7 Heavy Metals Everyone Should Test For

Signs Your Water May Be Contaminated With Toxic Metals, Why You Should Be Concerned, and What You Can Do About It

In recent years, lead contamination has sprung to the forefront of national consciousness following the onset of the Flint, Michigan drinking water crisis. While lead is certainly one of the most talked about concerns (and for good reason)–it isn’t the only player in the insidious, toxic, and dangerous game of drinking water contamination. 

Several other major metals can (and do) often find their way into your tap water. Many of these naturally occurring contaminants are covert threats that cannot be smelled, tasted, or seen in drinking water. However, they can bioaccumulate–leading to detrimental health impacts, especially for the brain and nervous system.

Even if you are confident that your water is not affected by heavy metal contamination, we have created a short–but crucial–list the seven heavy metals that should be on your radar when it comes to drinking water risks.  

What Is Manganese and How Does It Get into Drinking Water?

Manganese is a naturally occurring metal used in steel and corrosion-resistant aluminum alloys. It's also an additive in unleaded gasoline, pigment, plumbing materials, battery cells, matches, fireworks, fertilizer, a reagent in organic chemistry, an oxidizing agent, and a component of tobacco smoke.

How Much Manganese Is Safe in Drinking Water?

The US EPA recommends maintaining a manganese concentration at or below 50 parts per billion (PPB) in drinking water.

Health Effects of Manganese in Drinking Water

While manganese is an essential nutrient required by the human body in small amounts, exposure to high concentrations of manganese over many years has been associated with toxicity to the nervous system.

How Do I Know If There Is Manganese in My Drinking Water? 

You may notice a metallic taste, brownish-red color (that can stain clothing or appliances), or black slime if your water contains manganese at concentrations over 50 PPB. 

Read more: What’s the Black Gunk on My Fixtures?!

How To Remove Manganese from Drinking Water? 

Successfully removing manganese from water depends on its state of oxidation, the pH of the water, the presence and concentration of other minerals, as well as the concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS). Testing your water is an important first step to determining these key factors. Depending on the results, common solutions may include:

What Is Lead and How Does It Get into Drinking Water?

Lead is a bluish-silver, naturally occurring metal that is fairly soft, highly malleable, and very resistant to corrosion. It is toxic to humans, animals, and most other lifeforms. It can enter your tap water three ways:

How Much Lead Is Safe in Drinking Water?

No amount of lead is considered safe according to health research. 

While the EPA enforces a 15 PPB limit on lead in drinking water, the public health goal (i.e. maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG))  is zero.

Read more: What Is The Difference Between MCLG and MCL?

Health Effects of Lead in Drinking Water

Even low levels of lead exposure can be dangerous. It accumulates in your body and has several toxic effects on your brain, liver, kidney, and bones. Children are especially vulnerable to the damaging effects of lead poisoning.

Lead exposure can lower a child's IQ, negatively impact behavior, and result in lifelong disabilities. Despite your best efforts to protect your children at home, it has been found that school water may be a significant culprit when it comes to increasing exposure risks. 

Currently, there is no Federal requirement for schools to test their drinking water–leaving millions of children exposed to potentially toxic levels of lead in water.

Read more: The School Water Lead Crisis

How Do I Know If There Is Lead in My Drinking Water? 

You cannot see, taste, or smell lead in your drinking water, but the age of your home can be a clue to your risk level.

If you live in a house built prior to 1986, laboratory testing is a wise investment. It is also important to note that lead is legal in many fixtures and pipes. While permitted lead concentrations are lower than they were pre-1986, differences in water quality could lead to leaching.

Lead leaching occurs when corrosive water enters an old pipeline and easily reacts with the metal pipes. How do you know if your water is corrosive? Again, the only way to know is to test your water. 

The corrosive-potential of your water is determined by its Langelier Saturation Index (LSI). This calculation examines a variety of water chemistry parameters–including pH, conductivity, total dissolved solids, alkalinity, and total hardness–and evaluates whether your water is more like to form scale or corrode your home's plumbing. 

 

How To Remove Lead From Drinking Water? 

Because lead contamination can often enter water directly from the plumbing and fixtures within your own home, point-of-use (POU) filters are often suggested to filter out lead–such as an under-sink reverse osmosis system. 

Cold water often has a lower concentration of lead than hot water--as hot water may increase the ability of your water to leach metals from your pipes and fixtures. 

It’s also important to note, that like all metals on this list, boiling water will not remove lead. In fact, it will have the opposite effect and will concentrate the lead contamination.

What Is Arsenic and How Does It Get into Drinking Water?

Arsenic is a common element in the earth's crust and unfortunately, it’s quite toxic to humans.

Natural erosion of arsenic from soil and rocks is the most common pathway for arsenic to get into your tap water. It is also present in agricultural runoff from orchards and waste streams from metals and electronics industry activities.

How Much Arsenic Is Safe in Drinking Water?

The EPA recommends an MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level) for arsenic of no more than 10 PPB. However, the MCL recommendation remains arguably insufficient.

A recent study demonstrated that arsenic levels well below the MCL have adverse health impacts–as children drinking well water with levels as low as 5 PPB arsenic had significant reductions in IQ and perceptual reasoning relative to children exposed to fewer than 5 PPB of arsenic.

Health Effects of Arsenic in Drinking Water

Short term effects of arsenic exposure include skin discoloration, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Long term effects include impacts to the heart, lung, liver, kidney, eye, dermal gastrointestinal, hematological (blood), immune, and nervous system, developmental effects, diabetes and various types of cancer.

How Do I Know If There Is Arsenic in My Drinking Water? 

There are no obvious signs of arsenic contamination. However, a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study reported that nearly 77 million Americans receive drinking water from systems that violate federal regulations for arsenic (> 10 PPB). They also noted that western states tend to have a higher incidence and elevated average levels of arsenic in their water systems. 

Additionally, it is estimated that 43 million Americans use private wells as their drinking water source. While community water systems are mandated to test for the toxic metalloid, routine testing for private wells does not usually include assessing arsenic levels.

How To Remove Arsenic from Drinking Water? 

Similar to the other metals in this list, testing is the only sure fire way to know what’s in your water. This is especially crucial when it comes to arsenic because the form of arsenic in your water determines how best to remove it. Different oxidative states of arsenic respond to treatment technology in different ways. 

Before spending money on a treatment product that may not be designed to target the specific form of arsenic in your water, test your water with Tap Score and their team of treatment experts will provide an unbiased and personalized list of treatment product recommendations tailored to exactly what’s in your water. 

Now that you’re up to speed on what metals may be meddling with your water quality, we’ve got some good news for you!

Tap Score offers a water test designed explicitly for testing these (and other) important U.S. water contaminants that pose potential health risks. Whether you are on city water or private well water,  all of Tap Score’s Essential, Advanced, and Extended Tests include high precision analysis for every heavy metals on this watch list. 

TEST YOUR WATER NOW

Each Report will include an easy-to-understand breakdown of what’s found in your water, the potential health effects, and personalized treatment recommendations based on your water’s unique chemistry.

Take a look at an example Tap Score report here. Our team of treatment experts, chemists, and water quality engineers can walk you through how to treat your drinking water so that you know that what you are drinking is safe.

Have more questions? Send the team of water chemists, treatment experts, and engineers a message at hello@gosimplelab.com.