With more than 300,000 West Virginia residents left without drinking water since a week ago today, after a chemical spill contaminated their drinking water supply. Environmental assessors have now estimated that approximately 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol – a hazardous chemical that is used during the processing of coal – leaked into the Elk River from a ruptured storage tank. This is substantially higher than the original estimates of between 2,000 – 5,000 gallons, and no doubt will take longer to contain and flush out of the water supply.

The chemical spill occurred at the premises of Freedom Industries – a producer of specialty chemicals used in the mining, cement and steel industries – located on the Elk River, a mere 1.5 miles upstream from an intake that supplies water to West Virginia American Water – the state's largest water supplier, which supplies residents in Charleston and nine surrounding counties with drinking water.

Residents have been cautioned not to drink the water from their taps, nor to use the water for bathing or showering or for any other use except flushing their toilets.

FEMA has already trucked in over a million liters of water to supply stricken residents, and this figure is expected to rise to around 3 million liters.

According to a report in The New York Times on Saturday, over one hundred people have visited local hospitals with health issues ranging from skin and eye irritations to feeling nauseous or vomiting.

A team of chemical safety experts aligned with the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), a federal agency whose mandate is to investigate chemical spills, will visit the stricken areas in West Virginia today to assess the cause of the chemical spill and to make safety recommendations in order to prevent a similar accident in the future.

This spill, as unfortunate as it is, highlights why it is so important for us to prepare for any situation that will leave us without safe drinking water. Water can become contaminated due to natural causes, natural or man-made disasters, or from accidental spills or intentional acts of sabotage or terrorism. When hundreds of thousands of people are affected, it becomes a logistical nightmare to distribute sufficient water to cater for everyone's needs simultaneously, especially when affected people are spread over a large area. While aid may be sent swiftly, it may still take some time to get through, and can result in pandemonium as people desperately scramble for limited supplies of essential items, particularly a vital resource such as drinking water.

A good quality home water filter not only provides a source of healthy drinking water on a daily basis, it offers a safety net in the event of a water crisis. However, even the water filtration industry was caught off-guard by this chemical. 4-methylcyclohexane methanol is not on the EPA monitored list, and not surprisingly, there are no labs currently equipped to test for it. It is why last week we released our statement regarding us simply not knowing whether the Berkey can remove this chemical or not. If you know of a lab in the WV area that becomes equipped to test for this chemical, please let us know in the comment section below.