Am I slowly poisoning myself with lead?
October 24, 2024 11:55 AM   Subscribe

How seriously should I take this letter about possible lead pipes from my water supplier?

Got a letter in the mail yesterday from the water company which basically says, "Warning, we don't know if the private service line that runs from our lead-free pipes into your home, which you are responsible for, is lead or not and here is what you should do."

Hubby and I first freaked out but then calmer minds have sort of prevailed, and I'm not sure how to proceed. We have lived in this house for 25 years. The house itself is almost 100. My initial thought is that the water company did some sort of internal audit and discovered that they have no record of the makeup of our private service line. Which just means they have no record and perhaps this letter is their legal CYA letter. They have a guide for helping you determine if you have lead pipes, but this is not very helpful. It doesn't look like the picture of a lead pipe with the bulbous ends, and the pipes have threads, but are not magnetic. So maybe lead? I also can't tell from the scratch test they recommend. It's all just old and brown when I scratch it. They also asked me to take a photo and indicate what type of pipe it is and submit it through an online form (which again makes me think this is a CYA thing). I chose "unknown" and submitted the photo.

Neither of us has ever had any health issues that would indicate lead poisoning. We both get yearly extensive blood panels because of "the old" and no doctor has ever raised a concern about what they see and related it to lead (hubby has hypertension, but lead is not the only cause of hypertension).

I've had a plumber down there who put a shut off valve on the main line, but after the pressure gauge, so not really where the service line comes out of the wall, but my plumber is a rock star and I would like to believe that he would have noticed it when he was down there if it physically looked like lead. Maybe I'm delusional.

I also looked back at our home inspection, and while there was never a lead water test, there are pictures of the service line in the inspection but nothing indicates that there may be lead pipes in the inspection report. Is this even a thing they would check? And if they did, would they put in the report that it definitely ISN'T lead, or would they only note if they id'ed it as lead?

I ordered a lead water test kit off Amazon to try the cheap route before I panic and start wondering how I am going to fix this if in fact it is lead. I guess I'm just wondering how to proceed and how worried or not worried I should be. Why after 25 years is this suddenly a thing? I called the water company to try and get more info but they have a 3-day call back waiting period.
posted by archimago to Home & Garden (13 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I got a similar scary letter from the City of Chicago a few years ago, got the free test kit the city provides, sent it off, and got a much less scary letter a few weeks later saying there's not enough lead in my water to concern myself with.

Don't freak out until you have to!
posted by phunniemee at 12:01 PM on October 24, 2024 [5 favorites]


I just got a similar letter from my city in Maine, so perhaps there is a CYA trend among water districts right now. I haven't worried about it because I had a lot of plumbers out there in the yard where it connects to the city line a few years ago -- turned out the problem was the city line, not my line, thank goodness -- and nobody said anything about lead.
posted by JanetLand at 12:04 PM on October 24, 2024


Best answer: The short answer is that this is probably part of your water utility's lead reduction program and they probably have information about this on their website that would be helpful.

The water utility in my city (Denver) is replacing all their lead service lines and is in a multi-year process to address it. Their approach has been
- target neighborhoods that were mostly built prior to the end of lead pipes
- mail a letter to everyone in those neighborhoods with a house over a certain age that basically says "hey, you might have lead lines, just FYI, we'll be in touch"
- send everyone in those areas a Brita pitcher and subscribe them to filter replacements (free)
- send everyone a lead testing kit

I wasn't too concerned about this because even though our house is in a target neighborhood and built in the early 1900s, I had done lead testing with the state lab when we bought the house which was negative (and I don't think the utility cross-referenced with prior tests or with permits)

Neighborhood by neighborhood, crews are replacing the main lines and scheduling visits with individual houses to test their house-specific service line. When we got ours done it turned out that our service line had been replaced in the 1980s so it didn't matter anyway.

Denver has been pretty proactive about notifying people in the affected neighborhoods about what would be happening (especially since it involves lengthy road work) but it definitely started with a slightly ominous letter similar to the one you describe.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 12:05 PM on October 24, 2024 [3 favorites]


Best answer: The Biden administration and the EPA have a goal to replace 100% of lead service lines, this is probably why your city is reaching out to you. I don't think it's fair to say they are trying to cover their liability, I think they are trying to identify who has an LSL and get their citizens to replace them, and there may now be public funding to help do that. Providing which city you live in might give more targeted answers. I think all the reasons you've given for why you shouldn't panic are totally reasonable.
posted by muddgirl at 12:07 PM on October 24, 2024 [8 favorites]


The worst case scenario is that there is some amount of lead in the water you've been using for 25 years. A few more days of that water after 25 years will not meaningfully hurt you. It sounds like you are already working on multiple fronts to get clarification, which is great. The most likely case is that your water is fine and the water company is doing a audit/review of all their pipes.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 12:07 PM on October 24, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: When we bought our house (about two years ago) the inspector took one look at the service line coming in from the outside and said that it was lead. He did the scratch test and confirmed it. We had the service line replaced before we moved in. It wasn't cheap (on the order of $5k, I believe) but we got a bit knocked off the price of the house and it was in our budget of stuff we needed to fix. There used to be a city program to subsidize replacing lead pipes, but it lapsed before we bought the house, so we were on the hook for the entire cost.

