Looks like there's some fairly cheap "diy water test kit" on Amazon.

I'd expect them to work reasonably well, at least for lead. The chemistry is pretty simple. Whether they can detect low concentrations is another matter. You could boil a pot of water until most of it is gone and test that. You'll have a much higher concentration of any contaminants.

If you want specific numbers, you'll need to get a lab involved which will be more expensive. But to just detect the presence of contaminants, a cheap tester like available at hardware stores should work.

An example: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Safe-Home-Do-it-Yourself-Lead-in...

Are you on municipal water? If you are call the water company, they will often test it for free. They are required by law to test a certain number of houses each year - yours can be one of them.

If you are on well water, call your county department of health, there might be a fee, but it should be lower than a private lab.

The dose makes the poison here.

How much lead is permissible before it’s bad? The answer is, very very very little.

In comparison, you get copper contamination from copper pipes (especially if the water is too acidic), however the body handles a little copper just fine. It doesn’t build up in the body unlike lead.

Then you’re left with plastics: PEX or PVC. As of yet, there’s some potential concerns with microplastics in general… but that is from all the tiny plastic particles found everywhere, not solid pieces of pipe. And there hasn’t really be any evidence that it causes any specific known issue. If it was some giant problem (like lead in drinking water!) then the magnitude of effect would be much more obvious.

I would assume they do leach microplastics and nanoplastics and require third party proof that they do not. From what I can find on the internet plastics leach micro/nanoplastics period. https://safepipingmatters.org/plastic-pipes-microplastics-im...

Before then, those of us with homes that aren't 100% rodent-proof forever have to factor in just how much mice and rats luuuuuv chewing on PEX hot water pipes. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/rodents-chew-pex-pipe/

PEX is easy to work with and cheap up front. The cost and risk are shifted onto the future owners.

Replaced it with higher-end pex. Yes, there is a trade-off there, but to me the effects of lead over long periods of time are very scary. I also have a filter for our actual drinking water that is able to filter some micro plastics as well.

You're going to find 'health problems' with every pipe material. Even stainless steel will contain trace amounts of lead or another toxic metal.

The gold standard is copper + lead-free solder for incoming pipes, and PEX for sewer/outgoing.

I wouldn't use PEX for fresh water pipes.

I know there are at least two types of PEX, if you do replace pipes make sure you use the highest quality stuff you can get because PEX isn’t just PEX

PEX isn’t new, it has been in use for at least 50 years by now

Copper pipes + lead free (silver) solder is also an option.

Yeah I'm too lazy to look up a source now, but I did look it up and both types of PEX will leech microplastics into your water.

It sounds like a big facepalm, and it kind of is, but it's not a crazy idea to filter your water at the taps: you probably only have 2-6 of them anyway. I'm a fan of the whole-home water filter, but yeah then you've gotta be confident about your pipes.

I support RO water filters. But consider not cooking with that water either. I’d just bite the bullet and eliminate the lead.

Only about a 20dB improvement for something that has a zero safe exposure level.

I have a young toddler so would have needed multiple filters throughout the house. They tend to like to drink from the bath and my anxiety can’t handle that.

I tested the water at a local company. Did multiple water tests. First pull in the morning, another one after flushing for a few minutes and then in multiple areas. Home inspector let us know we may have lead in the joints for the pipes which turns out to be a significant amount.

The issue is not removing old pipes, but even getting access to install new pipes. This typically means opening up walls and floors, and patching the resulting holes after it's done.

Yes, a lot of the old pipes were left in place. That seems to be fairly common as they are difficult to remove given they are made of copper

Seattle does a good job of publishing stats about their water and it is tested at multiple different locations. However, as you allude to, you should test your individual water as well.

As far as I know newer homes are using pex these days. I lived in a newer townhome prior to this house and that was pex too. There’s a place in Fremont that does water testing.

Lead causing the downfall of two major empires in history would be very funny

This article rather seems to prove what I said?

“The authors of the study stated that it could be assumed that other municipalities in Germany – with the exception of Frankfurt am Main and the southern German states – might also be confronted with increased levels of lead in drinking water.”

It’s not surprising to me that the former GDR states that the article mentions as hotspots in the following paragraph are in a different position, they have to catch up in a lot of areas.

(And that’s not going into what’s considered “exceeded” levels in the EU.)

I tried several times to find an appropriate answer to your comment, but it's hard. If you do not realize that "Europe" is made up of many vastly different countries, and that Bavaria is not a part of Hungary, then I just don't know what to say.

There are a few California towns that would have benefitted from buried power transmission lines in recent years.

Are we sure that microplastics from the new pipes aren't just as bad? Can you make your water reasonably microplastic-safe by running it for 2 minutes in the morning?

