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Drinking Water Research
In the Spotlight
Science Overview
EPA establishes and enforces standards to protect drinking water quality and ensure that Americans have access to safe drinking water. To support regulatory efforts, drinking water research is is improving our understanding of linkages between health and drinking water by providing the science to:
- protect the quality and sustainability of water resources
- ensure that treatment facilities are capable of controlling waterborne contaminants
- understand and manage health risks associated with public water supplies
- prevent and mitigate impacts of water distribution and storage systems on drinking water quality
- improve infrastructure reliability and sustainability
EPA is dedicated to providing safe drinking water to the public. Cutting-edge research is conducted to improve the safety, reliability, and sustainability of drinking water supplies. Methods are produced that improve our ability to analyze waterborne contaminants, measure exposure and elucidate health effects associated with waterborne contaminants. The research program develops methods, models, and tools to analyze health risks, optimize approaches for treating and distributing drinking water, and improve the integrity, reliability, and sustainability of water infrastructure.
Two long-term goals that address the need for new scientific knowledge, tools, and technologies to provide safe and reliable drinking water and support the statutory requirements under the Safe Drinking Water Act. They are:
Risk Characterization Research: Produce methods, data, and tools to characterize drinking water sources, treatment efficacy, distribution and storage systems, and health risks associated with waterborne contaminants.
Risk Management Research: Produce data, tools, models, and technologies to prevent, control, manage, and/or mitigate potential health risks associated with sources, treatment, distribution, and use of drinking water and to promote the sustainability of water resources and the reliable delivery of safe drinking water.
Within these two long-term goals, research encompasses the hydrologic or water cycle with an emphasis on surface water and ground water sources that are used to supply drinking water. The research is organized around protection of drinking water sources and characterizing and managing health risks associated with exposure to waterborne contaminants. The research is organized under five themes:
- Assessment tools
- Source Water/Water Resources
- Treatment and Residuals
- Distribution/Storage and Infrastructure
- Exposure/Health Effects
Assessment Tools
- Develop innovative methods and approaches to identify and characterize H. pylori, caliciviruses, other sources of human pathogens and cyanobacteria and their toxins in water
- Determine in-vitro genetic toxicity of waterborne chemical contaminants
- Develop methods for cumulative health risks associated with concurrent exposure to multiple waterborne contaminants through drinking water
- Provide method(s) for monitoring waterborne chemical contaminants for use in the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR)
Source Water/Water Resources
- Improve methods to measure concentrations of Cryptosporidium spp. and Giardia spp. in source waters
- Evaluate and demonstrate biosensors as a tool to protect source waters
- Assess best management practices (BMPs) for atrazine in rural watersheds
Treatment and Residuals
- Conduct full-scale demonstrations of arsenic treatment technologies
- Develop advanced oxidation processes for destruction of MTBE in small drinking water systems
- Determine how small systems that rely on conventional treatment can achieve protozoan removal through microfiltration and ultra filtration systems
- Study the extent to which conventional treatment and filtration can control cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) and associated toxins and exudates (e.g. taste and odor compounds)
Distribution and Storage Systems
- Determine how dissolution of arsenic from corrosion byproducts, iron particles, scale, and/or particulate material entrapped in drinking water distribution systems can impact the net exposure to arsenic through drinking water and potential health risks
- Characterize drinking water distribution system biofilm microbial populations using molecular detection methods
- Evaluate the relative effectiveness of chlorine and chloramines in controlling Aeromonas growth and persistence in distribution systems
- Assess how implementation of alternative surface water treatment technologies such as membranes and advanced oxidation impact distribution system water quality and biofilm characteristics
Exposure/Health Effects
- Evaluate waterborne disease occurrence in the young and elderly in a community intervention study
- Study disinfection byproducts (DBPs) and adverse reproductive outcomes in California
- Apply biomarkers in a Chinese population to assess cancer and noncancer effects due to arsenic exposure
- Assess exposure to arsenic in humans in utero and in early postnatal life
- Conduct on-going epidemiological studies