“Is my tap water safe to drink?”: assessing a national sample of Consumer Confidence Reports for public health communication

The Environmental Protection Agency requires that public water systems create an annual report for their customers. This report is known as a “Consumer Confidence Report” (CCR) and was claimed to be the “centerpiece” of consumer right-to-know under the Safe Drinking Water Act. However, previous research indicates that CCRs are not understandable to members of the American public; as such, they are not serving their purpose of communicating important information about tap water to consumers. The purpose of this manuscript is to assess the communication and content quality of CCRs published in 2019-2020. No known work has examined the readability of CCRs published since 2013. In addition, no known work has evaluated CCRs for their adherence to EPA requirements. This manuscript describes the collection of a nationwide sample of CCRs, and the application of a content analysis to the sample. The objectives of the analysis were twofold: 1) to examine CCR communication quality; and 2) to evaluate them for their inclusion of legally-mandated content, as well as non-mandatory information that may be useful to customers. No CCR in this sample earned a passing communication score. When an item was required by law, the majority of CCRs included it. However, far fewer CCRs went “above and beyond” to provide readers with additional facts about their tap water, even though such information may be very helpful for consumer trust. This suggests that additional legal requirements for CCR content and language could have a marked impact in improving the reports to meet the needs of the American public.