How much water is in your drinking water?
The EPA is expected to release an updated assessment of the water quality of our country’s drinking water this week, but experts warn that the numbers released could be significantly lower than what has been reported.
A recent survey of nearly 1,000 residents found that more than half of the respondents thought the EPA’s numbers are too low.
That survey found that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed had either no water at all or had very little.
And many respondents were also surprised to learn that nearly three-quarters of respondents thought their water was polluted.
“If it’s the case that there is water that is polluted and there is not enough of it to warrant a higher EPA count, it’s certainly something we need to be concerned about,” said Scott Kestenbaum, director of the Water Resources Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There is no excuse for this to be understated.”
According to a new report from the Environmental Working Group, about one-third of Americans surveyed had a low or no amount of drinking water.
The number of Americans without adequate water in their homes is up nearly 50 percent in just one year.
And it’s likely that the EPA underestimated how many Americans have access to safe water.
The EPA’s estimate of how many people lack access to drinking water has been widely criticized.
In its survey, nearly two thirds of Americans polled said they had no water in the home.
The majority said they did not drink tap water.
And more than a third of respondents said they drank bottled water, which was almost identical to what the EPA estimated in its study.
But Kestensmith said that the survey did not take into account the amount of water that people actually have in their own homes.
“What they are missing is the amount that people drink, so that means that their tap water doesn’t have as much water as they think,” he said.
“So when they say that it’s not enough, it actually means that they are underestimating the amount.”
A recent study conducted by the University the Texas Rio Grande Valley found that about 80 percent of Americans live within 30 miles of an aquifer.
The report found that roughly 40 percent of those people live within a 100-mile radius of a source of drinking-water contamination.
Kestenberg said the survey should include that fact, but he warned that the new EPA numbers could be far higher.
“They are not the numbers that the American people are looking for,” he added.
“The real number is about 1 in 2,000.
That’s the number of people that live within 100 miles of a drinking-potential aquifer.”
Kestenkamp said the EPA should use a more robust definition of the threshold for safe drinking water, as well as a higher standard for the amount people should consume in a year.
He said that while there is a case to be made that the water should be considered safe, that is not necessarily the case.
“It’s important to keep in mind that people are drinking water and not drinking it because they are drinking tap water,” Kestenedbach said.
“If you want to talk about safe drinking, it needs to be a system of quality and quantity, not just quantity of water.”
Follow Michael on Twitter and Facebook for more news, and follow The Daily Beast on Twitter for more updates on water pollution.