There are still approximately 15 percent of Americans do not receive public water supply due to the distribution channel do not reach them or they just choose to rely on other source of water supply. They either dig and construct a well, or just simply drill and extend the pipe to deep down underground and extract water from below the earth surface. Unfortunately, these supplies are not subject to EPA standards, although some state and local governments do set rules to protect users of these wells. Unlike public drinking water systems serving many people, they do not have experts or authority regularly checking the water’s source and its quality before it is sent to the tap. These households are basically left to their own to take special precautions to ensure the protection and maintenance of their drinking water supplies.
A study in between 1999 - 2000, private well without well water filtration contributed 26% of the drinking water outbreaks that made people sick in U.S. The local health or environmental department can only help on the advise, the private well owner will need to be totally on their own initiative to make sure that the well water filtration system they installed, can protect these household users.
There is no way to tell whether the well water is contaminated or not by its appearance, instead a series of test need to be carried out to determine the type of contaminants and how serious is the contamination. Various stages of test need to be done, and these procedures will need to be done periodically in order to ensure the safety of the well water. Before choosing a well water filtration that can ensure the quality of the well water, you need to understand how the common contaminants get into the well water.
Contaminations always has a correlation with environment, and they can happen in many different way but some germs and chemicals just get into the well water naturally. Irregardless where the well is located, heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and cadmium are naturally found in rocks and soil and sometimes just seep into well water. Floods, storm water, sewerage system leakage, and illegal industrial waste disposal might just add on to these contamination.
Bacteria, viruses and parasites are the common microbes found in well water which can find their way into the well water through human, animals, plants and it is harmful and can cause diarrhea, dysentery, and hepatitis.
Volatile Organic Compounds are industrial related or petrochemicals that endanger the human health in many ways. Polluted storm water runoff, agricultural runoff, and underground water runoff bring the surrounding contaminants to the well water.
Nitrate which is contained by many foods, but it will make human sick if the level in water is high. Animal waste, decaying plants, private sewerage system runoff, industrial fertilizers, and geology of the land around your well are the main contributors of nitrate level in the well water.
A good well water filtration system must be able to purify the water from all these known contaminants to ensure the well water can be safely consumed. Instead of regularly testing the source of well water, using various equipments, choosing one well water filtration system which had been clinically tested to be effectively removing the contaminants will be much wiser. The cost of one good well water filtration will be much less than the total equipment cost in testing, need not to mention the time factor involve.
Alvyn Khoo is a health researcher on water purification issues. He helped 2 teams of people promoting home water purifier from 2 reputable companies in Asia but later decided to stay independent and neutral on his patient in home water purifiers system. Visit his site now at http://www.absolute-filtered-water-site.com to get the facts on how to choose the best water purification system. Drinking water is best consumed as pure as the nature originally intended.
