Co-Occurrence of Metal Contaminants in United States Public Water Systems in 2013–2015

Abstract

The United States Environmental Protection Agency monitors contaminants in drinking water and consolidates these results in the National Contaminant Occurrence Database. Our objective was to assess the co-occurrence of metal contaminants (total chromium, hexavalent chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, cobalt, and strontium) over the years 2013–2015. We used multilevel Tobit regression models with state and water system-level random intercepts to predict the geometric mean of each contaminant occurring in each public water system, and estimated the pairwise correlations of predicted water system-specific geometric means across contaminants. We found that the geometric means of vanadium and total chromium were positively correlated both in large public water systems (r = 0.45, p < 0.01) and in small public water systems (r = 0.47, p < 0.01). Further research may address the cumulative human health impacts of ingesting more than one contaminant in drinking water.