How You Can Prevent Water Contamination at Home

Freshwater pollution is a major concern for our environment, particularly because we have relatively little available fresh water. Water covers over 70% of the earth’s surface, but only 0.3% of that surface water is fresh. Furthermore, only a minuscule amount of that fresh water is available for human use — much of the rest remains trapped in inaccessible forms like glaciers and snow packs. So, it’s imperative that we keep our small percentage of usable fresh water clean.

Pieces of plastic and debris are a common sight in water bodies like lakes and rivers, and less apparent chemicals and pollutants also play a major role. Fortunately, though water contamination is a major, complex global issue, you can take many steps at home to help mitigate the harmful effects of water pollution and help maintain clean water supplies.

What Causes Water Pollution?

Because our supply of available freshwater is so small, pollution becomes an even greater concern. Pollution gets into our water supply in various ways. Legal discharge from industrial sources is one way, and illegal discharge is another. Pollutants can also leak out of water treatment facilities, oil pipelines, and fracking operations. Windstorms and flooding also contaminate our water supply by washing pollutants and debris into it.

1. Nonpoint Source Runoff Pollution

In the United States, industrial pollution is relatively tightly regulated. So, although direct industrial pollution is still a problem, our main source of freshwater pollution is nonpoint source pollution. In nonpoint source pollution, rather than being dumped from a specific polluting source, contaminants seep into our groundwater from a variety of sources when rain or flooding brings pollutants into contact with our water supply.

This type of runoff pollution is still toxic. It can contain contaminants likeoil, arsenic, other toxic chemicals, livestock and pet waste, bacteria and viruses, and so forth. Lead pollution can also seep into our water through older plumbing infrastructure like lead pipes.

2. Agricultural Runoff

In the United States, agricultural runoff is the single biggest source of contamination in rivers and streams. The United States uses about a billion pounds of pesticides per year, much of that in agricultural applications. Herbicides, fertilizers, and other agricultural chemicals also contribute to pollution. When it rains or floods, runoff from farms carries pollutants into rivers, streams, lakes, and groundwater, and from there, it’s easy for them to end up in municipal water supplies and well water.

If workers do not dispose of animal waste properly or practice good personal hygiene, bacterial infections such as giardia, cryptosporidium, E. coli, salmonella, and others can accumulate and run off into our water as well.

3. Nutrient Pollution

Water pollution has various adverse effects on human health and our environment. One of these is algae overgrowth. Chemical concentrations such as nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff diminish water oxygen levels in a process known as eutrophication. In eutrophication, nitrogen and phosphate act like algae fertilizers, creating flourishing algae blooms in surface water such as lakes and rivers. These blooms stifle populations of fish and other aquatic organisms and sicken other animals all the way up the food chain.

Nutrient pollution from phosphates and nitrogen is the number one threat to water quality worldwide. As many as 43 million Americansget their water from private groundwater wells that are susceptible to algae contamination, and if the contaminated water does not receive proper treatment, they could develop health issues ranging from gastrointestinal ailments to kidney and liver damage.

4. Wastewater Dumping and Overflow

Developed countries typically treat about 70% of the wastewater they generate. The rest is dumped back into waterways without treatment. In middle-income and developing countries, the amount of treated wastewater drops substantially to between 28% and 38% for middle-income countries and 8% for many developing countries.

In most areas of the United States, we are lucky to have robust wastewater treatment programs. Nevertheless, our aging wastewater infrastructure is far from perfect. The U.S. Geological Survey reports that almost half of the country's water is contaminated with chemicals dangerous to human health.

5. Industrial Waste

Industrial waste contains heavy metals, PFAS and toxic chemicals, and as we have seen, not all wastewater ends up getting treated, much less 100% purified. Mining industries use water to separate ore from rock and can end up sweeping small particles of heavy metals into our water supply. Industries like hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to produce shale gas create enormous quantities of wastewater, much of it contaminated with heavy metals, radionucleotides, and other pollutants. Or gasoline or oil may spill into our oceans and rivers, potentially contaminating our water supply.

