Cambridge, Massachusetts
Water Quality in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Watershed: Charles River – Frontal Boston Harbor
What is the water quality like in Cambridge, MA?
Let’s dive deeper into Cambridge, MA water quality.
What’s in Cambridge water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 17 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
8 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
See the What Can You Do? section below for all of the contaminants you can filter out and how to do it.
Where does Cambridge’s water come from?
Cambridge’s water comes from the Charles River – Frontal Boston Harbor watershed.
All 16 EPA assessed water sources in the Charles River – Frontal Boston Harbor watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:
- Boston Inner Harbor
- Brookline Reservoir
- Chandler Pond
- Charles River – 2 segments
- Chestnut Hill Reservoir
- Dorchester Bay
- Halls Pond
- Jamaica Pond
- Muddy River
- Neponset River
- Pleasure Bay
- Scarboro Golf Course Pond
- Stony Brook
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition.
Whether a water source is in Impaired or Good condition refers to the quality of these uses:
- Drinking Water
- Aquatic Life
- Fish and Shellfish Consumption
- Recreation
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Cambridge, MA water quality.
Conclusion – What Can You Do?
Information about water quality can be surprising.
But there’s no reason to lose hope. There are things you can do in your household as well as things you can do at a community level.
In Your Household:
- Use Berkey water filters with activated carbon to filter out 14 of the 17 contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Cambridge water.
- Brita can filter 7 contaminants (and Lead depending on the filter).
- If you want to avoid plastic, consider Berkey Water Filters.
- To filter out 15 of the 17 contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your house.
- These are more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but can be more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Barium – health risks in water
- Bromodichloromethane – health risks in drinking water
- Bromide
- Bromoform
- Chloroform – side effects
- Chromium (total)
- Dibromochloromethane
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
- Hexavalent chromium – health effects
- Nitrite
- Radium
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination*
*Chlorination is an effective method of disinfecting/treating drinking water. You can then use a water filter to reduce the effects of chlorination byproducts to get the safest, cleanest water possible.
In Your Community:
Contact your local government officials and put pressure on them to invest in cleaner waterways and upgraded city water filtration and treatment.
Go to: https://www.cambridgema.gov/ to find contact information for your local officials.