1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Update the EPA's Outdated Nitrate Drinking Water Standard I am writing as your constituent to ask you to press the EPA to update its outdated nitrate standard for drinking water and finally complete the health assessment it has delayed for years. The current EPA limit — 10 mg/L — was set decades ago to prevent acute infant "blue baby syndrome." It was never designed to address the chronic risks now linked to nitrate exposure, including elevated cancer risk and adverse birth outcomes, at levels below the current legal limit. The EPA already knows this. Per Investigate Midwest (Aug. 2026), the agency cited new cancer and birth-defect science in its 2010 and 2017 reviews, but the follow-up risk assessment has stalled. Researcher David Cwiertny said the EPA has "opened the door acknowledging the need for more assessment and then just left it ajar." Nitrate pollution from agricultural runoff keeps worsening in farm states like Iowa, where utilities are struggling to keep levels safe. I am asking you to: 1. Call on the EPA to release its long-delayed nitrate health assessment. 2. Press the EPA to lower the nitrate limit based on current science. 3. Support funding and staffing for EPA's Office of Water. 4. Request a written explanation of the assessment's timeline. Clean water shouldn't depend on a standard frozen in the 1990s. Please let me know what steps you plan to take.