The United States has had to confront the poor quality of their public drinking water on multiple occasions in the past couple of decades.

So perhaps it’s not all that surprising to learn that there’s something in there that has even scientists scratching their heads.

In fact, scientists have been trying to identify this mystery chemical for over forty years.

They knew it was a byproduct of chloramine, a disinfectant commonly used in water treatment, but other than that?

They were stumped.

At least, until now, when a study has been published that claims it’s chloronitramide anion, which was previously unknown to science. It’s a compound of one chlorine atom, two nitrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms.

It does share some aspects with other waterborne chemicals that are toxic, but since it was technically just discovered, scientists don’t know yet whether or not it could be harmful for humans to consume.

Julian Fairey, the lead author on the study, thinks more research is in order, and fast.

“We need to investigate it. We don’t know the toxicity. This work was 40 years in the making in terms of trying to identify the compound, and now that we have identified it, we can delve into how toxic is this thing.”

Percentages are on our side, though, since most contaminants in drinking water are in low enough concentrations to be harmless.

Chemistry professor Oliver Jones, who was not involved in the study, is also optimistic about chloronitramide anion’s safety.

“I agree that a toxicological investigation of this anion would be useful now that we know its identity, but I am not overly worried about my tap water. The question is not – is something toxic or not – because everything is toxic at the right amount, even water. The question is whether the substance is toxic at the amount we are exposed to. I think here the answer is probably not.”

There are plenty of concerning things in our water, like microplastics.

It sounds like this one should be low on the list of concern.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a quantum computer simulation that has “reversed time” and physics may never be the same.