The Lead Pipe Bomb in the US

Lead pipes, antiquated law threaten water

Experts, and even some regulators, say existing laws are failing to protect Wisconsin and the nation from harmful exposure to lead in drinking water that leaches from aging plumbing — a danger illustrated by the public health crisis in Flint, Michigan.

At least 176,000 so-called lead service lines connect older Wisconsin homes to the iron water mains that deliver municipal water, according to an estimate by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Milwaukee alone, where 60 percent of the state’s known lead-poisoned children live, has 70,000 lead service lines.

Regulators concede that the Lead and Copper Rule, the 25-year-old federal law that seeks to minimize the danger from these lead pipes and indoor plumbing fixtures, is failing on several fronts:

• Methods for sampling often fail to detect the highest level of lead in a consumer’s home.
• Too few homes are sampled, and those that are may not be in the neighborhoods most at risk.
• The requirement that utilities replace some lead lines when they exceed federal thresholds may actually cause dangerous increases of lead in drinking water.

Lead is primarily leached into Wisconsin’s drinking water by the corrosion of lead pipes and indoor plumbing components.

Health effects of lead include irreversible brain damage in children under age 6 and an increased risk of miscarriage in pregnant women.

Decades ago, when it became clear that lead was one of the worst toxins for the developing brain, U.S. regulatory agencies began to eliminate the heavy metal from gasoline, paint and new plumbing. But the efforts to address the nation’s existing water infrastructure were limited.

Marc Edwards, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech and one of the nation’s foremost experts on lead in drinking water, helped Flint address its massive problem with lead-contaminated drinking water that has poisoned a number of the city’s children.

Edwards said millions of U.S. homes have some lead components in their water delivery system, although he acknowledged “no one knows” the exact number. He agreed with some who have called the widespread risk posed by lead pipes and the astronomical cost to replace them one of the biggest environmental disasters in U.S. history.

Source: Post-Crescent

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1 Comment

1. This is mostly wrong. The Lead and Copper regulations have been in effect for almost 25 years. They are designed to identify waters that are corrosive to lead or copper and require corrective actions to make the water non corrosive and if not then to require lead line replacement. The Flint situation occurred because they did not follow the regulations, and did not even follow good practice to identify and control corrosivity when they changed their source of water to the river from Lake Huron. Lead levels that were detected in some children were somewhat higher. But I have not seen reports that the blood lead levels were extremely high. The high numbers that I have seen are well below the average child lead levels that existed when leaded gasoline was in use. In the 1976-1980 time period the average US child had 16 ug/dl. The report that I saw from the Michigan DHHS indicated 3.4% exceeded 5 ug/dl and 0,6% exceeded 10 ug/dl. The average US today is around 1 ug/dl and that is mostly from he elimination of leaded gasoline.