The drinking water in Washington Court House is safe for consumption, according to Ron Fannon, Class III supervisor at the city’s water treatment plant.

Reports of chromium-6 being detected from water tests at the Washington C.H. water treatment plant were released earlier this week by the Environmental Working Group.

Although 20 years of research has indicated that chromium-6 may cause cancer, the US EPA has been slow on moving to establish maximum contaminant levels for individual states.

Instead, states use the US EPA maximum contaminant level of 100 parts per billion of all chromium as the standard.

Due to litigation, California imposed a maximum contaminant level of 10 parts per billion of chromium-6 in state drinking water. Ohio follows the US EPA standard of 100 parts per billion of all chromium and chromium-6 remains unregulated.

Fannon said the water reports for chromium-6 in the Washington C.H. water are nowhere near the US EPA standard of 100 parts per billion.

He said that even though chromium-6 is an unregulated contaminant, they still test for it in the water.

“There are no standards for it, so we don’t test for it all the time. We do send our tests out, and they are checked for chromium at least once a year—as a heavy metal,” said Fannon, who said that last year’s test showed there was no chromium-6 in the water.

He said this year’s test is getting ready to be done and they should have the results back in about a month.

“To me, we put out a good product and it’s safe,” said Fannon.