Private well groundwater quality in West Virginia, USA–2010

Abstract

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in collaboration with the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health (BPH), initiated an investigation to characterize private well water quality in West Virginia. The objective was to better characterize private well water across various aquifer geologies by testing household drinking water samples and comparing them to EPA's National Primary Drinking Water Standards. The BPH selected ten counties representing three regions to capture geologically diverse areas that represent varying aquifer geology. We collected well-water samples from participating households and analyzed all water samples for 20 constituents currently monitored in public drinking-water systems. We calculated geometric means for each constituent and compared metal concentrations to EPA maximum and secondary contaminant levels by the geologic age of the rock surrounding the aquifer where the sample was obtained. All participating households (n = 139) provided a water sample. We detected arsenic at levels higher than the EPA maximum contaminant level in 10 (7.2%) samples. We detected elevated radon-222 in 48 (34.5%) samples. Geologic age of the region was indicative of whether arsenic and radon-222 were present at levels that exceeded current EPA drinking water standards. We found arsenic and radon concentrations were higher in Permian aquifers compared to those of other geologic ages. Homeowners with private wells in areas with Permian aged aquifers could benefit from targeted public health messaging about potentially harmful constituent concentrations in the well water. This may help ensure proper testing and maintenance of private wells and reduce exposure to these constituents.

Natural and Anthropogenic Processes Affecting Domestic Groundwater Quality within the Northwestern Appalachian Basin

“…Both clusters 5 and 6 occurred primarily in the southern portion of the study region in West Virginia’s Doddridge, Tyler, and Ritchie counties. Although As concentrations above the MCL are known to occur in the western NAB, little attention has been devoted to elucidating the causes of these impairments, except to exclude potential influences of UOG. ,, Smedley et al . proposed two requirements for the development of high-As groundwaters: a geochemical trigger for As release from the solid to aqueous phase and long groundwater residence times (relative to release time scales) to enable accumulation of As within the porewater.…”

Comparative evaluation of irrigation waters on microbiological safety of spinach in field

“…The use of GW as an irrigation water source is common and preferred in the mid‐Atlantic region, as GW is considered to have superior microbiological quality than the surface water (Marine et al ). In the United States, CDC in collaboration with the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health tested 139 GW samples in 2010, in which 33·8% of these samples were positive for coliforms, and only 5% of the samples contained both E. coli and coliforms (Law et al ). Antaki et al () did not find E. coli in the GW samples used for irrigation in the region of southern Georgia during 2012–2013.…”

Analysis of Kansas Water Well Policies and Proposal of Nonpublic Household Water Well Recommendations

“…Internet search engines were also used to identify additional resources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. EPA, and ChangeLabSolutions. Resources that offered recommendations to protect nonpublic water well users were used to inform the recommendations (Chappells et al 2014;Kreutzwiser et al 2011;Ridpath et al 2016;Simpson 2004;Zheng and Flanagan 2017), as were policies and practices from other states (Convery 2005;Flanagan et al 2015Flanagan et al , 2016MacDonald Gibson and Pieper 2017;Law et al 2017; Rhode Island Department of Health 2008), recommendations from an expert panel (Fox et al 2016), and a publication from ChangeLabSolutions, "Closing the Water Quality Gap" (ChangeLabSolutions n.d.).…”