Drinking water quality in the United States: a review of contaminants, regulations, and health implications

Overview

This comprehensive review examined the occurrence, regulation, and health implications of multiple contaminants in US drinking water, including lead, arsenic, uranium, cadmium, mercury, and chromium. The authors synthesized data from US public water system monitoring programs alongside epidemiological evidence for health effects, comparing current regulatory action levels and maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) against the latest toxicological evidence. The paper provides a critical assessment of gaps between regulatory limits and health-protective exposure thresholds.

Key numbers

The review presents regulatory limits for each metal alongside occurrence data from large-scale US monitoring programs. Lead: EPA action level 15 µg/L; proposed revision to 10 µg/L (as of review date). Arsenic: MCL 10 µg/L. Uranium: MCL 30 µg/L. Chromium: MCL 100 µg/L (total chromium). DOI: 10.1038/s41370-023-00597-z.

Methods (brief)

Systematic narrative review of regulatory documents, monitoring databases (UCMR, PWS databases), and epidemiological literature. Covers US federal (EPA, FDA) and state-level regulatory frameworks.

Implications

Certification: Comprehensive regulatory landscape for water metals directly relevant to food manufacturing water quality standards and infant formula reconstitution risk. Courses: Core reference for the US regulatory environment module covering multiple metals and water matrix. App: Informs risk framing for product categories where processing water source matters (infant formula, beverages, canned goods with added water). Microbiome: Not addressed.

Wiki pages updated on ingest

• Lead
• Arsenic
• Uranium
• Cadmium
• Mercury
• Chromium
• drinking-water
• epa-lead-action-level
• EPA — Maximum Contaminant Level for Arsenic in Drinking Water

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.