Point of Entry Water Filtration Systems

Point-of-entry water filtration systems eliminate the need for individual filter systems at each water dispenser in your home.

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Whereas point-of-use systems filter the water before it is dispensed, point-of-entry water filtration systems filter the water when it enters your home. A point-of-entry water filtration system connects directly to your water line and acts as a central filtration system for your whole house. These systems are perfect for homes with multiple water dispensing locations because they offer peace of mind whenever you turn on a faucet.

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Access to clean drinking water is imperative because of the potential for both acute and chronic health risks associated with drinking contaminated water. Federal regulations serve the purpose of reducing the likelihood of becoming ill from drinking the tap water. The EPA regulates contaminants by establishing MCLs for microbiological, organic, and inorganic contaminants based on health guidelines, research, and feasibility15. These standards delineate the maximum amount of a contaminant that can be allowed in drinking water to minimize exposure. States may build on the EPA&#;s standards by adding additional contaminants not regulated at the federal level and by further reducing MCLs for federally regulated contaminants.

Federal drinking water regulations

To regulate drinking water, the EPA establishes primary and secondary drinking water standards. Primary standards are enforceable by law and apply to all the U.S. public water systems; their goal is to limit levels of harmful contaminants in drinking water. The EPA15 has a list of 88 contaminants regulated in the primary standards with the following contaminant categories and numbers: 3 disinfectants, 4 disinfection byproducts (DBPs), 16 inorganic chemicals, 8 microorganism categories, 53 organic chemicals, and 4 radionuclides. The EPA regulates most of these contaminants by establishing MCLs that can be present in the effluent of drinking water treatment plants. These MCLs are intended to keep people safe, but they are not necessarily safe. The maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) is the amount of a contaminant in drinking water at which there is no known or expected risk. MCLs are determined by feasibility of measurement, removal, and enforcement in combination with MCLGs, so there may be some health risks even with MCLs in place.

To supplement the enforced primary standards, the EPA sets unenforced secondary drinking water standards. They are intended to improve aesthetic qualities of water such as taste, color, and odor. According to the EPA, these standards are important because if water looks, tastes, or smells bad, people may not drink it even if it is perfectly safe. Some other secondary standards help control scaling, which restricts water flow and corrosion, which can cause pipes to wear out or dissolve harmful contaminants previously fixed within the mineral scale8.

The EPA also maintains a contaminant candidate list (CCL) for compounds that are not currently regulated but are expected to be found in public water systems and may require regulation in the future16. The CCL serves an essential purpose in the process of enacting water quality regulations. Every 5 years, the EPA decides if it will regulate or not regulate at least five contaminants on the CCL. In February , the EPA made preliminary decisions to regulate perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), but not to regulate six other chemicals including dichloroethane and acetochlor17. They make these decisions using data collected about these contaminants and compare it to the criteria for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The CCL must be updated every 5 years, and the contaminants with the greatest potential health risks in drinking water shall be placed on the list16. Once the EPA decides to regulate a contaminant, it can take years before a regulation is enacted. For example, the EPA decided to regulate perchlorate in , but as of , the EPA still has not set a MCL for perchlorate18. Because it takes many years to regulate a chemical that it deems to be unsafe for human consumption19, there may be chemicals present in drinking water for which negative healthy effects are known, but no action has yet been taken.

State drinking water regulations

States are required to have standards at least as strict as EPA standards for primary drinking water treatment20. Yet, state standards may vary from the EPA standards, providing room for states to regulate certain contaminants more strictly or address contaminants that are not yet federally regulated21,22. For example, in California, contaminants are regulated because of determinations made by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which sets public health goals based on the health impacts of individual contaminants23,24. For carcinogenic contaminants, they create regulations based on the risk of cancer from exposure to different amounts of the contaminant. Typically, the acceptable risk is for&#;at most&#;one person in a million to get cancer upon exposure over 70 years. After proposing a standard based on current research, they consult a group of scientific experts, make further revisions, and finally allow public comment. After setting a goal, they can establish an enforceable standard that is as close as possible to the goal while considering economic and technical feasibility. This process is similar to how the EPA sets its MCLs, but because it is separate from the EPA, they can regulate chemicals of local concern such as agricultural contaminants25.

Table S17,26,27,28 compares the EPA&#;s primary drinking water standards to the drinking water regulations of several states; it also displays the health effects of exposure and the origins of these contaminants. Alaska, Texas, and California exhibit an exemplary range of different state&#;s approaches to regulations, with California being the most stringent29. Exposure to regulated contaminants can cause a variety of health issues including cancer, kidney problems, nervous system problems and more, which is why these chemicals are regulated by the EPA and states. In addition, one clear commonality amongst the origins of these contaminants is that they frequently come from industrial operations that discharge waste into the environment.

