Sociodemographic Barriers to Advancements in Water Treatment among U.S. Community Water Systems
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Past work shows sociodemographic disparities in siting of pollution sources and exposures to contaminants in drinking water. Advancements in water treatment such as reverse osmosis, ion exchange, and activated carbon have been recommended by the United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency for removing emerging classes of chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Here we retrospectively examine national scale disparities in implementation of such treatment technologies across US community water system (CWS) with different sizes and sociodemographic composition of residents within the same counties or service area boundaries. The study window for our analysis spans 2004-2022 and includes up to 36,611 CWS. Time-to-event statistical analyses revealed that adoption of technology useful for removal of emerging contaminants among the largest and most well-resourced CWS occurred at 7-8 times the rate of small and very small CWS over a 19-year period. Results showed significantly lower adoption among counties or service area boundaries with higher proportions of non-Hispanic Black residents. Each 10% increase in the non-Hispanic Black population within the CWS county or service area boundary was associated with lower odds (-14.2% [95% CI: -18.9%, -9.7%] to -25.2% [-36.8%, -13.7%]) of adopting advancements in treatment over the study window. We infer from these results that as regulatory requirements evolve, policy interventions supporting costly water treatment infrastructure among small CWS and those serving historically marginalized communities will be needed to address sociodemographic disparities in water quality.
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4416087101