https://archive.ph/geqRg

My mom works for our local municipal government administering a HUD lead abatement grant. The state of lead contamination in many older homes in low income areas is just awful.

I recently did a full replacement of my lead-soldered water pipes in my 1970s home in Seattle. Despite how much people rave about how great the drinking water is in Seattle, many homes have older piping systems, which will test positive for lead in the drinking water. It was a very expensive and time-consuming project, but I am glad I did it. Unfortunately, many will not even know they are being exposed due to the clean water reports from the city.

When I was a child I was taught that ingesting lead caused insanity and brain damage. I was taught that the use of lead pipes was one of the main factors that caused the Roman Empire to fall. It was implied that modern man was smarter than that now and we stopped using lead in pipes.

As an adult, I learned that lead was still used in water pipes. Even the more recent "lead-free" pipes can still have a little bit of lead in them ("no more than 0.25% lead in the wetted surfaces").

If we can rip and replace all lead pipes in just 10 years, we could also bury all nearby high voltage electric cables. But we won't.

That’s one of the more bizarre things in the US to me. Lead pipes have been outlawed in Bavaria in the 1800s. It’s not something anyone ever thinks about, so imagine my surprise when I moved to a major US city and was told that I should test my water.

This is serious, right? There really still are lead drinking water pipes used in the US?

Get ready for lower crime rates! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...

Most of lead pipes are nowadays covered with water stone inside, so amount of leaking lead should be much lower then years ago.

Replacing with new plastic pipes rise concerns about mictoplastics in water.

Whenever I hear something like this, I wonder if the Chevron ruling allows the EPA to do things like this...?

We should do asbestos and paint next.

Wait, we still use lead pipes for drinking water?

Now can we stop using PVC for supply lines?

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Good luck in NYC lol.

If you could even attempt it, it would take 100 years.

can we also wire fiber to every home and apartment in the country and screw all these ISP monopolies?

This makes me think of the Roman Empire.

Everyone here whining about lead pipes while drinking their $10 Starbucks latte from a brass boiler. lol

But what will it be replaced with? HDPE? If it’s plastic based, it seems that instead of lead we’ll get microplastics and other plasticizers. Neither are good. At least with lead is that if the pH is correctly maintained than I believe the risk is actually negligible. There isn’t anything you can do for plastic to prevent its leaching and degradation.

I’d really love if it someone crunched the numbers and estimated how much NIMBYism contributes to lead poisoning by not allowing older homes to be replaced with newer, modern homes.

Every incoming kindergartner, middle school student and high school student should be required to submit a blood lead level test to their school for data collection. This can be easily administered as part of their yearly checkup.

That data can then be used for tracking, remediation and support.

It would also reveal how much differential education outcomes are correlated to lead levels.