Plumbing
What's Really In Your Tap Water (And What You Can Do About It)
Rich Jordan · August 20, 2026 · 11 min read
Plumbing
Rich Jordan · August 20, 2026 · 11 min read
When I was growing up, my family drank the tap water. We did not filter it. We did not keep bottled water in the house. We thought families who did were paranoid or just picky about taste.
The more I have learned about water, being in the plumbing and water treatment business now, the more real questions I have about the water the city sends into my home. The water I cook with. The water my family drinks. The water we shower in.
So I went digging through the actual research. Not TikTok and Facebook conspiracies - real scientific literature. I wanted to know what is happening to our water, why, and what a homeowner can actually do about it.
Here is what I found. If you decide you want to do something about it, our plumbers can help. But mostly I just think you should know.
Your municipal water treatment plant was designed in the 20th century to solve 20th-century problems. Bacteria. Sediment. Parasites. It does that job well. You are not going to get cholera from your kitchen sink, and that is not a small thing.
But the list of things that end up in our water supply has changed enormously in the last 30 to 40 years. Pharmaceuticals. Synthetic hormones. Industrial chemicals that did not exist when your treatment plant was built. Microplastics. Pesticides running off farmland into the watershed.
Your treatment plant was not designed to remove these things, because most of them did not exist when the plant was designed. And in most cases, your water utility is not required to test for them.
That does not mean your water is going to make you sick tomorrow. It means there are things in your water that the science is increasingly concerned about, and you have the ability to do something about it - either where the water enters your home, or right at the tap your family drinks from.
Let me walk you through what the research says.
| Contaminant | Does your treatment plant remove it? | What removes it at home |
|---|---|---|
| PFAS | Mostly no | Reverse osmosis; carbon helps |
| Pharmaceuticals and hormones | Partially | Reverse osmosis |
| Microplastics | Partially, larger particles only | Reverse osmosis; sub-micron carbon block |
| BPA and phthalates | No | Reverse osmosis; carbon |
| Pesticides such as atrazine | Some plants, not all | Activated carbon |
| Chlorine byproducts | It creates them | Whole-house carbon |
Reverse osmosis is point-of-use, so it treats drinking and cooking water. Only a whole-house filter treats what you shower in.
What they are: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. A family of thousands of synthetic chemicals used in nonstick cookware, food packaging, stain-resistant fabric and firefighting foam. They are called forever chemicals because they do not break down naturally in the environment.
What the research says: A 2023 U.S. Geological Survey study, the most comprehensive of its kind, sampled tap water at 716 locations nationwide and found that at least 45% of U.S. tap water contains one or more types of PFAS. Urban water is hit hardest, with roughly a 75% chance of detection versus about 25% in rural areas.
The EPA finalized the first enforceable federal limits on PFAS in drinking water in April 2024, setting the maximum contaminant level for PFOA and PFOS at 4 parts per trillion each. Four parts per trillion is an extraordinarily low threshold, which tells you how seriously the agency took the health data.
And here is the part that changed. In May 2026 the EPA proposed pushing the PFOA and PFOS compliance deadline from 2029 out to 2031, and separately proposed rescinding the limits on four other PFAS compounds - PFHxS, PFNA, the GenX chemicals, and the hazard index that governed mixtures.
Health concerns: Increased cholesterol, thyroid disease, immune effects, reproductive issues and several cancers. The EPA's own assessment describes some PFAS as likely carcinogenic to humans.
Does your treatment plant remove it? Most do not. Conventional treatment - coagulation, filtration, chlorination - is largely ineffective against PFAS. Only advanced treatment such as granular activated carbon or reverse osmosis removes them reliably.
What they are: Birth control pills, hormone replacement therapy, antidepressants, antibiotics and other prescription drugs. Your body metabolizes some of the active ingredient. The rest passes through and goes down the toilet.
What the research says: Synthetic estrogens, particularly ethinylestradiol from oral contraceptives, along with natural estrogens, are detected in drinking water sources across the country. Concentrations sit at the nanogram-per-liter level, which is parts per trillion. Very low - but estrogen is biologically active at very low doses. That is the entire point of it as a hormone.
The ecological effect is not disputed. Male fish downstream of wastewater treatment outflows develop female reproductive tissue, and this has been replicated worldwide. A 2024 review in Environmental Science and Pollution Research catalogues the occurrence and sources, and a companion systematic review found pharmaceutical residues in drinking water across dozens of countries, with antibiotics, analgesics and hormones among the most frequently detected.
Health concerns: The honest answer is that we do not know the long-term effect of chronic low-dose exposure to a mixture of these compounds. Individual concentrations are tiny. The cumulative effect of many endocrine-active compounds together is an open research question, and the early findings are concerning enough that researchers are calling for action.
Does your treatment plant remove it? Partially. Conventional treatment removes some pharmaceutical compounds and many pass through. There is no federal requirement to test for or remove pharmaceutical residues from drinking water.
What they are: Plastic particles between one micrometer and five millimeters. They come from larger plastics breaking down, from synthetic clothing fibers shed in washing machines, from tire wear, and from industrial processes.
