Drinking Water Quality: A Clear Need for Appalachia’s Healthy Homes Future

One year ago, the National Center for Healthy Housing published David Jacobs’ indictment of drinking water quality in the United States. Jacobs, currently the chief scientist for the National Center for Healthy Housing, was formerly the director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.

If there has ever been a scientist who could speak with authority about the need for water quality standards, Jacobs is he. His thesis was straightforward: make drinking water quality a clear part of the healthy homes strategy. 

Many of you have heard me speak about the eight key principles for a healthy home.

The final principle, “free of contaminants,” necessarily includes a drinking water supply without lead or other contaminants.

In parts of greater Appalachia, this is easier said than done. Some of our central Appalachian neighbors in communities to the north of us, in states like West Virginia, struggle for clean water to drink and practice good hygiene. In our area of the southern Appalachians, Duke Energy is on the tail end of a 5-year cleanup of a coal ash spill on the Dan River near Greensboro, at the state line. Heavy metals such as arsenic can easily end up in the watershed from coal ash spills. It follows that groundwater is frequently contaminated at or near the coal ash sites that dot the Carolinas and Appalachian landscapes.

Speaking of heavy metals, let’s talk about lead. Lead standards for drinking water are almost non-existent. There is no real health-based standard for the acceptable levels of lead in drinking water in the U.S. To my knowledge, the same is true for North Carolina and surrounding states.

Though I don’t see a lot of lead pipe in western North Carolina and surrounding areas of late, I do see a lot of young families buying industrial-era homes to refurbish. To be on the safe side, my team and I always confirm that lead pipes have been replaced with safe alternatives. Thanks to decades of education, most parents know it’s important to safeguard their children from the possibility of exposure to lead. 

Even if the plumbing in an old house has been updated, there’s always the possibility that the aging infrastructure in many small or underfunded American towns has not. In cases where the quality of the system is unknown, it’s better to err on the side of caution. 

Healthy homes professionals must also consider whether there are likely chemical or biological contaminants in the water supply.

In olden days, hill folks who were wise located their outdoor facilities downhill from their drinking water. Those who were were not as well-informed left themselves vulnerable to the spread of infectious disease, such as typhoid.

Back in the day, typhoid was widespread. In 1901 there were still 8,000 to 10,000 cases of typhoid fever in North Carolina annually, according to https://www.ncpedia.org/infectious-diseases-part-ii. Folks in these parts took the illness seriously.

In her novel, Christie, a New York Times best seller, author Catherine Marshall described several characters – including the heroine – fighting to survive during a typhoid epidemic in 1914. Thankfully, by the mid-20th century, typhoid dwindled as outhouses became a thing of the past, wells and public pumps were replaced by water and sewage systems, and medical treatments improved. 

A century later, we may expect household water and sewage systems to continue to improve and evolve. Healthiness measures increase sustainability and ensure contaminants do not enter precious water supplies.

Guidelines for sampling and determining water quality can sometimes be difficult to interpret. A Healthy Home exam can help remove the guesswork – because the primary standard for your home’s water quality should be its healthiness.