Violations of standards

Even though regulations exist to limit exposure to toxic contaminants, sometimes public water utilities violate existing standards. Public water utilities are categorized by the EPA as community water systems (CWSs), transient non-community water systems (TNCWSs), or non-transient non-community water systems (NTNCWSs) (Fig. S1). The EPA then classifies the size of these public water systems in categories of very small, small, medium, large, and very large (Table 1)30. Fig. S230 displays the amount of each type of public water system by size. It can be seen that CWSs represent a larger percentage of public water systems as the size of the population served increases, which means they end up serving residential communities, whereas smaller public water systems tend to be TNCWSs.

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The EPA publishes a database with information about the types and sizes of public water systems and the violations that occur within these public water systems. Violations required to be reported under SDWA of EPA are grouped into the following categories31:

1. 1.

   Health-based, including 3 categories: (1) exceedances of the maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) which specify the highest allowable contaminant concentrations in drinking water, (2) exceedances of the maximum residual disinfectant levels (MRDLs), which specify the highest concentrations of disinfectants allowed in drinking water, and (3) treatment technique requirements, which specify certain processes intended to reduce the level of a contaminant31.

2. 2.

   Monitoring and reporting: failure to conduct regular monitoring of drinking water quality, or to submit monitoring in time, as required by SDWA31.

3. 3.

   Public notice: systems are required to alert consumers if there is a serious problem with their drinking water or if there have been other violations of system requirements, as required by SDWA31.

4. 4.

   Others: violations of other requirements of SDWA, such as failing to issue annual consumer confidence reports31.

Table 2 shows the number of serious violations by treatment plant size. A serious violation is when a public water system has unresolved serious, multiple, and/or continuing violations, which need to be returned to compliance or the system will be faced with formal enforcement action30. Many serious violators have violated monitoring and reporting guidelines; they fail to regularly monitor drinking water quality or promptly submit monitoring results to the EPA or a public health agency32. These violations indicate mismanagement or neglectful monitoring rather than an immediate health hazard.

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However, some violations are health-based violations where public water systems exceed MCLs, maximum residual disinfectant levels, or have an incorrect treatment technique that is put in place to remove certain contaminants30. Especially, those violations that can pose immediate health effects are called acute health-based violations. There were over 6.5 million people affected by health-based violations in the United States in . Violations including exceeding monthly allowed turbidity levels, treatment technique violations, Escherichia coli present in treated water, and nitrate violations have been reported30.

Allaire et al.33. evaluated spatial and temporal patterns in health-related violations of the SDWA using a panel dataset of 17,900 CWSs from to . About 21 million people are affected by health-based water quality standard violations in the year , according to the study33.

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During each year between and , 9&#;45 million people, up to 28% of US population, were affected33. Health-based violation was observed in about 8.0% of the 608,600 utility-year observations, while total coliform violation is observed in about 4.6% of all observations33. In total, 95,754 health-based violations were observed, and 37% of all violations are the total coliform type (Fig. 1a). About 36% of violations are categorized as &#;other&#; contaminants, primarily DBPs. While violations of treatment rules and nitrate are less commonly observed (21% of total)33.

a Number of health-based violations, and b total violations per water system. In total, 95,754 health-based violations were observed from to , affecting up to 28% of US population. Rural areas have a larger compliance gap than suburban and urban areas; however, fewer violations with DBP violations were observed in rural areas with higher incomes (reprinted with permission from33; Copyright© PNAS, ).

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The number of violations per CWS (Fig. 1b) differs between rural and urban areas. Rural areas have a larger compliance gap than suburban and urban areas, however, fewer violations with DBP violations were observed in rural areas with higher incomes33. Differences between rural and suburban areas were exaggerated after new DBP rules in the early s33, corresponding to the spike in Fig. 1b. Due to limited financial resources and technical expertise, regulatory compliance is a challenge for rural systems33. In contrast to large systems, small systems face restricted access to loans and outside financing34. Moreover, smaller customer base has less revenue for infrastructure improvements, repayment of debt, and salaries to attract technically skilled operators34. All these factors make the rural system operations and development challenging, and eventually may trigger the violations.

Violations also vary geographically. The distribution of the total number of violations, from to , per CWS in a given county is shown in Fig. 2A. The majority of violations are observed in rural areas, located in Texas, Oklahoma, and Idaho. Total coliform violations, as shown in Fig. 2B, are primarily observed in the West and Midwest. Differences of violations across counties can be attributed to the difference of quality of source water as well as the state-level enforcement33. Other factors such as different temperatures at different seasons can also contribute to the regional difference of violations across the U.S. For instance, high summer temperatures might cause the Southwest region to be particularly susceptible to DBP violations. SDWA violations are mostly identified in Oklahoma and parts of Texas, based on local spatial autocorrelation, shown in Fig. 2C. 11% of the CWSs have repeat violations, including two or more subsequent years of a violation33. The states with the greatest proportion of CWSs with repeat violations are Oklahoma (43% of CWSs in the state), Nebraska (35%), and Idaho (33%)33.

