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The Global Drinking Water Quality Database & Map is a collection of shared data from public and private sources with the purpose of informing and educating the public about the quality of our shared water resources. Individuals or groups can anonymously share their data through the KnowYourH2O Drinking Water Quality Index Calculator.
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The Indoor Global Drinking Water Quality Database & Map is our effort to educate and inform the community about "drinking water quality" in our community. Rather than creating an online map that just tells you the water's general quality, we created a "sharing" platform that permits us to share privately-collected water quality data with public drinking water information and our outreach findings. We are able to accomplish this by converting the water quality data into a "Drinking Water Score" for the water.
The EPA divides water quality regulation into Primary and Secondary drinking water standards. These two areas are further divided into contaminant groups such as Microbiological, General Quality, Trace Metals, Organic Compounds, Radiological Contaminants, and Disinfection By-Products. Because of this, it makes it difficult to get an overall rating of water quality. For this reason, we developed our Drinking-Water-Quality Index Calculator that generates a Drinking Water Score. The calculator takes the raw water quality data, compares the data to a set standard, and then compares the water quality data by "Contaminant Groups" to provide a numeric drinking water score from 0 to 100 (perfect) and a rank of A, B, C, D, and E. The data are then plotted on our mapping tool by zip code only and, for privacy, does not show the point-source location of the water source.
For individuals, companies, businesses, and others that create an account, we not only convert your water quality data into a "Drinking Water Quality Score," but set it up such that you are able to see your original data you submitted from which we calculated your score. You have access to your data, can see the data on a map, and can generate reports. However, the point locations and specifics of your data source are not shared with the community. Our goal was to create a platform to share drinking water quality data that can be used to help educate and inform the community without violating the privacy of individual contributors.
We hope to add publicly available data related to radon levels, blood lead levels, and other environmental issues in addition to water quality data.
Also, check out our other tools such as our Self-Test Web App, the Neighborhood Environmental Report, our Community Environmental Widgets, the Outdoor Global Water Quality Database & Map, and our Community-Based Organization Database & Map.