Groundwater.org – The impacts of a growing population, societal needs, and climate variations all render the need for increased efforts to protect and conserve our groundwater resources.

National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWRs or primary standards) are legally enforceable standards that apply to public water systems. Primary standards protect public health by limiting the levels of contaminants in drinking water. Visit the list of regulated contaminants with links for more details.

Documentation for Immediately Dangerous To Life or Health Concentrations.
Chemical Listing and Documentation of Revised IDLH Values.

Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.

Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Key elements of the Convention include the requirement that developed countries provide new and additional financial resources and measures to eliminate production and use of intentionally produced POPs, eliminate unintentionally produced POPs where feasible, and manage and dispose of POPs wastes in an environmentally sound manner. Precaution is exercised throughout the Stockholm Convention, with specific references in the preamble, the objective and the provision on identifying new POPs.

Chlorine remains the most widely used chemical for water disinfection in the United States (Gordon, 1987). However, 1.1 billion people in the world still lack access to safe drinking water, and new questions about health effects from chlorine have led to questions about the advisability of using chlorine to provide safe water for this population. This fact sheet summarizes information about the production, and health effects, of disinfection by-products (DBPs).

Water systems are capital-intensive operations. When local governments and private entities fail to raise sufficient funds to cover the cost of rehabilitating their water networks, upgrades are put off, and decay accelerates. It is a vicious cycle that has spread like wildfire across the country