The Safe Drinking Water Act got a boost this week when U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced the agency's plans to better protect you from contaminants in your drinking water. "To confront emerging health threats, strained budgets, and increased needs—today's and tomorrow's drinking-water challenges—we must use the law more effectively and promote new technologies," said Jackson, before outlining a four-point plan to:

• address contaminants as a group rather than one at a time to enhance drinking-water protection in a cost-effective way;
• foster development of drinking-water-treatment technologies to address health risks posed by a broad array of contaminants;
• use the authority of multiple statutes to help protect drinking water; and
• partner with states to share more complete data from monitoring at public-water systems.

Even if the Safe Drinking Water Act were to regulate every conceivable contaminant and water companies were to stick to the letter of the law, contaminants could still enter your drinking water after it leaves a water-treatment facility. That's because many of the countless miles of water-distribution pipes throughout the country are nearing their end of service life or are in disrepair. What's more, household plumbing remains a main cause of lead contamination in homes built before 1986.