Short answer: No measured result is above a legal limit; lithium sits above a screening level, and the water is hard. City of Houston serves 2,970,543 residents.
Your water bill or annual water quality report names your actual supplier.
CITY OF HOUSTON (EPA PWSID TX1010013) delivers surface water to 2,970,543 residents. This report reflects 29 individual PFAS result(s) from the source UCMR5 observations and the latest Lead & Copper Rule 90th-percentile result. The utility's 2025 CCR reports hard water and chloramine disinfection.
Houston's delivered water reads as a mixed but well-managed picture in the federal records. In the 2024 UCMR5 round the two regulated forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, were not detected, and the most recent lead 90th-percentile result was 5 µg/L, well under the 15 µg/L federal action level. The measures that stand out are the disinfection by-products that come with chlorinating a very large surface-water system: total trihalomethanes at 43.6 ppb and haloacetic acids (HAA5) at 40.8 ppb, both below their federal limits (80 and 60 ppb) but high enough to shape the score. Water hardness of 7.9 grains per gallon sits above the point where many households notice scale.
A result under a federal limit is a compliance statement, not a health verdict. Disinfection by-products are the trade-off for microbial safety; hardness is an aesthetic and appliance issue, not a regulated health limit.
If the by-product or hardness numbers matter for your household, review the Houston findings with their sources on this page, confirm your supplier on your utility bill, and see which filter technologies address chlorine by-products and hardness.
1health-based violation in the last 10 years
From EPA SDWIS. Counted once per contaminant per year, as in the Track record score.
Every filing is listed; the Track record score counts at most one per contaminant per year.
Resolved
to Resolved
Plumbing inside a home can add lead that the system record can't show. A tap test tells you what reaches your glass.
lead 5 µg/L, below the 15 µg/L action level
PFHxA 5.1 ng/L, below the 400000 ng/L state limit (+3 more PFAS detected)
Screening tells you if something is worth a closer look; a lab result is the number you can act on.
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Screening: quick check, not lab-grade
Varify
17 strip readings, including lead, chlorine, fluoride, iron and hardness, plus 2 coliform bacteria tests
What it can't tell you: Strip colors give rough ranges, not lab numbers, and it cannot detect PFAS or arsenic.
Lab-certified results
ETR Laboratories
50+ substances, including lead, copper, arsenic, nitrate, hardness and coliform bacteria
What it can't tell you: It does not test PFAS, and not every result on the panel falls under the lab's accredited scope.
Each card names which Houston findings its current certification covers, and which it doesn't.
As an Amazon Associate, PurityMap earns from qualifying purchases. A product appears here only when a current certification record covers at least one identified concern; every concern stays listed. The retail offer is looked up afterwards and never changes which products appear or their order. Affiliate disclosure.
PurityMap does not give a safe/unsafe verdict; it shows what the public records measured. For Houston, PFAS were detected below their limits, and 6:2 FTS 42.6 ng/L, PFBA 10.6 ng/L and PFPeA 6.7 ng/L with no federal or state limit; the lead 90th-percentile result was 5 µg/L against the 15 µg/L action level. CITY OF HOUSTON (PWSID TX1010013) has a Purity Score of 87/100 (confidence: high), assessed at the water-system level and computed only from contaminants that were measured. Water can change in your own pipes, so a certified test is the only way to know what comes out of your tap.
CITY OF HOUSTON (PWS ID TX1010013) is the public water system on record for Houston, Texas, serving about 2,970,543 people. Confirm the utility on your water bill before acting on a specific finding.
Surface water (primary source of record in EPA SDWIS).
In EPA's UCMR 5 testing (2023-02-06 to 2025-02-21), PFHxA was detected at 5.1 ng/L, below the 400,000 ng/L state limit. 6:2 FTS (42.6 ng/L), PFBA (10.6 ng/L) and PFPeA (6.7 ng/L) were also detected; they have no federal or state limit.
CITY OF HOUSTON's most recent lead 90th-percentile result (2024) was 5 µg/L, below the 15 µg/L action level. That figure comes from sampled homes; lead usually enters from a building's own pipes and fixtures, so only a test at your tap tells you what you drink.
PurityMap's current record for Houston holds 34 findings: 2 above a reference, 4 detected within the reference, 3 detected with no limit and 25 not detected. Each finding links to its dated public record; a parameter that was never monitored is shown as pending, not as a pass.
Houston's water is recorded as 7.9 gpg, hard. Hardness is an aesthetic and plumbing characteristic, not a health-based limit.
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Perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA)
1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (6:2 FTS)
Perfluoropentanoic acid (PFPeA)
11-Chloroeicosafluoro-3-oxaundecane-1-sulfonic acid (11Cl-PF3OUdS)
1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorodecane sulfonic acid (8:2 FTS)
1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (4:2 FTS)
4,8-Dioxa-3H-perfluorononanoic acid (ADONA)
9-Chlorohexadecafluoro-3-oxanone-1-sulfonic acid (9Cl-PF3ONS)
Hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA) (GenX chemicals)
N-ethyl perfluorooctanesulfonamidoacetic acid (NEtFOSAA)
N-methyl perfluorooctanesulfonamidoacetic acid (NMeFOSAA)
Nonafluoro-3,6-dioxaheptanoic acid (NFDHA)
Perfluoro (2-ethoxyethane) sulfonic acid (PFEESA)
Perfluoro-3-methoxypropanoic acid (PFMPA)
Perfluoro-4-methoxybutanoic acid (PFMBA)
Perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS)
Perfluorododecanoic acid (PFDoA)
Perfluoroheptanesulfonic acid (PFHpS)
Perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA)
Perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS)
Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)
Perfluoropentanesulfonic acid (PFPeS)
Perfluorotetradecanoic acid (PFTA)
Perfluorotridecanoic acid (PFTrDA)
Perfluoroundecanoic acid (PFUnA)
Every value is the published result from the cited public record. A reporting limit is the lowest level the method could reliably quantify; a non-detect is not a guarantee of zero.
UCMR5 Analytical Results
UCMR5 Analytical Results: CITY OF HOUSTON (TX1010013)
US EPA
State SDWIS Compliance Record
Lead & Copper Rule 90th-percentile: CITY OF HOUSTON (TX1010013)
US EPA SDWIS
Consumer Confidence Report (CCR)
City of Houston 2025 Consumer Confidence Report (CCR)
City of Houston
Methodology: how we analyze water. Prepared with AI assistance and reviewed by the PurityMap Editorial Team before publication.
Start with the hot-or-cold tap check. Where City of Houston reported something related, it's shown below.
Houston disinfects with chloramine (utility water-quality report).
Lead at City of Houston: 5 µg/L (90th percentile, 2024 monitoring period). Lead has no taste, so a taste neither shows nor rules it out.