Is NYC Tap Water Safe? 6 Cancer-Causing Chemicals Found At 'Unsafe' Levels: Report

NEW YORK, NY — A watchdog report released Wednesday by the Environmental Working Group, a national nonprofit based in D.C., says the water flowing from millions of faucets across New York City — "some of the best tap water in the world," according to city officials — may not be as pure as we all like to brag.

Of 14 sketchy chemicals that showed up in recent NYC tap water samples, six of them, all cancer-causing, were present at levels higher than certain government guidelines recommend, the study found.

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The NYC Department of Environmental Protection, which controls the city's water supply, has brushed off the nonprofit's findings, as they're mainly based on one set of particularly idyllic health standards created by California state officials. "New Yorkers should rest assured that their tap water is tested more than 630,000 times each year and it meets or exceeds all health and safety standards," a department spokesman told Patch.

The nonprofit, on the other hand, has argued that — until scientists know more about the health effects of specific chemicals — the stricter the standards, the better.

Here are the six chemicals detected at "unsafe" levels in NYC tap water samples between January and March of this year, according to the EWG:

1. Bromodichloromethane

• About: "Formed when chlorine or other disinfectants are used to treat drinking water, Bromodichloromethane and other disinfection byproducts increase the risk of cancer and may cause problems during pregnancy."
• NYC level: 4.65 parts per billion
• National average: 4.31 parts per billion
• Guideline: 0.4 parts per billion (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment)

2. Chloroform

• About: "Formed when chlorine or other disinfectants are used to treat drinking water, Chloroform and other disinfection byproducts increase the risk of cancer and may cause problems during pregnancy."
• NYC level: 30.9 parts per billion
• National average: 11.2 parts per billion
• Guideline: 1 part per billion (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment)

3. Chromium (hexavalent)

• About: "A carcinogen that commonly contaminates American drinking water, Chromium (hexavalent) in drinking water may be due to industrial pollution or natural occurrences in mineral deposits and groundwater."
• NYC level: 0.04 parts per billion
• National average: 0.08 parts per billion
• Guideline: 0.02 parts per billion (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment)

4. Dichloroacetic acid

• About: "One of the group of five haloacetic acids regulated by federal standards, Dichloroacetic acid is formed when chlorine or other disinfectants are used to treat drinking water. Haloacetic acids and other disinfection byproducts increase the risk of cancer and may cause problems during pregnancy."
• NYC level: 13.6 parts per billion
• National average: 6 parts per billion
• Guideline: 0.7 parts per billion (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

5. Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs)

• About: "Trihalomethanes are cancer-causing contaminants that form during water treatment with chlorine and other disinfectants. The total trihalomethanes group includes four chemicals: chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane and bromoform."
• NYC level: 34.8 parts per billion
• National average: 23.4 parts per billion
• Guideline: 0.8 parts per billion (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment)

6. Trichloroacetic acid

• About: "One of the group of five haloacetic acids regulated by federal standards, Trichloroacetic acid is formed when chlorine or other disinfectants are used to treat drinking water. Haloacetic acids and other disinfection byproducts increase the risk of cancer and may cause problems during pregnancy."
• NYC level: 18.1 parts per billion
• National average: 4.92 parts per billion
• Guideline: 0.5 parts per billion (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

The results above were released as part of the Environmental Working Group's ambitious new Tap Water Database, which allows anyone in the U.S. to enter their zip code and find out what's lurking in their local water supply. Overall, the organization found, over 250 million Americans are drinking water with "unsafe" levels of contaminants — including more than 8 million NYC residents. (And here we are wondering why the sperm count in American men has been dropping lower and lower each year.)

Until now, no single group has compiled this kind of info for all 50 states into one easily searchable database. Read more about the water project here.

But now that we know what's in the NYC water supply, how can we tell if it's truly harmful? And if it is, what would we do about it anyway?

In their new report, EWG researchers used the most stringent government health guidelines they could find to determine which chemicals had surpassed "safe" limits. But these standards differ hugely depending on which city or state officials you ask. They're also much, much lower than the legal limits set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996.

For example: In the case of trihalomethanes (see above), the legal limit is around 100 times higher than most guidelines recommend.

“Legal is not safe,” argued Nneka Leiba, director of Healthy Living Science at the EWG. “In many cases, it’s far from safe.”

Almost all the chemicals found in NYC tap water are used to kill any germs in the water on its way from river to sink — a necessary process, but one that activists argue should be more closely scrutinized and held to a higher standard.

“There’s more that could be done" to keep contaminants out of water supplies across the country, said Scott Meschke, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at Washington University, in an interview with Patch.

However, the professor said, this "would increase the overall cost of the water — and we already have some pretty expensive water compared to other places in the world.”

Part of the reason the EPA's standards haven’t been updated in more than two decades, Meschke said, is that "the chemical industry tends to create new compounds and new products faster than we can test them." So calling for further studies into these contaminants, he said, would be a good place for a concerned citizen to start.

Indeed: There's not much definitive research, at this point, on how the hundreds of invisible contaminants swimming around in America's tap water are affecting the people who ingest them. And unless you can find a smoking gun like Erin Brockovich or the whisteblowers in Flint, it can be difficult to tie individual cases of cancer or other illness back to certain chemicals and/or water supplies.

What we do know is this: Over the years, as humans have introduced more and more harmful chemicals into the environment, cancer rates have risen steadily — including cancer rates in young people, which can't be blamed on the fact that we're living longer.

Until we have a better understanding of that correlation, Leiba said, our uncertainty itself is “why precaution is so necessary.”

“There are more than 250 contaminants across our nation’s drinking water,” Leiba said. “About 160 of those are unregulated. And that’s a big concern, because if a chemical is unregulated, that means it can be present in our water at any level — and be legal.”

Wondering what you can do to protect yourself in the meantime? The EWG recommends finding a good water filter. Its website allows you to search for filters that block particular chemicals and pollutants, based on test results from your local water supply.

For what it's worth, though, city officials insist there's no need for all that. Filtering the city's famously delicious tap water is "not at all necessary," a spokesman for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection told Patch.

This story has been updated. Additional reporting by Cody Fenwick (Patch Staff). Photo by Steve Johnson/Flickr