Is your tap water safe to drink?
See what's actually in your city's water — detected contaminants, legal limits, and whether you need a filter.
Cities with data
Exceed a health limit
Safe — stains/tastes
Safe to drink
Browse by state
US cities, grouped by state — EPA legal limits. States with a 🔴 mark have at least one city above a health limit.
Browse by province & territory
Canadian cities, grouped by province/territory — Health Canada guidelines.
How we classify water quality
Hardness and safety are different things. Every city page shows the detected contaminant levels against the legal limit (Health Canada for Canadian cities, EPA for US) — and one of three verdicts:
A contaminant is above its legal health limit. We name it, give the number vs the limit, and explain whether a filter helps.
Meets every health limit, but an aesthetic parameter (iron, manganese, sodium) runs high — cosmetic effects only.
Every detected contaminant is below its legal limit.
Cities with a contaminant above the legal limit
These are the cities worth a closer look — 7 total, each with a named exceedance.
Safe — but stains or tastes
These meet every health limit but have an aesthetic parameter running high (iron staining, manganese, taste).
Assiniboia, SK
Stains/tastesBallantrae, ON
Stains/tastesBurwash Landing, YT
Stains/tastesCarmacks, YT
Stains/tastesHolland Landing, ON
Stains/tastesNobleton, ON
Stains/tastesOld Crow, YT
Stains/tastesQueensville, ON
Stains/tastesStouffville, ON
Stains/tastesStrasbourg, SK
Stains/tastesWatson Lake, YT
Stains/tastesSafe to drink
667 cities meet every legal limit. Here are a few examples — search any city above for its full report.
Learn how to read your water
How we get these numbers — and when to doubt them
Search a smaller city and you might find two sites showing different contaminant numbers — or a scary figure that the utility itself has never published. Water quality data gets copied between aggregator sites with no link back to a source, so a single outdated reading can spread far enough to look like fact.
That matters more here than anywhere else. When we tell you a city's water is above a legal limit, you deserve to know exactly where that number came from — not a vendor trying to sell you a filter.
What we do instead.
- Primary sources only. We cite the utility's own water-quality report, a state or provincial health department, or USGS/EWG data — never a vendor, never a water-filter lead-gen site.
- We read the actual report. We name the specific contaminant and show your city's measured level against the legal limit — EPA for US cities, Health Canada for Canadian ones.
- Every number is traceable. Click the source link on any city's page (and in its Sources section) and you'll land on the exact document we pulled it from.
- Kept current. Each page shows the report year its numbers are based on.
The rule is simple: if you see a contaminant number here, you can click straight through to where it came from. If we can't trace it, we don't publish it.
About us: HardWaterHQ is part of Gravison Group. Questions or a correction? Contact us.
Disclosure: some product links are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. This never affects the data.