Is my water safe to drink?

Often, the first sign of a problem with your drinking water is a detectable change in your water's appearance, color, taste or odor. Sometimes, these are transient and self-resolving problems that cause no harm to you. However, there can be some chemical, especially organic compounds that can be toxic without any obvious clues.

Primary treatment methods used to handle taste, odor, or color problems include filtration, carbon filtration, softening, reverse osmosis, chlorination
and distillation.

Signs	Possible Causes
My water tastes:
salty-brackish	high sodium

alkalai	hardness, total dissolved solids, low Ph, high metal content, corrosive water

metallic	high iron, copper or zinc levels

My water smells like:
rotten eggs, musty	hydrogen sulfide,sulfate-reducing bacteria, softwater reactions in electric water heaters, algal bioproducts

earthy, fishy, grassy	vegetable and algal biproducts

oily	gasoline or oil contamination

methane	organic decomposition, gas in acquifer

My water color is:
milky	precipitation of carbonates, excessive air, suspended solids
blackish	reactions with manganese and possibly iron, IRB/slime bacteria
yellowish	presence of humic or fluvic compounds, iron, IRB bacteria
reddish	presence of dissolved or precipitated iron, IRB bacteria

return to water quality

(Source: Driscoll, 1986; Lehr, 1980)