Organic compounds rarely exceeded drinking water standards; however, atrazine, metolochlor, simazine, MTBE and chloroform were all detected in more than 5 percent of the wells sampled.
Since the water quality of domestic wells is not federally regulated or nationally monitored, this study provides a unique, previously nonexistent perspective on the quality of the self-supplied drinking water resources used by 45 million Americans in the United States.
The newly released study on the chemical contamination of self-supplied domestic well water is featured in the August issue of science journal the Ground Water Monitoring & Remediation a publication of the National Ground Water Association; access this article and data from http://health.usgs.gov/.