A Washington D.C. based environmental group says it's not trying to put blame on local cities for contamination of hexavalent chromium. A single sample taken an Avion Water Company customer's tap was one of 35 taken across the country that showed levels in excess of what the State of California is proposing as a public health standard. “This is an upstream pollution problem that needs to be stopped at the source. We need better water source protection and while we do advocate all utilities do their own testing for this and let their all their customers know the results, this doesn’t mean that they’re the ones responsible for the pollution.”

Leanne Brown with the Environmental Working Group says the only consumer level filtering system that can remove this chemical is a reverse osmosis system.   Hexavalent chromium can come from manufacturing, pulp mills, and leather tanning.