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Almost 20% of Americans are drinking nitrate-contaminated water

In the early 20th century, scientists discovered how to produce nitrate from air. This was key to the development of factory farming because nitrate is a very efficient . But the following decades revealed significant downsides to the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers. Because the compounds in fertilizer can make their way into soil, groundwater and nearby waterways, nitrogen-based fertilizers have emerged as the main source of in drinking water.

Now, examines a new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that finds around 18% of the United States population relies on drinking water with elevated , which the EWG defines as levels above 3 mg/L.

Nitrate is a naturally occurring compound that , . However, the rise of after World War II has accelerated nitrate contamination in the environment to levels far beyond those found naturally in the nitrogen cycle. And that’s a problem, because high levels of nitrate have been .

One study found that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10%, due to less livestock manure and less fertilizer needed for feed crops. Corn is a prime example: , but unlike many other plants, “there’s no amount of nitrogen that can hurt the crop,” says Anne Schechinger, who led the EWG analysis as EWG’s senior director for agriculture and climate research. This can lead to farmers overapplying nitrogen-based fertilizers to corn, resulting in nitrogen-saturated soil and, eventually, nitrate in drinking water.

“When you have a lot of animal facilities in a small area, there’s just not enough farm fields to apply the manure to dispose of it without it being over-applied,” Schechinger tells Sentient. “So you will see manure often being over-applied to the same farm fields, like in Iowa, here in Minnesota, and .”

In the United States, the problem is exacerbated by the federal government’s massive financial incentives for corn farmers, she adds. Corn, , was the , according to USAFacts.

“When we have government policies like farm subsidies and crop insurance that really pay farmers to grow corn, you’re going to have more corn on the landscape,” Schechinger says. “So that’s a big driver of this problem.”

Although high nitrate levels have been linked to health problems in humans, research and public policies have not provided clear or consistent guidance on how much is too much.

The EPA’s legal limit for , known as the maximum contaminant limit or MCL. The agency established this threshold in 1962 to reduce the risk of acute blue baby syndrome, a condition that’s most common in babies, in which excess nitrate leads to .

However, more there are other at The Technical University of Denmark’s National Food Institute recently issued a report for the Ministry of Environment and Gender Equality of Denmark should reduce the risk of colon cancer and developmental issues from long-term exposure to nitrate in drinking water.

The Minnesota Department of Health states that suggest the water is contaminated from human activities, and those levels could rise over time. The Environmental Working Group looked at water systems with that level or more in its most recent analysis.

The EWG reports that almost one in five people in the United States may be drinking nitrate-contaminated tap water, but that’s likely an understatement, as the analysis only included . Although the comes from public water, many people living in rural regions with high nitrate pollution use well water, which wasn’t included in the EWG analysis.

In Iowa, for example, in 2022, rely on well water, and in 2020, in the state. That could be significant given that in the country. A March study from the Iowa Environmental Council and The Harkin Institute found that this is in part linked to — you guessed it — .

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