In this recent article from Water Online, Virginia Tech environmental engineering professor Marc Edwards expresses his concerns about the potential problems that can come from high levels of iron in drinking water.
Edwards is quoted in the article saying:
“What we’ve discovered in the last, say, five or ten years is a legitimate public health concern about having too much iron and manganese in the water… this doesn’t just look bad, it poses a significant public health threat.”
Problems Too Much Iron Can Cause in Drinking Water
While the presence of iron itself in drinking water won’t necessarily make people ill, it can help produce conditions where water becomes more hospitable to contaminants.
Edwards says in the article that iron can increase the leaching of lead into water. He also says high levels of iron can negate disinfectants like chlorine, enabling bacteria to get into water.
Bacteria in drinking water can cause numerous health risks. For example, legionella is a bacteria that can get into water. Legionella can infect the lungs and cause Legionnaire’s Disease.
Recent evidence supports this. Leading up to the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, 87 residents were diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease between June 2014 and November 2015. That’s almost double the cases of Legionnaires reported in the county in the four years previous to that combined.
Iron Levels Currently Considered a ‘Secondary Standard’
All this lends credence to the idea that the dangers of high iron levels in drinking water (which can give water a brownish color) may be very real.
And it’s a danger that many states and communities may not be effectively regulating.
According to the Water Online article:
“…the EPA doesn’t require that states enforce the agency’s set of so-called secondary drinking water standards because high iron and manganese have not been considered health risks.”