6. City Sewage

According to the World Health Organization, more than 2 billion people worldwide drink microbiologically contaminated drinking water. This contaminated drinking water, which is likely to contain bacterial diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and even polio, is believed to cause at least 505,000 deaths each year.

This issue is not confined to developing nations. In the United States, sewer overflows release billions of gallons of raw sewage and storm water annually, spewing bacterial toxins into our fresh waterways. Sewer line breaks also release harmful toxins from human waste into the environment.

7. Water's Solvent Properties

Water is known as the “universal solvent” because it dissolves more substances than any other liquid. But water’s solvent properties also increase its likelihood of becoming polluted.

Water is a polar molecule. To form water, oxygen bonds covalently with two hydrogen atoms. This covalent bonding means the oxygen and hydrogen atoms share electrons, so they can each fill their outermost electron shells.

Oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen, so it tends to pull the electrons closer, giving itself a slightly negative charge and giving the two hydrogen atoms a slightly positive charge. These charged areas of water molecules are electrically attracted to other charged substances and can pull them apart, dissolving them easily. Ionic compounds, such as salts, in particular, dissolve readily in water. But this property also means water readily dissolves pollutants into itself rather than refusing to mix with them.

Practical Steps to Prevent Water Contamination

The following are practical steps you can take to prevent water contamination in your home:

Filter Maintenance

It's important to regularly change and maintain your water filters. Be sure to check whether the product is genuinely certified by an accredited organization such as NSF, WQA or IAPMO. To ensure you get the right water filter, look for the certification mark on the product.

A properly certified water filter is independently tested and verified to meet stringent standard requirements accepted throughout the water industry. Testing ensures that the filter effectively reduces contaminants and provides clean drinking water. Regularly changing these water filters is important to keep them working properly.

Identifying and Mitigating Contaminant Sources

If your water comes from a well, conduct regular water quality tests at home to identify and mitigate contaminant sources in your drinking water. You might use a home water testing kit or a professional laboratory analysis. Water testing can be challenging because water quality changes daily and even throughout the day. Many testes might also not thoroughly detect all potential contaminants.

If you have city water, contact your local health district to ask about the water samples they can collect for testing. The EPA requires all public water system suppliers to provide an annual report on water quality to their customers that you can typically find on their website.

Emergency Purification Techniques

In an emergency like a flood, water main break, or hurricane, you might not have safe tap water available for use. In these situations, you can prevent illness with the following options:

• Boil your drinking water
• Use a chemical disinfectant for small qualities of water
• Only use bottled, boiled, or treated water for drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene

You might also supply your home with a water emergency treatment system that utilizes solid carbon block filter technology to provide a source of cleaner, safer water when safe tap water is not available.

How to Prevent Water Contamination

Homeowners can lessen their impact on water pollution in many ways. Below are 12 ideas for how to stop water pollution at home and in your community.

1. Avoid Hardscaped Surfaces

Hard landscape materials lead to runoffbecause they do not absorb water. Streams of runoff can carry away harsh chemicals like detergents and pesticides and dump them into our water supply. For landscaping features or pathways in your yard, try to use porous materials like gravel, wood, and paving stones rather than hard concrete. Some hard home surfaces like driveways are unavoidable, but we can take steps to diminish runoff from these surfaces. For example, planting shrubs along the side of a driveway creates a root system that can trap and hold water.

2. Pick up After Pets

Pet waste in yards, parks, and trail systems is unsightly, but it’s also harmful to our environment, particularly our water supply. Pet waste is laden with bacteria that can easily contaminate groundwater and make us ill if we ingest it. Though municipal water receives treatment for these contaminants, there’s always a possibility that some bacteria could slip through. And well-water users do not get the benefits of such treatments.

By picking up after pets, we can significantly diminish the public health issue of bacteria-contaminated water. It’s also helpful to walk dogs in grassy areas rather than near streams or rivers.

