Metals in Your Water: What You Need to Test Your Well For

Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the phrase that best describes people’s attitude about their well and their water. Unless water is coming out of the tap tinted brown with rust or people are finding sediments in the bottom of their drinking glass, most never stop to question if their water is actually clean or not.

As local experts for well water testing in Monroe, NC, we often don’t get called in to test residential wells until customers can either see or taste metals in their water and, by then, you’ve probably been drinking metal for quite some time!

Safe metals

Trace levels of dissolved metals can often be found in well water. Metals, such as calcium, magnesium and sodium, are actually essential for life and are often naturally available in the water we drink and even the food we eat.

Other metals, such as zinc, selenium, copper, iron, and cobalt, are necessary in low levels to help with digestion. These metals are inorganic compounds that occur in natural geologic formations and should be found in drinking water in small amounts.

Dangerous metals

While most metals found in water are safe in small amounts, other metals can cause chronic or acute poisoning when ingested, even in small amounts. These dangerous metals include cadmium mercury, lead, barium, and even arsenic. Unlike the safe metals mentioned above that occur naturally, contamination of your water by poisonous metals is often due to human activities such as mining, industrial production and even agricultural processes.

Effects on your health

While ingesting dangerous metals in small amounts on occasion is inevitable, continually consuming them from your water supply can be deadly. Here are some of the effects dangerous metals can have on your health over time:

• Arsenic: This odorless, colorless, and tasteless poison is one of the most dangerous metals. Symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning include fatigue, depression, nausea, hair loss, and weight loss.
• Lead: A cumulative poison that remains in the body after consumption is most dangerous to children. It can cause kidney damage, nerve and brain damage, and even death.
• Cadmium mercury: This toxin can cause harmful effects to the digestive and immune systems, lungs, kidney and nervous system, and can be fatal.
• Barium: This contaminate can cause an increase in blood pressure, muscle weakness, digestive problems and even affect the nervous and circulatory systems.

Test your well water

If you think you will see or taste a problem with your water, you’re wrong. Metals in your water may be causing permanent damage to your body and you won’t know until you start to have symptoms of poisoning. By then, the damage is often irreversible.

The best way to protect your health is to test your well water regularly for metal contaminates. If you want to make sure that you and your family have safe drinking water, call Love Well & Pump Supply, LLC, your local experts for well water testing in Monroe, NC, today!

Categorised in: Well Water Testing

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