Mount Vernon family learned of contamination through research study
Roughly half of Mainers on private well water have tested for arsenic, and that share has barely moved in nearly a decade. According to the most recent figures from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 53 percent of Mainers on private well water had tested for the contaminant as of 2023, up only modestly from 48 percent in 2014 and well below the 65 percent goal the agency set to be reached by 2020.
For one Mount Vernon family, learning what was in the water did not happen through routine testing. Wendy Brennan agreed to put her daughter into a 2009 study examining how arsenic exposure can affect children’s cognitive development, she said, primarily because her daughter wanted the free T-shirt. The family had lived on their property in the small Kennebec County town for eight years, and Brennan said she had no reason to fear the results.
When researchers came to test the family’s drinking water, they found the well carried arsenic at nearly six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum exposure guideline. Brennan said she had used the well water to mix her daughter’s baby formula.
“I pride myself on being a good mom,” Brennan said. “One of the first things I thought was: ‘I was giving my baby arsenic with her formula, and I was unaware.’”
The study Brennan joined examined how arsenic exposure can affect children’s cognitive development. The 65 percent testing goal the state CDC set for 2020 went unmet; the share of private-well households that have tested now stands at 53 percent — essentially unchanged from the 48 percent the Maine CDC recorded in 2014.