Summerville, South Carolina
What is the Water Quality in Summerville, South Carolina?
Compared to other US cities, Summerville water quality ranks in the lower-middle range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 20 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Chloroform is at very high levels: 30x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in Summerville water.
What’s in Summerville 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 20 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
10 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does Summerville have Lead contamination?
Yes, Summerville has lead in its water. The most recent Lead samples collected from 2015 through 2017 showed concentrations up to 0.8 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 Summerville’s water come from?
Summerville’s water comes from the Sawmill Branch watershed.
Both water sources in the Sawmill Branch watershed are in Impaired condition. These include:
- CSTL-013
- CSTL-043
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 Summerville’s water.
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in Summerville 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 88.2% of contaminants in your drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in Summerville water.
- Brita can filter 11 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, 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:
- 1,4-Dioxane
- Bromodichloromethane
- Chloroform
- Chromium (hexavalent)
- Chromium (total)
- Molybdenum
- Nitrate
- 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: http://www.summervillesc.gov/ to find contact information for your local officials.