West Lafayette, Indiana
What is the Water Quality in West Lafayette, Indiana?
Compared to other US cities, West Lafayette water quality ranks in the low-mid range for contamination excluding Lead.
Most of their 18 contaminants have cancer-causing attributes.
- Arsenic is at particularly high levels: 532x health guidelines.
Let’s look closer at what’s in West Lafayette water.
What’s in West Lafayette water?
Here are the top 4 chemical compounds in your water and what health issues they can potentially cause:
- Arsenic – Potential effect: Cancer
- Haloacetic acids (HAA5) – Potential effect: Cancer
- Nitrate – Potential effect: Cancer
- Total trihalomethanes – Potential effect: Cancer
These are five of the 18 contaminants analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org).
10 of these contaminants are rated as exceeding EWG Health Guidelines.
Does West Lafayette have Lead contamination?
No, West Lafayette 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 for all of the contaminants you can filter out and how to do it.
Where does West Lafayette’s water come from?
West Lafayette’s water comes from the Wabash River watershed.
Nine out of 10 waterbodies in the Wabash River watershed are in Impaired condition.
Ideally, a water source would be rated in Good condition. See below for what you can do to improve West Lafayette’s water.
Learn more from How’s My Waterway here
What Can You Do?
Information about water quality in West Lafayette 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 90% of contaminants in West Lafayette drinking water.
- Berkey filters can also remove up to 99.99% of Lead in West Lafayette water.
- Brita can filter 7 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 17 of the 18 contaminants, consider a Reverse Osmosis water filtration system for your house.
- These are typically more expensive than pitchers to purchase, but may require fewer filter changes over time.
- They have the benefit of filtering out heavy hitters like:
- Arsenic
- Barium
- Chromium (total)
- Fluoride
- Haloacetic acids
- Molybdenum
- Nitrate
- Strontium
- Total trihalomethanes
- Uranium
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.westlafayette.in.gov/ to find contact information for your local officials.