The first nationwide investigation of potential socioeconomic disparities in nitrate concentrations in US drinking water is reported in the open access journal Environmental Health.
The majority of average nitrate concentrations were below 1 mg/L, the level at which nitrate occurs naturally in aquatic systems.
Dr Laurel Schaider, lead author of the study said: "We hypothesized that Hispanic Americans might have higher nitrate in their drinking water because many US farmworkers are Hispanic, and agriculture is a major source of nitrate pollution.
These results suggest that there may be additional reasons why Hispanic residents in the US have higher nitrate in their drinking water."
The authors suggest that previous evidence of possible health effects associated with nitrate concentrations of 5 mg/L and above in drinking water raises concerns for the 5.6 million Americans served by public water supplies with average nitrate concentrations above this level.
Research article: Environmental justice and drinking water quality: are there socioeconomic disparities in nitrate levels in U.S. drinking water?
Schaider et al. Environmental Health 2019 DOI: 10.1186/s12940-018-0442-6 For an embargoed copy of the research article please contact Anne Korn at BMC.
Environmental Health is a public health journal serving the public health community and scientists working on matters of public health interest and importance pertaining to the environment.
A pioneer of open access publishing, BMC has an evolving portfolio of high quality peer-reviewed journals including broad interest titles such as BMC Biology and BMC Medicine, specialist journals such as Malaria Journal and Microbiome, and the BMC series.
by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.