Throughout the fall, Harvard Chan faculty will share evidence-based recommendations on urgent public health issues facing the next U.S. administration. Ronnie Levin, instructor in the Department of Environmental Health, offered her thoughts on policies that could address contamination in the country’s drinking water supply and improve drinking water quality.

Q: Why is drinking water quality a pressing public health issue?

A: The U.S. has arguably the best and most reliable drinking water quality in the world, and that’s because we’ve spent a lot of money and time getting it in that shape. On the other hand, our drinking water is not risk-free. It’s not perfectly safe—it can contain lead, nitrate, PFAS, arsenic, and uranium, as examples. In addition, there are racial and ethnic disparities in contaminant exposures, so not everybody gets the same quality of drinking water.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing the next administration around improving drinking water quality?

A: A hundred years ago, we sunk a lot of money into water treatment and infrastructure, but then we stopped putting in that kind of investment. Now our water systems are severely aging and deteriorated, and we haven’t continued to maintain the older ones. And when we build new ones, they’re not always as well designed as the old ones.

In addition, science has moved on—we’ve found things in our drinking water that we thought weren’t bad, like PFAS, that turn out to be biologically active at very low levels. Lead, arsenic, and nitrate cause health effects at lower levels than we knew when we set the standards decades ago. We now need to catch up.

Q: What are your top policy recommendations to address drinking water quality?

A: There’s been recent progress toward reducing lead in drinking water. On Oct. 8, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a rule that requires all lead pipes in U.S. water systems to be replaced within the next decade, lowers the current level for taking action to reduce lead exposure from 15 to 10 parts per billion, and also implements several other policies to reduce exposure to lead from drinking water. If the rule is implemented and enforced, millions of people will have cleaner, safer water. Importantly, it will particularly enhance environmental protection among disadvantaged and low-income populations, which have been disproportionately impacted by lead-contaminated water.

Read the full article about drinking water quality by Jay Lau at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.