3. Don't Put Nondegradable Products Down Your Toilet or Sink

Try not to dump paints, motor oil, harsh cleaners, or unused medicines directly into a drain or flush them down a toilet. These substances contain harmful contaminants such as ammonia and formaldehyde, and the contaminants can sometimes make it through wastewater treatment facilities and end up in our water supply. Many pharmacies will take back old medicines and dispose of them safely. Search online or contact your sanitation company to find out where you can safely dispose of hazardous products.

It’s also a good idea not to put solid objects like baby wipes or other garbage down the toilet. Baby wipes often contain plastic, which does not degrade well over time. Instead, they can end up collecting in sewer systems, clogging them and leaching plastic chemicals into the water. If they make it through the sewage system, these items end up contaminating our lakes, rivers, and other waterways.

4. Minimize Garbage Disposal Use and Liquid Grease Disposal

Do your part for the environment by keeping food and grease out of pipes. Many food products can form blockages, causing sewer pipes to back up or burst. When they do, they spill contaminated water into the surrounding environment. Grease is a particular culprit — if you pour hot grease down the drain, it often solidifies as it cools and causes plumbing headaches.

Instead of using your garbage disposal, try creating a compost pile, and remember to pour hot grease into a can to cool and solidify before throwing it away.

5. Reduce Pesticide Use

Reducing home pesticide use is crucial for keeping waterways and groundwater contaminant-free. Pesticides can easily run off into waterways, seep into groundwater and end up in our water supply. Most of us don’t want to consume pesticides with our food, so why would we want to ingest them with our drinking water? The National Pest Information Center recommends using an integrated approach by monitoring, deterring, and excluding pests from your property, tolerating harmless pests, and using pesticides sparingly and only as a last resort.

6. Conserve Water

Most of us know conserving water helps preserve essential wildlife habitats, but conserving water can help reduce water pollution, as well. When we use less water, less energy is necessary to treat, supply, and heat our water. A lower energy burden means less use of fossil fuels. Reduced use of fossil fuels has numerous benefits, and one of them is that it spews fewer pollutants into the atmosphere that can eventually make their way into waterways and groundwater and, from there, into our water supply.

7. Plant Trees

Planting trees helps reduce water pollution in a couple of critical ways. For one thing, trees’ extensive root systems create a barrier to runoff and help keep contaminants fromrunning into our water supply. Trees can also act as natural water purifiers. Their root networks filter contaminants out of the water as they soak through the soil, keeping those contaminants from reaching our water supply.

Planting trees has an abundance of benefits, from increasing biodiversity to providing wildlife habitats to diminishing carbon dioxide concentrations in the air, and helping to reduce water pollution is unquestionably one of those benefits.

8. Install Water-Efficient Appliances

Installing water-efficient appliances helps reduce water pollution because the water from appliances carries contaminants out of homes and into our water supply. Dishwashers flush dish detergent into the water system, and washing machines do the same with laundry detergent, along with any chemical residues that may be clinging to your dirty clothes. Using a high-efficiency washing machine can help you reduce your water use so you're using less detergent and putting fewer potential contaminants into your water.

9. Use Phosphate-Free Detergent and Dish Detergent

In those appliances, it’s also a good idea to use a detergent that’s gentle on the environment. The EPA recommends using a phosphate-free detergent in your laundry machines and dishwashers. They help keep the water supply free from phosphate contaminants, which diminish oxygen levels in lakes and rivers and contribute to algae blooms. These phosphate-free detergents typically contain relatively gentle surfactants that break down quickly into non-polluting compounds, so they help you minimize chemical pollution from your home.

10. Run Only Full Loads

Every time you run your dishwasher or laundry machine, it discharges contaminated water into the sewer system. Though the discharged water undergoes treatment at a water treatment plant, some contaminants from sewage and wastewater may slip through to the environment.

Running only full loads helps you mitigate these environmental harms. You'll do fewer loads of laundry, run fewer dishwasher cycles, and discharge less contaminated water from your home.

