Our editorial standards

Tested Water is published by Rudderberry, LLC, a small Florida company. We aren't a lab, a government agency or a water treatment company. These are the rules every page on the site follows.

We only use public agencies and universities

Health and treatment information comes from the EPA, the CDC, the US Geological Survey, state health and environment agencies, and university extension services. We don't use product makers, sales sites or forums as sources.

Data comes from the Water Quality Portal (run by the USGS and the EPA), EPA estimates built from the 2020 Census, state drilling records and the EPA's radon map. The sources page lists every file we use, where it came from and what it can't tell you.

We check every claim against its source

Every limit, number, health effect, cost and step on a page is checked against a source page we open on the day of the review. A claim that matches stays. A claim that doesn't gets reworded to match the source or cut. If we can't confirm something, we leave it out or say plainly that it varies.

Each article lists its sources at the bottom and shows the date it was last reviewed. We review every page at least once a year, and sooner when an agency changes a limit or its advice.

We use AI tools to help draft pages and to check them against their sources. A tool's output never goes on the site without being checked against the sources listed on the page.

We write about health calmly and exactly

• We never call water "safe." We say whether results were over or under the limit, because a limit is a line an agency drew, and two wells next door can test very differently.
• "The limit" means the EPA's limit for public drinking water, unless a page says otherwise. Private wells have no federal limit, so we use the same numbers.
• We say who is most at risk, such as babies for nitrate, and what to do about it.
• We explain numbers in a way people can picture, like "about 3 in 10 tested wells," and give exact counts in tables.
• County numbers describe wells that agencies tested. We say so on every county page, and we mark results we think a single study overstated. How we read the numbers explains the rules.

Money doesn't change what we recommend

We plan to earn money from affiliate links to lab tests and treatment products. We pick the test or fix that fits the problem first, then look for a place to buy it. We tell you about free testing programs first, and pages with affiliate links say so. How we make money has the details.

We fix mistakes and say when

If you spot a mistake, a broken link or a number that doesn't look right, email hello@testedwater.com. We check it against the source, fix the page if we got it wrong, and update the date on the page.