What the research says: Microplastics have been detected in tap water, bottled water, food, air, and in human blood and tissue. A comprehensive review in Environment International confirms widespread contamination of drinking water globally. Research has found microplastics in human blood, placental tissue and lung tissue, meaning they cross biological barriers we assumed would stop them.
The World Health Organization has said microplastics in drinking water do not appear to pose a health risk at current levels, while acknowledging significant gaps in the research and calling for more study. Both halves of that sentence are true and both matter.
Health concerns: Still being studied. Microplastics can carry other chemicals on their surface, including endocrine disruptors, and their physical presence in tissue raises questions about inflammation and cellular damage. The science is early and moving fast.
Does your treatment plant remove it? Partially. Coagulation and filtration catch larger particles. Smaller particles pass through. No treatment plant was designed with microplastics in mind.
What they are: Bisphenol A is used in polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, including the lining of canned food and some water infrastructure. Phthalates are plasticizers that make PVC flexible. Both are endocrine disruptors, meaning they mimic or interfere with your body's own hormones.
What the research says: BPA has been detected in over 90% of tested urine samples in the U.S. population. Diet is the primary exposure route and drinking water contributes. A 2025 review covers the endocrine and health outcomes. Notably, the BPA-free replacements - BPS and BPF - show similar endocrine-disrupting behavior in recent studies. The replacement may not be safer, just less studied.
Chronic exposure to phthalates in drinking water has been linked to reproductive dysregulation, neurological effects, and metabolic disorders including obesity and hypertension.
Health concerns: These are among the most studied endocrine disruptors we have. They interfere with estrogen, testosterone and thyroid hormones. Documented effects include reduced sperm quality, early puberty, metabolic syndrome and developmental effects in children.
Does your treatment plant remove it? No. Conventional treatment is not designed to remove these compounds.
What they are: Agricultural chemicals that run off farmland into surface water and groundwater. Atrazine is the one to know. It is among the most widely used herbicides in the United States and one of the most frequently detected pesticides in drinking water.
What the research says: Atrazine has been banned in the European Union since 2004 on health grounds. It remains in wide use here. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of 25 studies found atrazine exposure disrupted the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis in animal models, reducing testosterone production and impairing reproductive function. It is detectable in supplies across the Midwest and Southeast, especially during spring application season.
Health concerns: Endocrine disruption affecting male reproductive hormones, links to several cancers, premature birth and developmental effects.
Does your treatment plant remove it? Some do. Plants using granular activated carbon remove atrazine effectively. Many smaller systems do not have it. The EPA maximum contaminant level is 3 parts per billion, a threshold set decades ago that many researchers now consider too permissive given current evidence.
What they are: This one is ironic. Chlorine is what your treatment plant uses to kill bacteria and make water safe. But when chlorine reacts with organic matter in the water, it forms byproducts called trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids. The treatment that protects you from one thing creates another.
What the research says: Disinfection byproducts are regulated by the EPA and they are present in virtually all chlorinated tap water. Long-term exposure has been associated with increased bladder cancer risk and adverse reproductive outcomes in epidemiological studies. Concentrations rise with water temperature and contact time, which means a hot shower is an exposure route through both skin and inhaled steam, not just drinking.
Health concerns: Bladder cancer risk and reproductive effects. The EPA regulates these while openly acknowledging the tradeoff: the risk from disinfection byproducts is far lower than the risk from waterborne disease if we stopped chlorinating. That tradeoff is real and chlorination is the right call. It just is not the end of the story for your house.
Does your treatment plant remove it? It creates them. They are a byproduct of the treatment itself. Point-of-use carbon filtration removes them effectively.
I am not here to scare you, and I am not suggesting you stop trusting your water utility. They do important work keeping you safe from the things they were built to protect you from, and they generally do it well.
But there are contaminants in your water that your treatment plant was never designed to handle, and waiting on federal rulemaking is not much of a plan. The good news is that the solutions are straightforward, proven and available right now.
This is the single highest-impact upgrade most homeowners can make, and it is the one I would do first.
If you want to treat all the water entering the house - including what you shower and bathe in - a whole-house system is the way to go.
Not sure what is in your water? Get it tested. A professional water quality test tells you what is actually coming out of your tap, not just what is typical for your region. That is the honest starting point, and it is what tells you whether you need option one, option two, both, or nothing at all.
My family grew up drinking unfiltered tap water. So did yours, probably. For most of the 20th century that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
The world changed. The list of chemicals we manufacture, consume and flush into the water supply has grown enormously. Our treatment infrastructure has not kept pace, and the research on what chronic low-dose exposure does to human health is still catching up to the reality.
You do not need to panic. You do need to be informed. And if you decide you want to do something about it, the technology exists today to remove nearly everything discussed in this article, right where the water enters your home or comes out of your kitchen tap.
This post covers the landscape. Each of these goes a layer deeper on one contaminant category - what it is, what the evidence actually shows, and what removes it.
Tell us what you need - we’ll confirm your appointment and get your home back to comfortable, fast.
HOW QUICKLY CAN WE SERVE YOU?