Hoffman Estates, Illinois
What is the Water Quality in Hoffman Estates, Illinois?
Compared to other US cities, Hoffman Estates water quality ranks in the low-mid range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 19 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Radium is at particularly high levels: 63x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Hoffman Estates water.
What’s in Hoffman Estates 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
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 19 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
11 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Hoffman Estates have Lead contamination?
Yes, Hoffman Estates has lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected in 2019 showed concentrations up to 13.0 parts per billion.
The legal limit for lead is 15 parts per billion. Being well-below this level is a good thing.
Concentrations between 3.8 ppb and 15 ppb put a formula-fed baby at risk of elevated blood lead levels. Read more about the symptoms of Lead in water.
There is no safe level of lead for humans.
The good news is that 99.99% of the lead can be filtered out.
See the What Can You Do? section below for all of the contaminants you can filter out and how to do it.
Where does Hoffman Estates’s water come from?
Hoffman Estates’s water comes from the Poplar Creek watershed.
Eight of the nine (9) waterbodies in the Poplar Creek watershed are in either Impaired or Unknown condition. These water sources include:
- Adalyn – unknown
- Bode South – unknown
- Crabtree – unknown
- Harrow Gate – impaired
- Kollar – unknown
- Left Foot – unknown
- Poplar Creek – impaired
- Rose – unknown
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. See below for what you can do to improve Hoffman Estates’s water.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway here
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Hoffman Estates can be surprising.
But there are things you can do in your home to clean up your water.
To Remove Lead and Other Contaminants In Your Home:
There is one solution that beats Brita, PUR, and expensive whole house systems.
- It costs less per gallon.
- Needs fewer filter changes.
- And it doesn’t make your water taste weird.
- Use Berkey filters with activated carbon to filter out at least 68% of contaminants in Hoffman Estates drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Hoffman Estates water.
- Brita can filter 12 contaminants and Lead depending on the filter.
- Note: We may receive a commission if you decide to purchase filters through links on this page.
- To filter out 17 of the 19 contaminants in your whole house, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but may require fewer filter changes over time.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Molybdenum
- Monobromoacetic acid
- Strontium
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.hoffmanestates.org/government to find contact information for your local officials.