11. Reduce Plastic and Other Single-use Product Consumption

Chemicals in plastic bottles and containers can easily leach into groundwater and contaminate our drinking water. And because plastic does not degrade well, it provides an exceptionally long window for contamination to occur. Especially in unlined landfills, it’s incredibly likely for contamination to seep into the soil and contaminate the groundwater. Other single-use products, such as food packaing can also contain PFAS. PFAS are called "forever chemicals" because they do not break down. Fast food containers, water-resistant clothing, and nonstick pans all contain PFAS, which last for decades in our bodies and environment.

12. Experiment With Organic Foods and Vegetarian Options

Organic foods help keep pollutants out of the water because their growing methods use no pesticides. When you wash a non-organic apple in the kitchen sink, lingering pesticide residue could transfer to the water. When you wash organic fruits and vegetables, you'll likely transfer fewer pesticides, keeping the water clean.

Additionally, agricultural operations that produce meat use large quantities of water, and the fertilizers, pesticides, and manure often run off into the water supply. Diminished meat consumption would mean less meat production and smaller volumes of contaminated water to run off.

Advanced Solutions for Water Contamination Prevention

Various advanced water contamination solutions are available, including point-of-use filters that use carbon block filter technology to effectively reduce a large number of contaminants that can be found in your drinking water.

How Carbon Filters Can Help Avoid Water Pollution

We must take care of our water to ensure a clean and healthful water supply. It’s also essential that we take care of ourselves, our families, and our drinking, bathing, and cooking water by reducing water pollution’s effects.

Protect your family from water contamination that can enter your home with a carbon block filter. Advanced carbon block filter technology, such as that used in Multipure products, is the most effective treatment available for reducing the largest number of contaminants that can be found in your home's drinking water, particularly contaminants from runoff. Some of the most advanced carbon block water treatment systems are NSF-certified to be able to remove a wide array of contaminants.

Solid carbon block filters contain activated carbon that performs several useful functions to help keep harmful contaminants — including microplastics, PFAS, lead, chlorine, benzene, and many more — out of your home’s water. The combination of these different functions allows a single filter to be effective against an enormous spectrum of water pollutants.

• Mechanical filtration: Because the carbon in these filters is so dense and compact, it filters out minuscule particles as small as 0.5 microns in size. This filtration helps keep harmful contaminant particles out of your water.
• Electrokinetic adsorption: Adsorption is the process of collecting solute molecules on a surface — in this case, collecting dissolved contaminants on the carbon block filter. Carbon block filters have a prefilter that acquires a positive charge as water flows through it. In contrast, most pollutants found in water are negatively charged. The positively charged filter attracts these negatively charged particles and allows for the filtration of even smaller contaminants than mechanical filtration alone.
• Physiochemical adsorption: Carbon block filters also have a large surface area to facilitate the adsorption of harmful pollutants. The large surface area of carbon block filters creates a sustained contact time between the filter and the water, facilitating the effective adsorption of many pollutants, including heavy metals, herbicides, and pesticides.

Know what's in your water, then shop for the most effective protection, shop around for different options and see what type of carbon filtration system would work best for your home.

Protecting Water Quality With Multipure Filtration Systems

Multipure offers countertop and below-sink water filtration systems to help you get cleaner, better-tasting water at home. Our filtration systems include:

• Aqualuxe: The Aqualuxe water purifier was specifically designed to filter out bacteria and viruses in your drinking water.
• Aquaperform: This exceptional system is certified to address PFAS, microplastics, arsenic, and other contaminants that can be found in drinking water.

Prevent Water Pollution in Your Home With a Multipure Filtration System

When you’re looking for a home water filtration system, make Multipure your trusted source. We have an extensive catalog of drinking water filtration systems and home and garden products, including systems specifically designed to remove waterborne viruses and bacteria.

We want to help you get the safest, cleanest, and best-tasting water you can. Contact us today.