Users of Aurora city water may have recently received a letter about testing for “unregulated contaminants” in the water system.
Here’s what that means.
The city of Aurora, like other public water systems in the U.S., was required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to test its drinking water for various substances that are not currently regulated. Because these substances are not regulated, the city is not required to keep them below a certain limit within drinking water.
Bob Leible, Aurora’s superintendent of water production, told The Beacon-News that the U.S. EPA is looking at these substances to see if they should be regulated in the future based on the concentrations they find within water systems across the country.
The city collects this data for the federal government, Leible said, but Illinois’ Environmental Protection Agency requires the city to then share that data with the public, plus issue a notice letting people know that it is available. That notice was the letter residents received recently, which commonly came bundled with a water bill, he said.
Once per quarter for a year, starting in May 2024, city staff took samples of drinking water that had already gone through the treatment process then sent the samples off to an outside lab to be tested, Leible said. So, four data sets were collected for each of the 30 substances.
While some substances were detected within Aurora’s drinking water, all of the findings were barely above the laboratory’s detection limit, Leible said.
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Lithium, one of the unregulated substances that was tested for, was found to be just within what the U.S. EPA considers to be potentially unhealthy levels during some, but not all, of the quarterly tests.
To be exact, the levels found in Aurora’s drinking water were just above the agency’s “Health Reference Level” for lithium. However, according to a U.S. EPA fact sheet about lithium in drinking water, the agency has not established a “a non-regulatory drinking water health advisory” for lithium in public water supplies and “cannot confidently estimate the risk for people with lithium exposures from drinking water” at this level because most data on the health impacts of lithium is from people receiving much higher therapeutic doses.
At those therapeutic doses, the agency’s fact sheet said, some studies have found lithium can have negative impacts on the kidneys, the nervous system and other parts of the body.
“The EPA continues to assess the literature for health effects information, identify data gaps and determine the need for future studies to improve our understanding of the possible health risks associated with lithium in public drinking water,” the lithium fact sheet said.
Similar to the U.S. EPA, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also does not regulate lithium within bottled water, according to the fact sheet.
The other substances tested for in Aurora’s drinking water were different types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called PFAS, according to Leible. None of these were found at what the U.S. EPA considers to be potentially unhealthy levels, test data from the city shows.
Commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they take a long time to naturally break down and so build up in the environment or in the body over time, PFAS have been shown to cause cancer, reproductive issues and other negative health effects.
The U.S. EPA actually has set regulations for some PFAS, but those regulations are not enforceable until at least 2029, and that deadline may be further extended.
Those regulated substances are PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA and HFPO-DA, which is commonly known as GenX. However, the U.S. EPA recently announced its intention to take back and reconsider the regulations on PFHxS, PFNA and HFPO-DA.
According to city data, quarterly tests done on Aurora’s drinking water found virtually none of the regulated PFAS chemicals — or, at least that the levels of those substances were less than what could reliably be tested for.
PFBS is also regulated but only when mixed with other regulated PFAS, and it also is one of the chemicals the U.S. EPA intends to reconsider the regulation for. This chemical was found above the minimum testing level in Aurora’s drinking water during some, but not all, of the quarterly tests.
Amounts of PFBA, PFHxA and PFPeA were also found during some of the tests. While these substances are not regulated, the U.S. EPA does offer “reference concentrations” based on available health data for PFBA and PFHxA, and the amounts found in Aurora drinking water were far below what is considered to be potentially unhealthy levels.
For all of the other unregulated PFAS chemicals that were tested for in Aurora’s drinking water, none were found above the minimum testing level.
Leible clarified that the city’s water utility does not make decisions around what to regulate: that’s left up to the U.S. EPA.
But, when the federal government does eventually begin to enforce regulations on PFAS, Aurora will be ready, according to Leible. That’s because Aurora uses a carbon filtration system within its water treatment process, and that is one of the best tools available for removing PFAS from water, he said.
Residents who want to receive their own copy of the testing data can call Megan Luers at 630-256-3250, according to the letter sent by the city of Aurora.
More information about the substances that were tested for can be found on the U.S. EPA’s website at epa.gov/dwucmr/fifth-unregulated-contaminant-monitoring-rule, and further health information about the tested substances can be found in the UCMR 5 Data Summary document linked on that webpage.