Palm Desert, California
What is the Water Quality in Palm Desert, California?
Compared to other US cities, Palm Desert water quality ranks in the high range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 31 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Arsenic is at extremely high levels: 481x health guidelines.
- Palm Desert also has high levels of Radon (123x health guidelines) and Uranium (12x health guidelines).
Let’s look closer at what’s in Palm Desert water.
What’s in Palm Desert water?
Here are the top 7 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Bromodichloromethane – Potential effect: Cancer
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Hexavalent Chromium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Nitrate – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are seven of the 31 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
14 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Palm Desert have Lead contamination?
No, Palm Desert does not currently have lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2016 through 2018 showed concentrations of 0.0 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 to learn how to filter out contaminants.
Where does Palm Desert’s water come from?
Palm Desert’s water comes from the City of Indian Wells – Whitewater River watershed.
There are no known natural water sources in the City of Indian Wells – Whitewater River watershed.
Ideally, a water source would be known and rated in Good condition.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve Palm Desert’s water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Palm Desert can be surprising and downright scary.
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 80.8% of contaminants in your drinking water. (Berkey Light and Travel Berkey are the only types available in California.)
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Palm Desert water.
- Brita can filter 14 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 27 of the 31 contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your house.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but are much more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Arsenic
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- DBCP (Dibromochlorophane)
- Fluoride
- Nitrate
- Nitrite
- Selenium
- Strontium
- Tetrachloroethylene
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.cityofpalmdesert.org/ to find contact information for your local officials.