A Total violations. B Total coliform violations. C Spatial clusters (hot spots) of health-based violations, &#;. Violations also vary considerably across geographic locations. Some of the counties with the highest prevalence of violations are rural, located in Texas, Oklahoma, and Idaho (reprinted with permission from33, Copyright© PNAS, ).

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Table S4 shows the breakdown of the size of treatment plants and the source of water. Larger treatment plants tend to use surface water, whereas smaller treatment plants predominantly use groundwater. From the above table and information about the different types and sources of violations of drinking water treatment plants, the percentage of violations by water source can be determined. The values in Table S5 were computed using the number of surface water and groundwater violations by size and comparing that to the total number of treatment plants using either surface water or groundwater as a source by size (data from Table S4). The percentages of CWSs, NTNCWSs, and TNCWSs were computed as well, using the number of violations of those types by size and comparing that to the total numbers of treatment plants by type and size (data from Table S4). Table S5 shows that with every type of violation, treatment plants that use surface water as a source tend to have a higher percentage of violations than treatment plants that use groundwater as a source. As the size of the treatment plant increases, the percent of violations amongst public water systems that use surface water tends to decrease. The only exception seen here is for treatment plants of very large size. In addition, CWSs typically have slightly higher percentages of violations (Table S5). This analysis, presented in Table 3, shows that CWSs tend to have a higher percentage of surface water sources compared to NTNCWSs and TNCWSs.

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Non-grid-tied water resources

Domestic wells (private or homeowner wells) are the dominant source of drinking water for people living in rural parts of the United States35. Population distribution using domestic supply wells per square kilometer is shown in Fig. 3a. Over 43 million people, 15% of the U.S. population, rely on domestic (private) wells as their source of drinking water36. These private wells are not regularly tested for known contaminants, and thus, may pose unknown health risks. The water safety of domestic wells is not regulated by the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act or, in most cases, by state laws. Instead, individual homeowners are responsible for maintaining and monitoring their own wells36.

a Population using domestic wells, and b domestic wells affected by arsenic. Over 43 million people, 15% of the U.S. population, rely on domestic (private) wells as their source of drinking water. About 2.1 million people in the conterminous U.S. were using water from private wells with predicted arsenic concentration >10&#;μg/L (reprinted with permissions from35,36; Copyright© Elsevier, ; Copyright© ACS, ).

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In a study of domestic wells, water in about 20% of the wells is contaminated with one or more contaminants at a concentration greater than MCLs35,36. Table 4 summarized some common contaminants in domestic wells which frequently exceeding health standards (MCLs regulated by USEPA or U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Health-Based Screening Levels) in tests. The most common contaminants that were found to exceed health standards were metals including lead and arsenic, radionuclides, and nitrates37. Nitrates in drinking water supplies can cause harm such as methemoglobinemia in young children, but nitrates rarely cause direct harm to adults36. Microbial contaminants (for example, bacteria) were found in about 30% of wells tested, about 400 wells in total36. Ayotte et al.35. developed a logistic regression model of the probability of having arsenic >10&#;μg/L (&#;high arsenic&#;) from 20,450 domestic wells in the U.S. As shown in Fig. 3b, approximately 2.1 million people in the conterminous U.S. were using water from private wells with predicted arsenic concentration >10&#;μg/L35. Some states have both relatively large population, over 1 million people, and high percentages, over 1%, of total state populations with arsenic >10&#;μg/L. It is noteworthy that 60% of all counties with the largest population with high-arsenic wells are located in New England; other top-10 counties are located in Ohio, North Carolina, California, and Idaho, respectivly35. Considering the high risk of exposure to the various contaminations, it is therefore imperative to apply additional treatments, such as POU, before using the well water in households.

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Contaminants of emerging concern with no regulations

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are chemicals or microorganisms that are not commonly monitored in drinking water because they do not have established MCLs38. A USGS study found that over 80% of streams in the U.S. contained some form of emerging contaminant including pharmaceuticals, hormones, detergents, plasticizers, fire retardants, pesticides, and more. Although these were generally found at low concentrations, a growing number of research report their close relationships with some human diseases39,40. In addition, a more recent study found that about 8% of groundwater sources used for drinking water contain hormones and pharmaceuticals41. The unregulated status of these contaminants makes them unmonitored by treatment plants in many cases. It is also unknown how much of them end up in drinking water after drinking water treatment. Thus, there is potential health risk for people consuming these contaminants in drinking water.

