Public Health Concerns at the Intersection of Drinking Water Contamination and Low Healthcare Access in Maine.

Abstract

Issues surrounding drinking water quality and inadequate monitoring of metal contaminants are particularly relevant in Maine, where 55 percent of residents rely on private wells for drinking water, yet only half of those wells test for arsenic. The public health impacts of contaminated water can be compounded by limited access to healthcare in rural areas. To better inform state and local policy, we assessed the potential public health risks that arise from the intersection of environmental and structural vulnerabilities. We used a dataset of 2,664 private drinking water samples collected between 2016 and 2025 by Maine students involved in a secondary school-based citizen science project called All About Arsenic. To evaluate the dual burden of exposure to heavy metal contaminants in areas with limited access to healthcare, we analyzed the distribution of metal contaminants in the subset of private well samples relative to health professional shortage areas across Maine.