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Questions or Comments: pdws@tceq.texas.gov

Drinking Water: Consumer Concerns

Low pressure? Poor service? Is your water cloudy or colored? Does it smell bad? Is your supply contaminated? Identify the problem. Find out if it could affect your health. Learn more about notices or reports from your supplier.

Drinking Water in Your Area

Drinking Water Watch
Use this searchable database of analytical results and compliance data to learn more about the quality of your drinking water and your public water system's compliance with state and federal regulations.

Technical Guidance
If you seek general information for operating a public water system.

Plan Review
To learn if your public water system’s treatment facilities comply with state drinking water regulations or the status of compliance.

Exceptions to the Rules
To learn if your public water system is operating treatment facilities by approved exceptions to state drinking water regulations.

Bottled Water

Bottled Water
In order to produce bottled water in Texas, the system must meet PWS requirements; this gives information about those rules.

Drinking Water and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The CDC website provides links to resources that answer common questions about drinking water and links to waterborne disease fact sheets.

Fluoride in Drinking Water: Is It Safe?
Answer copied by permission from the American Water Works Association's "Plain Talk About Drinking Water" (2001).

Landscape Irrigation
Training, licensing, rules, and regulations for landscape irrigators. Find a licensed individual or make a complaint about one.

Radiochemicals and Drinking Water
Information on the occurrence of radiochemicals in public water systems (PWSs) in Texas, and what are the long-term risks to health and treatment options. Compliance determination and public notification requirements.

Understanding Chemical Analysis Results
How to read and interpret the results of chemical analyses reported to public water systems by a drinking-water laboratory.

Using Bleach for Disinfecting Drinking Water and Water Wells
Guidance for determining which bleaches may be used for disinfecting water that is to be used for drinking, preparing foods, or other forms of consumption.

Choosing Home Water Treatment
If you wonder if home water treatment is right for you and your family, this information may help you evaluate your needs and options.

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Disinfection Byproducts

Disinfection Byproducts
Disinfection byproducts or DBPs, are chemicals that are formed when organic carbon reacts with chlorine, a chemical used to disinfect water against pathogenic organisms.

Relative Risk to Public Water System Customers from Disinfection Byproducts
Explains the relative risk to Public Water System Customers from Disinfection Byproducts.

EPA Drinking Water Health Advisories

Health advisories provide information on contaminants that can cause human health effects and are known or anticipated to occur in drinking water. EPA's health advisories are non-enforceable and non-regulatory and provide information to state agencies and other public health officials on health effects, analytical methods, and treatment technology associated with drinking water contamination.

EPA Health Advisory for Cyanotoxins
Cyanobacteria naturally occur in surface waters. Under certain conditions, such as in warm water containing an abundance of nutrients, they can rapidly form harmful algal blooms (HABs). HABs can produce toxins known as cyanotoxins, which can be harmful to humans and animals.

EPA Health Advisory for PFOA and PFOS
PFOA and PFOS are fluorinated organic chemicals that are part of a larger group of chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). PFOA and PFOS have been the most extensively produced and studied of these chemicals. They have been used to make carpets, clothing, fabrics for furniture, paper packaging for food and other materials (e.g., cookware) that are resistant to water, grease or stains. They are also used for firefighting at airfields and in a number of industrial processes.

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