Health and Safety Issues Surrounding U.S. Drinking Water from Half a Century Ago

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The identification of possible cancer-causing substances in U.S. tap water resulted in the creation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, a law that still safeguards public health today.

EPA to study carcinogen in tap water  Nov. 16, 1974

It also mentions that there is a curated stock of carcinogenic compounds that are found in clean drinking water around some localities. And many of the detected compounds, which include chlorine, lead some scientists to believe that added chlorine  used to disinfect drinking water  may be reacting with organic material not filtered out to produce the harmful substances. 

Update

The Safe Drinking Water Act was soon passed, giving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the authority to establish a minimum standard for contaminant levels.  While chlorine is still employed  one of many kinds to eliminate waterborne pathogens, limits are imposed by the EPA on specific levels of trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids (the by-products formed from chlorine use). They include chemicals that can cause cancer after many years of being exposed to them. The agency is now going after lead and PFAS, or forever chemicals known to be associated with a host of health issues. More recently, the EPA established standards for PFAS and announced that 60–80 percent of lead pipe service lines must be replaced in under a decade.

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