Palm Bay, Florida
Water Quality in Palm Bay, Florida
Watershed: East Melbourne Tillman Canal
What is the water quality like in Palm Bay, FL?
Let’s dive deeper into what’s in Palm Bay water.
What’s in Palm Bay water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chlorate – Potential effect: Harm to the thyroid
- Haloacetic acids – Potential effect: Cancer
- Radium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 17 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
6 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 Palm Bay’s water come from?
Palm Bay’s water comes from the East Melbourne Tillman Canal watershed.
There are no EPA assessed water sources in the East Melbourne Tillman 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 Palm Bay’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 13 of the 17 contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Palm Bay water.
- Brita can filter 2 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 14 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:
- 1,4-Dioxane – “Exposure may cause damage to the central nervous system, liver and kidneys.”
- Arsenic – health risks
- Barium – health risks in water
- Cyanide – exposure limits
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids – chlorination byproduct*
- Hexavalent chromium – health effects
- Molybdenum
- Nitrate
- 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.
**Chlorate, causing thyroid issues, cannot be filtered out at the household level.
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.palmbayflorida.org/government to find contact information for your local officials.