Table 5 shows the features of several typical CEC types in drinking water. N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) is a semi-volatile organic compound used to help produce liquid rocket fuel, antioxidants, and additives for lubricants. Animal studies have found that NDMA causes cancer in the liver, respiratory tract, kidneys, and blood vessels39. NDMA is also expected to be carcinogenic to humans42, while EPA has not set a MCL for NDMA yet. However, it has been placed on the fourth contaminant candidate list (CCL4). Also, several states have guidelines (not regulations) for levels of NDMA that could exist in water. In California, several nitrosamines have guidelines set that were above a specified level (in the instance of NDMA, 300&#;ng/L), and a response is recommended. Potential treatments for NDMA include photolysis with UV radiation43, biological treatment, microfiltration, and RO treatment. Despite these treatments, it may still be present in water because it is a byproduct of chlorination, which occurs after treatment39.

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Pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) are commonly found in sources of drinking water and enter these sources through domestic wastewater, hospital discharges, improper manufacturer disposal, and wastewater treatment plants44. PPCPs typically enter wastewater through human excrement or bathing and washing activities45. The amounts of PCCPs found in these treatment plants is low with concentrations between ng/L and μg/L. However, their long-term health effects are unknown and they can cause health issues through accumulation in the food chain46. In addition, some PPCPs containing amine groups demonstrate the potential to react with chloramines in the disinfection process to form toxic nitrosamines such as NDMA, which is not federally regulated and can cause adverse health effects as stated before47.

1,4-dioxane is another concerning contaminant given its classification as a probable human carcinogen. Approximately 30 million people in the U.S. have levels of 1,4-dioxane exceeding the health reference level for cancer, which indicates that it poses a serious risk to human health48. It is currently on the EPA&#;s CCL4 and has been on prior CCLs, which indicates 1,4-dioxane&#;s recognition as an emerging contaminant39. The problems with 1,4-dioxane include that it is highly soluble in water and does not react easily with other chemicals. In addition, AC filters do not absorb it. The best-known removal method appears to be RO48.

Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is an additive used in gasoline, designed for more efficient fuel combustion thus to improve overall air quality. It can cause liver, kidney, immune system, testicular, central nervous system, uterine, headache, and lung problems40. Like other CECs, no regulations have been established for MTBE by the EPA. In California, an established MCL for drinking water is 13&#;μg/L and a secondary maximum contaminant level (SMCL) is 5&#;μg/L49. The SMCL was established for water quality aesthetic properties such as taste and odor42.

Perfluorinated compounds such as PFOS are extremely hazardous emerging contaminants that enter the environment through their applications in the metal industry, firefighting foam, coatings on paper and textiles, and semiconductor production50. They can also occur due to biotransformation of dipolyfluoroalkyl, phosphates, fluorotelomer alcohols, and other chemicals51. They are persistent in the environment and tend to accumulate in red blood cells48. PFCs can cause pancreatic, liver, and Leydig cell cancers40. They are frequently found in treated drinking water with levels of up to &#;ng/L, and over 6 million people receive water from systems that exceed health advisory levels for PFAS48. Studies have concluded that people who drink water with PFAS in it have higher levels of PFAS in their blood, indicating the contaminant&#;s health risk48. PFOS are easily removed by using granular activated carbon (GAC) filters which can remove over 90% of them and ROMs which can remove more than 99% of them44. The EPA decided in to regulate PFOA and PFOS in drinking water, but it may take many years before a MCL can be established as was the case with other contaminants taking over 10 years between the decision to be regulated and actual regulation44.

Antibiotics are another concerning contaminants that can be found in water. Antibiotics in water can cause the rise of antibiotic-resistant genes and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This can make the use of antibiotics less effective against human and animal pathogens. As of now, there are approximately 2 million people who die in the U.S. from antibiotic-resistant bacteria per year, which is why it is important for them not to end up in aquatic environments48. Antibiotics can be detected at very low levels across the United States in the sources of drinking water (levels of between 20 and 60&#;ng/L)52. They are rarely detected in treated drinking water, and if they are detected, the levels are even lower (5&#;20&#;ng/L), and thus present little risk to human consumption themselves53.

Another concerning area of emerging contaminants is DBPs which are produced when chemical oxidants (e.g., chlorine, ozone, chloramine, etc.) are used for disinfecting microbes in drinking water. Over 700 DBPs have been identified by EPA, while only 11 types are regulated48. DBPs have been known to cause cancer and birth defects48. Thus, they too pose a risk to human health despite regulations that exist.

In summary, although well-intended and well-developed, the U.S.&#;s drinking water regulations do not fully assure the quality of tap water to prevent either short-term or long-term illness from drinking it. Improving upon water treatment technologies and moving them closer to the POU is a way to help remove contaminants that are not regulated yet or are introduced during distribution from the treatment plant to the tap. GAC, RO, UV radiation, and combinations of the above are all advanced water treatment technologies that remove emerging contaminants effectively. Although there has been much research on the mechanics and removal efficacies of these water treatment technologies, little information is available on their application in POU water treatment.

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