Is it safer to drink water from a private well or a public source?
People on a private well may think that they've got it great, because they don't have to pay some big water company to get their water. They have their own personal supply of drinking water. The problem with that is that no-one is testing the water to see how pure or not pure it is. There can be a lot of local sources of contamination that flow underground, and your plumbing can intercept those plumes of contamination and then bring that right up into your drinking water and into your shower, in your bathroom. The fact that it is not tested can lead you down the path of months to years, because these things don't always have a taste effect on the water, they may not smell, but you can end up with years' worth of contamination without even knowing about it. The classic story is, you get people calling the health department saying, my 3 dogs all died of the same kind of cancer, other people on the street are having problems. We just tested our water and it's got high levels of benzene or it's got high levels of perchloroethylene in it. How long has this been going on? Well, if they had tested their water years before, they could have avoided that kind of exposure, and maybe some of the health risks that were occurring. Testing of your own private water supply is something the value of is much underappreciated by most people
