Miramar, Florida
Water Quality in Miramar, Florida
Watershed: Royal Glades Canal
What is the water quality like in Miramar, FL?
Let’s dive deeper into what’s in Miramar water.
What’s in Miramar water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Cadmium – Potential effect: Harm to the kidneys
- Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
- PFOS (Perfluorooctane sulfonate)
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 77 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
7 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 Miramar’s water come from?
Miramar’s water comes from the Royal Glades Canal watershed.
There are no viable EPA assessed water sources in the Royal Glades Canal watershed.
Ideally, a water source would be Known, Assessed, and 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 Miramar’s water.
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 filters with activated carbon to filter out 64 of the 77 contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Miramar water.
- Brita can filter 55 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 72 of the 77 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:
- 1,4-Dioxane – “Exposure may cause damage to the central nervous system, liver and kidneys.”
- Arsenic – health risks
- Barium – health risks in water
- Benzene
- Beryllium
- Cadmium
- Carbofuran
- Chromium (total)
- Cyanide – exposure limits
- Dalapon – herbicide used on sugarcane and sugar beets.
- Dinoseb
- Diquat – herbicide that is moderately toxic to humans. May be harmful if swallowed, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin in large quantities.
- Endothall
- Endrin – insecticide, rodenticide, and piscicide (fish poison). See: Health Effects
- Ethylbenzene
- Ethylene dibromide
- Fluoride
- Glyphosate
- Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
- Heptachlor
- Hexachlorobenzene (HCB)
- Hexavalent chromium – health effects
- Lindane
- Metoxychlor
- Molybdenum
- Monobromoacetic acid
- Monochloroacetic acid
- Nitrate
- Nitrite
- Oxamyl – chemical pesticide. Granulated form banned in U.S.
- Pentachlorophenol
- Picloram – Herbicide with moderate toxicity to the eyes. Mildly toxic on the skin.
- PCBs
- PFOA
- PFOS
- Selenium – health risks
- Silver
- Strontium
- Styrene
- Thallium
- Toluene
- Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination*
- Toxaphene
- Trichloroacetic acid
- Vinyl chloride
- Xylenes
*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: http://www.miramarfl.gov/ to find contact information for your local officials.