How to have your drinking water tested

Drinking water is usually tested at two levels, one is a general test which gives a "total dissolved solids" (TDS) reading. You can buy an inexpensive digital TDS test meter to do it yourself. It will give you an exact reading (in PPM- parts per million) and a very good idea on how your overall water quality is like.

The second way is to test water against each specific contaminants/ chemicals. There are the inexpensive methods which is to buy some test strips (from a local aquarium supply) which will give you an approximate color reading. But it is often not very accurate.

To ensure accuracy, you would have to send some sample water to a professional lab to have them test out what's in your water against each substance in question. However, this is very expensive, about $1500 per contaminant. But, of course, very accurate!