My understanding is that the water test will not tell you whether or not the pipes themselves are lead. Lead pipes can be ok as long as lead is not actively leaching out of them into the water. In Flint, MI, what happened was the city changed to a more corrosive water source without proper treatment, and the different water made lead start leaching into the water. But the water test can't hurt -- it will at least tell you if there is enough lead in the water to worry about.

It's probably worth calling up the home inspector you used (if they're still around) to ask them whether they check for lead pipes, and if they would have noted it in the report.
posted by number9dream at 12:09 PM on October 24, 2024 [3 favorites]


Oh, sorry, I missed that you bought the house 25 years ago, so probably there's no useful information to be gotten from the inspection company, if it even exists.
posted by number9dream at 12:11 PM on October 24, 2024


the pipes have threads, but are not magnetic ... It's all just old and brown when I scratch it.

Lead pipe typically has soldered joints, because lead is too soft to be secured with threads cut into the lead or even with compression fittings. Also, lead oxide is quite soft as well, so if you scrape a lead pipe good and hard with a sharp steel edge like a paint scraper, you'll definitely see silvery coloured metal, not brown, in the middle of the scratch.

Copper is non-magnetic, oxidizes to a chocolate brown colour, and needs a much harder scrape to reveal the bright copper colour underneath the oxide layer which is quite hard. So it sounds to me like what you have there is most likely copper pipes, which if they're old will have compression nuts screwed onto brass fittings (newer copper lines usually use soldered-on fittings, also made of copper).

The photo you sent off will probably confirm that, and if you stick up a copy on Imgur or whatever and post a link here, you'll probably get quite a reliable eyeball ID that way too.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 PM on October 24, 2024 [4 favorites]


If you aren’t already filtering the water you do drink, that might help ease any worries about taking in more lead. A review from Wirecutter endorses Brita’s Elite filters - Wirecutter is a low-key advertising agency, but Brita products are widely available and tested by recognized third-party orgs that certify their ability to remove certain contaminants (link to a Consumer Reports guide about drinking-water safety).

The Elite filter is “ANSI/NSF-certified for more contaminants than any other gravity-fed filter we’ve tested; those contaminants include lead, mercury, cadmium, PFOA and PFOS, and multiple industrial compounds and “emerging contaminants” that are increasingly found in tap water. It’s also rated to perform for 120 gallons or six months, which is three times the rated lifespan of most other filters.” (NSF here is the National Sanitation Foundation, which is one of the reputable third-party certification orgs mentioned by Consumer Reports.)
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:43 PM on October 24, 2024 [2 favorites]


Filter your water and test it for lead -- it will be ok!
posted by twelve cent archie at 1:00 PM on October 24, 2024


Even if the pipes are lead, if they're old there's probably a decent layer of mineral buildup that's formed a protective barrier. Get a lead test and that'll tell you what your exposure is.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:59 PM on October 24, 2024 [1 favorite]


Best answer: A recent update to the Lead and Copper Rule just went into into effect. This updated regulation adds further protective actions to the regulation that has been in place for many years. One of the new requirements is that every utility must identify the material of every single pipe in their system (utility is responsible for) and every customer service line (the line from the meter box to your house that you are responsible for). The lines can be lead, non-lead, or unknown. Many utilities do not have documentation for each house on these materials, so many lines may be identified as unknown.

The new rule requires utilities to tell each customer who has an unknown service line that it is unknown. The rule just went into effect October 16th, so that's why everyone is getting letters now.

If you do have lead, don't freak out yet. Utilities treat with corrosion control inhibitors (usually phosphate) and take other measures to prevent metals from leaching out of a pipe (even lead ones) where necessary. In addition, as long as you are drinking/cooking with "fresh" water and not water that has been standing in your pipes for long periods, the lead (if any) will also be low.

Just a disclaimer, there's lots more to the new rule and lead in drinking water, but this should be more than enough to get your started. Let me know if you have any questions. I am a drinking water scientist and I'm happy to help if I can.
posted by jraz at 3:55 PM on October 24, 2024 [7 favorites]


You've gotten lots of good answers here already, but I wanted to emphasize that the key factor in whether you're likely to experience negative health effects from the presence of lead pipes in your home has to do with whether your water utility is providing adequate corrosion control treatment. The vast majority of utilities do this properly, and given how long you've been in the house with no issues, it's unlikely this is a pressing problem for you. Communities across the US are working through lead service line replacement projects, and it sounds like yours is doing the right stuff.
posted by that's candlepin at 9:22 AM on October 25, 2024 [2 favorites]


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