Whether you own a home or live in a rented space, you need to ensure that your drinking water is safe. There are different sources of water, but most people get it from private sources, including wells, ponds, and dugouts. Drinking untested water can cause sicknesses and diseases, while drinking safe water enhances the health, economic, and social well-being of your family and community.
Even where a water filter has been installed and is in use, the need to run water quality tests remain. Filters can pick particulates of up to a certain size, but some compounds such as dissolved minerals cannot be detected by water filters.
If you’re wondering whether you need to test the quality of your drinking water regularly, here are five reasons why you actually should:
1.To Determine The Suitability Of The Water
Before you drink water from any source, you need to have it tested to determine whether it’s suitable for drinking or not. Keeping tabs on the quality of water from different sources regularly is critical to ensuring that it’s safe and reliable at all times. It’s only by testing the quality of the water that pollutants posing health risks can be eliminated. The outcome of water quality tests enables you to make informed decisions about where to use water that’s not suitable for drinking.
For instance, if your main source of drinking water is groundwater, it’s a good idea to run a water quality test every so often to check its safety levels. This is because groundwater is prone to contamination by pollutants like gasoline, pesticides, and fertilizers from the land surface and leakage of toxins from untreated waste, landfills, and underground tanks.
2.To Monitor pH Levels In Drinking Water
When you run a water quality test, you’re able to determine the acidity levels of your drinking water. Changes in pH levels can lead to changes in the taste and appearance of drinking water. Abnormal pH levels can also damage water pipes, including pipe leakage. Due to the effects that high pH levels have, a slight change in the color or taste of drinking should not be ignored. Instead, the water should be subjected to a water quality test immediately.
3.To Check For Pollutants
If you use well water, you need to constantly test your water for pollutants. Often, well caps are used to separate pollutants from drinking water. If this cap breaks due to flooding or violent weather, contaminants can get into your drinking water. If you’re not aware of the breakage and continue drinking well water, you can easily drink pollutants without your knowledge, exposing you to potential health problems. To avoid this, you need to test the quality of your drinking water regularly. Doing this enables you to detect contaminants in the water as soon as there’s a leakage.
Aside from testing the water, using filters will also prevent you from drinking water that’s contaminated or are filled with particulates. Check out this website for reliable filtration solutions.
4.To Maintain Water Quality Records
When you test the quality of your water regularly, you can maintain a record of the data from every single test. Maintaining this record enables you to compare old data with new data to ensure that no significant changes have happened to your drinking water. This data also provides knowledge that’s required to address any water quality problem that’s detected. Where no significant changes are detected from water quality tests, this knowledge can help guide you on how to protect water sources from pollutants, as well as the most appropriate treatment approach that should be taken to enhance the water’s safety.
5.To Keep Track Of Changes In Drinking Water
Water sources undergo numerous changes. Some of these changes are sudden, while others are gradual and happen over an extended period of time. In most instances, these changes affect the quality of your drinking water but may often go unnoticed. The chemical composition of your drinking water can change without the water changing its appearance, or the way it smells or tastes. Running water quality tests on your drinking water regularly enables you to track any chemical composition changes that could be happening in your water sources. It’s also a great way to get the assurance that your water source is still safe and clean.
Final Thoughts
Drinking water should meet the highest water quality standards. However, this is not always the case. Water sources are always prone to contamination from both natural and man-made processes. This means the quality of the water you drink cannot be guaranteed as changes happen every so often. Running regular water quality tests on your drinking water is the only way to tell whether your drinking water is contaminated or not.