical expertise of larger cities, there's a greater chance of problems with your water quality.

Bacteria, viruses and pathogens are the biggest dangers because they can be fatal. If your water supplier is doing its job right, you don't need to worry. However, if your immune system is compromised for any reason -- because of HIV or chemotherapy, for example -- there may be enough microorganisms in your tap water to make you sick. Ask your doctor what steps you should be taking to protect your health, such as boiling your water or using a filter system.

Lead is the other big worry. It's particularly dangerous for young children because it interferes with normal brain development. Check your plumbing or consider having your water tested. If you discover that there's lead in your water, there are home filters that will get it out -- look for a system that meets ANSI/NSF standards for lead removal -- or consider replacing any lead pipes within your house.

There are many other unhealthy substances that can find their way into drinking water, including pesticides, nitrates, arsenic, radon and disinfection byproducts, to name a few. The proper filter system can get rid of many of these, so it pays to know what you're drinking. That's why your Consumer Confidence Report is important reading.

More and more people are turning to filtered water or bottled water because it is "healthier" or "tastes better." That's too bad. In many cases, their tap water is fine and there's no need for expensive alternatives. In some cases, there are problems with the tap water, and filter systems and bottled water may be good short-term solutions. Keep in mind, however, that these are only short-term solutions for people who can afford it. North America has poured enormous amounts of effort and money into creating public water systems, and we should continue to focus on making them as good as possible for everyone, rather than opting out by buying home filter systems or bottled water if we have the money and ignoring the tap water.

It's also worth remembering that if you choose to filter your water, you must take care of your filter system properly. If you don't, you run the risk of actually increasing the amount of contaminants in your water. Likewise, if you buy bottled water, you should know what's in it. There's no guarantee it's going to be any more pure than what comes out of your tap, so ask the manufacturer for a complete list of what's in there.

Having said all that, it's true that public systems will never be entirely risk free. One of the problems that governments deal with is deciding how much money to spend reducing those risks, and how much to spend dealing with other public health risks like infectious diseases and second-hand cigarette smoke. Is it worth spending billions of dollars to test for a relatively rare contaminant that may or may not have any effect on human health, when government could get more bang for its public health buck by investing in prenatal nutrition programs, for example?

In the United States, the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act is quite strict, but even so, there are dozens of common drinking water contaminants that aren't covered. One of the biggest criticisms of the EPA's drinking water program is that it's not moving fast enough to establish regulations for high-priority contaminants.

In Canada, the picture isn't so good. Drinking water quality is a provincial issue, and standards vary considerably across the country. Alberta, Quebec and Ontario have strong legislation, but Prince Edward Island, for example, currently has no legally enforceable standards for any drinking water contaminants. Many provinces have taken a fresh look at their drinking water regulations, thanks to recent waterborne disease outbreaks in Walkerton and North Battleford, but there's still lots of room for improvement.

Finally, just having strong regulations is no guarantee your water is safe -- in the past year, eight percent of American water suppliers didn't meet health-based standards. In Newfoundland, 66,500 people were forced to boil their water in 2001, and British Columbia has the highest rate of intestinal illness in the country, thanks in part to poor water systems.

For all these reasons, we should pushing for strict, legally enforceable regulations -- particularly in many Canadian provinces that currently rely on guidelines alone -- and regular monitoring to make sure suppliers are meeting those regulations. We should also be willing to pay the price for good drinking water. Stricter regulations mean more expensive water, but it's a price worth paying and still far cheaper than buying bottled water.

We should also be concerned about water in a wider sense. Water is essential to us and to all other living creatures. Water is a limited resource, and it is an endlessly recycled resource. It is dangerous and short-sighted to pour wastewater into our lakes and rivers and to use ridiculous amounts of high-quality water to flush our toilets or hose down our driveways. The sensible approach to is to prevent pollution from getting into our water supplies in the first place, and to treat our tap water as a valuable resource to be used frugally.

In the final analysis then, is our water safe to drink? Although the answer is yes, it's a qualified yes. For most of us, our drinking water is very good. Every year, however, hundreds of thousands of North Americans get sick and dozens die because of contaminated drinking water. Good water isn't something we can take for granted, and it's something we all need to take responsibility for: governments, industry, water suppliers, and individual citizens. Think about it next time you turn on the tap.

copyright Julie Stauffer, 2004