What is nitrate and could your water be contaminated with it?
Martha Lorenz lives in the shade of orchards, living in the house where she grew up outside of Ceres, California. She remodeled it in the 1980s. … She’s always gotten her water from a well. ”I didn’t think anything about it as a kid, you know, you just go to the sink and get your glass of water,” Lorenz said. But that all changed two years ago when she found out her drinking water was contaminated with nitrate. … Nitrate is odorless and colorless and can be dangerous. In infants, it can cause “Blue Baby Syndrome,” which causes low oxygen in the infant’s blood. It can be fatal. Nitrate can also cause cancer if the level in water is higher than 10 milligrams per liter. … Nitrate can come from a number of sources: urban wastewater applied on the land, septic tanks, farm manure, or fertilizer on golf courses or crops.
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