"Low-income homeowners are least likely to test and treat their well water for arsenic, and a state program to help them has treated fewer homes than expected."

"Wendy Brennan agreed to participate in a study examining how arsenic exposure can affect children’s cognitive development primarily because her young daughter wanted the free T-shirt. It was 2009, and the family had lived on their property in the small Kennebec County town of Mount Vernon for eight years. Brennan said she had no reason to fear the results.

But when researchers came to test their drinking water, Brennan learned that her family’s well tested nearly six times above the Federal Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum exposure guidelines for arsenic.

“I pride myself on being a good mom,” she said. “One of the first things I thought was: ’I was giving my baby arsenic with her formula, and I was unaware.’”

Brennan is not alone: just 53 percent of Mainers on private well water had tested for arsenic as of 2023, the latest figures available. The number has not moved much since 2014, when around 48 percent of Mainers on well water reported having tested it for arsenic, and is far short of the goal set by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to have tested 65 percent of wells by 2020."

John Forbes reports for the Maine Monitor August 17, 2026.

Source: Maine Monitor, 08/19/2026