Millions of people are exposed to unsafe drinking water every year in the US.Industrial towns like Pittsburgh and Detroit have discovered unsafe levels of lead in their water, which can lead to permanent brain damage in children.Other cities are reeling from the aftermath of chemical spills, which have released toxic substances into their main water supplies.Imagine turning on the tap in the morning to find an unpleasant brown sludge that tastes like metal. Then imagine that state officials told you that water was safe to drink.That was the reality for residents of Flint, Michigan in 2014, when lead from aging pipes seeped into their water system, effectively poisoning an entire community.Read more: Erin Brockovich is warning about an emerging drinking-water crisis in the US. Here's how she recommends you protect yourself.The scandal was one of the most egregious instances of water contamination in the US, but it wasn't an isolated occurrence. Every year from1982 to 2015, between 9 million and 45 million Americans got their drinking water from a source that violated the standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).While rural areas are the most contaminated, a few major cities have struggled to renovate their aging pipes and enforce safe standards among local jurisdictions. Here are some of the cities with the worst tap water in the US.SEE ALSO:These $2,000 solar panels pull clean drinking water out of the air, and they might be a solution to the global water crisisPittsburgh officials have been accused of downplaying the threat of lead-contaminated drinking water. In 2017, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority issued a warning to residents to boil their tap water before drinking it. Even basic activities like brushing teeth or washing dishes should be done with boiled water, they said.The alert went out after Pennsylvania's environmental regulators discovered low levels of chlorine in the water system, which could potentially expose residents to a parasite called giardia that causes diarrhea, cramps, and nausea.The city has also struggled to combat high levels of lead in drinking water, with the EPA reporting that there are not enough state officials to perform mandatory inspections. A 2017 audit revealed that health officials in Pittsburgh may have misled residents into thinking that their drinking water was safe. Milwaukee health officials may have failed to warn families whose children tested positive for lead.Milwaukee has also been mired in scandal when it comes to safe drinking water. In 2018, the city's health commissioner, Bevan Baker, resigned amid news that public health officials failed to warn families whose children tested positive for elevated lead levels from 2015 to 2017.Residents were previously told to install water filters if they lived in a home built prior to 1951 due to concerns about lead contamination. In 2018, environmental activists called upon Milwaukee's mayor, Tom Barrett, to resign over the crisis.Officials still aren't sure if the water in Flint is safe to drink.Flint residents may no longer be encountering the same odorous brown sludge they discovered in 2014, but local politicians are still worried about whether the tap water is contaminated.In 2017, after three years of distributing bottled water to local residents, Flint officials declared the water safe to consume. But Michigan congressman Dan Kildee has said that the city can't trust its water supply until all of the lead service pipes had been replaced. Flint is currently working to replace its old pipes by 2020.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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