[geepytee]

Is there any cheap way to test the quality of my water? I did some Googling around, looks like there are services that will do this for a fee but didn't look particularly affordable.

[ars]

Are you on municipal water? If you are call the water company, they will often test it for free. They are required by law to test a certain number of houses each year - yours can be one of them.

If you are on well water, call your county department of health, there might be a fee, but it should be lower than a private lab.

[geepytee]

I think so? I'll check with the city of Redwood City / San Mateo county. Good call!

[mystified5016]

Looks like there's some fairly cheap "diy water test kit" on Amazon.

I'd expect them to work reasonably well, at least for lead. The chemistry is pretty simple. Whether they can detect low concentrations is another matter. You could boil a pot of water until most of it is gone and test that. You'll have a much higher concentration of any contaminants.

[geepytee]

Just ordered one, wish there was one for microplastics too (and whichever other contaminants that I'm not aware of).

[tstrimple]

If you want specific numbers, you'll need to get a lab involved which will be more expensive. But to just detect the presence of contaminants, a cheap tester like available at hardware stores should work.

An example: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Safe-Home-Do-it-Yourself-Lead-in...

[asow92]

Regardless of your water source and/or lead contamination level, it's advisable to install a reverse osmosis filtration system. They're relatively affordable and will remove most contaminants. As a bonus reverse osmosis will produce clean tasting water rivaling that of bottled water, but you might want to consider supplementing minerals in your diet to compensate for anything lost in filtration.