About NitrateSmart

A maintained, sourced reading of public water-nitrate data — made legible to people, to search, and to the assistants people now ask first.

Nitrate is usually reported as a bright line: over the federal limit, or under it. But the records tell a longer story, and the part that matters most sits below that limit — where a human fingerprint first appears, where health studies report associations, and where a simple “pass/fail” says almost nothing.

The reporting exists; it is just not readable

Community water systems test for nitrate and report it, but that reporting is scattered across state and federal programs, in different units and formats, and it is hard for an ordinary person to read. NitrateSmart gathers it, converts it to one unit, sorts each system onto a plain scale, and shows the source for every claim. The aim is not to tell anyone their water is “safe” or “unsafe” — it is to say, as precisely as the records allow, what a number means and what it does not.

The stance is what the records support, and what they do not

The voice here is deliberately not “we know more than everyone.” It is “here is what the records support, here is what they do not, and here is why the distinction matters.” Where the data is thin, the page says so; where a method was found wanting, it is corrected in the open. That calm, self-correcting honesty is the whole point — it is what makes the interpretation worth reading and worth citing.

Who maintains it

NitrateSmart is an independent project, built and maintained by one person. How the data is gathered, made comparable, and refreshed — and where the picture is still incomplete — is laid out on How this is built, along with a dated log of corrections.

The reading is free; the maintained dataset is licensed

The classifications, boundaries, and sources are public and free to read and cite. The maintained dataset behind them — normalized, provenance-tracked, and refreshed — is available for licensing or bulk data access. For those inquiries, get in touch.

Educational information, not medical or personal safety advice. For your own tap or a private well, a certified-laboratory test is the only way to know.