This is the water your family drinks, cooks with, and showers in every day — and your city isn’t required to remove everything that’s in it. Enter your ZIP to see what’s in yours, free.
Every chemical your city’s own testing found, measured against strict health guidelines — not just the legal limit.
Drinking it is the least of it. You shower in it, bathe your kids in it, and cook every meal with it. When something’s off in your water, your body is usually the first to know, long before any report tells you.
Hard-water minerals and chlorine strip away the oils your skin makes to protect itself. Anyone with eczema or sensitive skin feels it first.
The same minerals and chlorine leave a film conditioner can’t fully rinse out, so hair goes limp and color fades faster, while a dried-out scalp turns itchy and flaky.
Children drink more water for their size than adults do, and babies are the most sensitive of all to nitrate and lead.
A hot shower lifts some of the chlorine byproducts into the steam, so you don’t just rinse in your water, you breathe it in.
The same water that leaves your skin tight and your hair dull is also carrying things with no taste, no smell, and no color: chlorine byproducts linked to cancer, chromium-6, PFAS “forever chemicals,” and lead. Your skin warns you about the water. Nothing warns you about those.
See what’s in your water →Three reasons your tap deserves a closer look:
A typical local report turns up things like PFAS (the “forever chemicals”) and lead, often under the legal limit but above what’s healthy to live with for years.
A Brita-style pitcher is made for chlorine and taste, and it does little for lead and almost nothing for PFAS. Only certain kinds of filtration bring those down to very low or undetectable levels.
See what’s really in your local tap water, then find the filters proven to remove it.
The city checks your water against a legal limit that was set many years ago. New science says the safe amount is much lower. Here’s the gap between “legal” and “safe” in a typical Northern Virginia report.
In a typical Fairfax Water report (about 2 million people), trihalomethanes run 241 times the safe level, but still count as legal, because they sit at just 45% of the legal limit. None of that breaks the law. That’s the problem.
Nine or more chemicals land in this gap in a typical report: above what’s safe, but under the legal limit. The city never has to tell you. Your report will.
Cleaning the water makes it legal to deliver. It doesn't get rid of every chemical, and a lot can change between the plant and your kitchen.
Your water starts in a river, lake, or underground. Along the way it picks up natural minerals and runoff.
The city filters the water and adds chlorine to kill germs. That keeps the water safe in the pipes, but the chlorine makes new chemicals of its own.
The pipes under your street and inside your home can add lead and other metals after the water leaves the plant. Older pipes and fittings are the usual cause.
What you actually drink depends on every step above. That's why the city's report is a good starting point, but not the final word.
The report above shows step 2, the water as it leaves the plant. The only way to know about steps 3 and 4 is to test the water at your own tap.
From the pipe under your front yard to the shower head upstairs — here's the path your water takes, and the spots along the way that decide what ends up in your glass.
One pipe brings every drop in from the street, usually through the basement wall. Your water meter and the main shutoff valve sit right here — and from this point on, the pipes belong to you, not the city. Worth finding your shutoff before you ever need it in a hurry. When this line fails, it fails out of sight — underground, on your side of the meter, and on your bill.
A backflow preventer lets water flow in but never back out — so a hose left in a puddle or a lawn-sprinkler line can't siphon backward into the water your family drinks. A pressure-reducing valve usually sits here too, because street pressure runs higher than your pipes and appliances like. A failed check valve stays invisible until a pressure drop nearby pulls water the wrong way; a worn pressure valve is louder — it lets street pressure slam everything downstream.
Every tap, the heater, the shower — everything downstream gets whatever passes this point. That's why whole-home filtration and softeners install right here, on the main line before the first branch. In most homes, this spot is empty pipe. And where a system is installed, it wears out quietly — the old water creeps back before you notice.
Hard water bakes onto the heating element and settles into scale at the bottom of the tank — the big reason heaters in hard-water areas wear out years early. Hot water also picks up more from pipes and the tank itself, so drink and cook from the cold side, always. A struggling tank usually talks before it leaks.
Cold and hot lines branch behind the drywall to every fixture. In homes built before 1986, the solder and brass at those joints can contain lead — and water that sits overnight has all night to pick it up. Give the first morning glass a few seconds of running first. Most pipe failures start smaller than you'd think: a pinhole weep at a joint, hidden behind drywall for months before anything shows.
A hot shower lifts chlorine byproducts into the steam you breathe, and the kitchen cold tap is the water that actually goes in your body. That's why an under-sink Reverse Osmosis (RO) filter installs right in that cabinet — and plenty of homes add a second at the bathroom sink, for brushing teeth and the midnight glass. One quiet exception worth knowing: the flexible rubber hoses behind appliances can let go all at once — braided stainless replacements are cheap insurance.