Most electrical cables are AC. Burying them just leads to higher losses.

Reduced fire risk is the main reason. The $ value of damage after a big fire often isn't THAT much smaller than the cost of undergrounding cables in that area. There's also some fringe benefits for aesthetics, electrocution risk, and maintenance costs (underground maintenance is more expensive but less common)

Prevent fires - and overhead power lines are ugly AF. You don't notice it until you go to a place where they don't have them and wonder why the scenery looks so nice.

They're much safer, have much less maintenance, and higher lifetime 'uptimes'.

Power on telephone poles have a couple problems, mainly involving trees/cars/miscreants breaking them and causing power outages (and sometimes fires). Some people also feel they're unsightly.

However, underground cables can be also be broken (e.g: by water leaks or backhoes), and in these cases, it can be more expensive and time-consuming to find and fix the break. I believe initial installation is also more costly.

> there are additives which AIUI prevent or at least significantly reduce leaching

Hard water (high in calcium and magnesium) can form a scale on the inside of copper pipes. In a way this acts as a protective layer, as the water doesn't actually come into contact with the copper.

Sure, but isn't this the same place that mandated lead pipes for most of its existence?

This is the case in my area; our service is almost 100 years old. You just need to run the water for minute if you haven't used it recently, since the leech is very slow.

Another issue besides tearing up the whole front yard (our line is 8' deep) is it would likely destroy the ancient ceramic sewer line. An upgrade can get expensive quick

> also given that 100+ years ago they weren't as diligent in mapping out things underground and they put sewage, electricity and internet in the same ground since then.

I have some experience with the local utility companies in my city and it's shocking how often they don't know where their own lines are, even ones that are only a decade or two old. I can only imagine how lacking the knowledge is from 100+ year old infrastructure.

Every once in a while they dig one up by accident in Boston. Many ~ancient cities don't even know where all the pipes are, or how they're connected. It'll be a colossal project.

Unavailable in EU, so here we go; https://archive.is/9I14n

Because I was curious: the deadliest wildfire in California's history killed 0.00021% of the state's 2018 population.

That's not a huge problem, though, unless you drink the hot tap water.

Yes and no. If congress has granted the EPA authority to regulate water to ensure it's not bad for you, then someone needs to determine what "bad for you" means.

Previously, under Chevron, the courts would defer to the EPA as the experts to make that determination (with the understanding that congress could always pass more specific legislation if they felt the EPA was overstepping its granted authority)

What the Supreme Court has said is deferring to the agency is going too far, and that if congress wants specific things regulated then it needs to be specific in it's legislation. Prima facie that makes sense, except for two major problems: congress is not productive enough in passing legislation, and congress are not the experts

This means that when questions like this arise, it comes to the courts to be the ones who end up interpreting the statutes and making the determination on what "bad for you" means.

Not anymore.

Or rather, judges have been given the power to make technical interpretations of law rather than just looking at the broad meaning of a law and leaving the technical interpretation to the agency.

See the overturning of the Chevron decision.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

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The price of freedom is ~~eternal vigilance~~ childhood brain damage.

That's a weird way to say you have no idea what Chevron was about and what judges do.

Judges always determined if an agency was acting within its statute.

The question that Chevron settled, was what if the statute was too ambiguous? Congress used to update laws regularly, but those times are over. It can't legislate effectively anymore. A lot of our laws are ancient and they're designed for a bygone era that often predates even the computer, never mind the internet, modern medicine, etc.

Chevron said, judges don't get to make decisions in those cases. Because those would be arbitrary decisions. It's better to have third party experts make those decisions until Congress can catch up. And if Congress has a problem it can overrule them as it always could. Agencies set up processes to make the review open, to gather data and evidence, comments for the public, etc.

Now we have the worst of all worlds. Appointed partisan judges, with no oversight, no accountability, get to make monumental arbitrary decisions about how minutia of our lives work, based on absolutely nothing, with no review, no criteria and no relevant expertise at all. All while essentially having no code of ethics and being subject to lobbying.

It is a typical example of "I'm right so I should be allowed to bypass the democratic process and do whatever I want" thinking. It's quite dangerous.

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If you see people turning violet, you should definitely assume something's wrong with water quality.

Yes, when older homes get replaced by newer, high-density housing, the lead pipes go bye-bye. That was the entire point. NIMBYs are often fine replacing existing homes with newer homes of the exact same size.

Is there any plastic that is just carbon chains? My understanding is all plastics contain additives. This [1] is just one study of many that show HDPE (and other plastics) leaching phthalates. Please don’t come at me or anyone with the ad hominem attacks. This is something I have looked in to in the past, and is of great concern of mine.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5848201/