St. Clair Shores, Michigan
What is the Water Quality in St. Clair Shores, Michigan?
Compared to other US cities, St. Clair Shores water quality ranks in the middle range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 20 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Chloroform is at very high levels: 32x health guidelines.
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) are at extremely high levels: 115x health guidelines.
- Haloacetic acids (HAA9) are at extremely high levels: 394x health guidelines.
- HAA5 and HAA9 are byproducts of chlorine treatment, a common method of disinfecting water supplies.
- Radium is at very high levels: 17x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in St. Clair Shores water.
What’s in St. Clair Shores water?
Here are the top 5 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Chloroform – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA9) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Radium – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 20 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
13 of the total contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does St. Clair Shores have Lead contamination?
No, St. Clair Shores does not currently have lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2015 through 2017 showed concentrations of 0.0 parts per billion (ppb).
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 St. Clair Shores’ water come from?
St. Clair Shores’ water comes from the Clinton River Spillway – Frontal Lake Saint Clair watershed.
5 of the 6 water sources in the Clinton River Spillway – Frontal Lake Saint Clair watershed are in Impaired or Unknown condition. These include:
- Detroit River
- Lake St. Clair (Michigan Jurisdiction)
- Multiple rivers and streams
- St. Clair River
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway
See below for what you can do to improve St. Clair Shores’ water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in St. Clair Shores 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 75% of contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of any Lead in St. Clair Shores water.
- Brita can filter 11 of 20 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 18 of the 20 contaminants in your whole house, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your home.
- These systems are more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but can be more effective.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Barium
- Bromodichloromethane
- Chloroform
- Chromium (total)
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5)
- Haloacetic acids (HAA9)
- Hexavalent chromium
- Nitrate
- Radium
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes – byproduct of chlorination
- Xylenes
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.scsmi.net/ to find contact information for your local officials.