For a typical home — no. The simple check device near your meter isn't on any test schedule. But the yearly rule is real, and it's code, not a sales line: plumbing codes across Virginia, DC, and Maryland require testable backflow assemblies — the kind installed with lawn-irrigation systems, fire sprinklers, and some boilers — to be tested when they go in and at least once a year. Your water utility runs the program behind it: a state-certified tester checks the assembly and files the result, and homes that skip it can eventually face a shutoff notice. So if you have a sprinkler system and haven't seen a test notice in the last year, that's worth a phone call — it protects your own taps and your neighbors' water too. Your checkup covers which device you have and whether it's due.
Your free Home Water Checkup walks this exact map in your home — the heater, the pressure, the fittings, the taps — and shows you what's worth doing. Book your visit →
In plain words, what they are, what they do in the body, and why a once-a-year city report rarely makes them clear.
When chlorine meets natural matter in water, it forms trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids. You can't taste or smell them.
The "Erin Brockovich" metal, from factories and rusting parts. Because it's dissolved, it slips right past carbon.
From non-stick pans, packaging, and firefighting foam. They don't break down, not in nature, and not in your body.
From fertilizer and septic systems. Unlike most chemicals here, it can be harmful right away.
Almost never from the city, it comes from a home's own older pipes, solder, and brass. Test at your tap to know.
Calcium and magnesium cause scale and dry skin; chlorine is the taste and smell you notice first at the tap. Not the dangerous part, just the most noticeable.
A water pitcher is made for chlorine taste. The chemicals found across Virginia, DC & Maryland need different tools to remove them. Here's an honest comparison, including the choice most homes make today: doing nothing.
Tap or hover over any chemical, filter, or mark below to see what it means, in plain words.
| Chemical | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
What the marks mean
Tap any box to see why it got that mark. Notice the pattern: pitchers and carbon handle taste and the chlorine byproducts, but dissolved metals like chromium-6 and nitrate slip past them, only reverse osmosis and the complete system close every gap.
Scores are based on official safety certifications and the makers’ own published test results, not ads. Source: EWG Tap Water Database (June 2026).
We start with the Combined system. It cleans the water at every tap in your home, plus an under-sink filter that makes your drinking water almost chemical-free (under 1% left). On a tight budget? Start with the under-sink filter alone. It still protects the water you drink and cook with.
Protect the water you drink and cook with
A Reverse Osmosis (RO) system under the kitchen sink takes the water you drink and cook with (disinfection byproducts, chromium-6, nitrate, PFAS, and lead) down to under 1%. It doesn't treat the shower or the rest of the house, but it covers the water that goes in your body.
Best for: Renters, smaller budgets, or anyone who wants clean drinking water first.
Cleaner water at every tap in the house
Whole-home carbon filtration strips chlorine and the disinfection byproducts at every tap, so the shower, the bath, the laundry, and the kitchen all run cleaner water, not just one faucet. It treats the whole house at the point your water comes in.
Best for: Homes where the chlorine smell and the shower, skin, and laundry matter as much as the kitchen.
Every tap covered, drinking water to under 1%
Whole-home carbon clears chlorine and disinfection byproducts at every tap, and an under-sink Reverse Osmosis (RO) stage takes your drinking and cooking water down to under 1% for what carbon can't catch: chromium-6, nitrate, PFAS, and lead. It's both systems together, bundled at one price.
Best for: Homeowners who want it all, clean water at every tap, and Reverse Osmosis (RO) quality water to drink and cook with.
Most of Northern Virginia tests hard, and that dissolved calcium bakes into scale on your water heater’s element and tank, quietly cutting its efficiency and trimming years off its life. Your free checkup measures your hardness on the spot and checks the heater’s condition, so you can flush it, soften the water feeding it, or plan a replacement on your terms, not after it leaks.
Each price above is a typical installed range. If your pipes need extra work, the price can change, we tell you the exact number for free at your in-home Home Water Checkup. No cost, no pressure.
An independent lab ran identical water heaters, showerheads, and faucets on hard water and on softened water, side by side, for the equivalent of years of use. The difference wasn’t subtle.
Sources: independent studies commissioned by the Water Quality Research Foundation — Battelle Memorial Institute (water heaters & fixtures) and Scientific Services (detergent use).
Your report shows what’s in the water before it reaches your house. A SwiftPro expert comes to your home and reviews your current situation, discusses your goals for water filtration, and helps provide options.
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More straight answers on the blog — five quick reads, about two minutes each.