Iowa is only state lab testing 28 chemicals on EPA UCMR3 list

Are there chemicals in the 34 billion gallons of water provided by public utilities every day in America? The Environmental Protection Agency is helping answer that question with a new list of contaminants that will be part of municipal water systems testing beginning this year and continuing through 2015. The State Hygienic Laboratory is the only state environmental public health laboratory that has achieved approved status to test for all 28 chemical contaminants on this EPA list known as the unregulated contaminant monitoring regulation 3 (UCMR3).

Marie Assem, analytical chemist, prepares to conduct testing of water for a list of contaminants recently selected by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Hygienic Laboratory is the only state environmental public health laboratory that achieved approved status to test for all 28 chemical contaminants on the list.

"As the state's environmental and public health laboratory, we believe that it is important that Iowa's environmental laboratory have the capability to perform this testing for public water supplies for our citizens," said Michael Wichman, associate director and head of the Hygienic Laboratory's Environmental Health Programs.

The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996 requires that every five years the EPA issue a new list of up to 30 contaminants that public water systems are required to monitor. These are considered unregulated or emerging contaminants (except for chromium) because there are no published health standards by which to measure their threat to human health and because there is concern that they may pose such a risk.

"This monitoring provides a basis for future regulatory actions to protect public health," the EPA reported.

UCMR3 testing will help measure the occurrence and exposure levels of the contaminants that constitute a potential health risk.

This UCMR3 list was published by the EPA in May 2012. UCMR1 was published in September 1999 and UCMR2 in January 2007.

Americans drink more than one billion glasses of tap water every day, according to the EPA. Clean water is especially important for babies in the first six months of life because they consume seven times as much water per pound as the average adult.