Don't drink the water

[glatt]

Washington D.C. had quite a scandal in the last year with extremely high levels of lead in the water. The biggest kicker, and the thing that made it a scandal was that the water company kept the test results quiet. There were numerous stories of kids and pregnant women drinking the tap water, without any knowledge it was unsafe. It was pretty scary for a while, since in Arlington, I get my water from D.C., and my house is old. We thought there was a fair chance we might have lead in our water. I got several test kits on the internet, and did many tests before I calmed down and saw that my water was safe.

Well, in an article in today's Washington Post, a review of several other cities shows that this isn't a problem in just D.C.

If you live in an older, East Coast city, you can't be sure that your water is safe. Several cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, routinely throw out test results that show high levels of lead in the water. They only report the low test scores to the EPA. They give a false sense of security to their customers when they claim that their lead levels are within EPA limits.

You can buy test kits online for about $10-20 a kit. It's what I did. If you have young children in your home, or are pregnant, you may consider it too.

The Post article requires filling out a form and registering for free, so here's the first third or so of it:

Lead Levels in Water Misrepresented Across U.S.
Utilities Manipulate or Withhold Test Results to Ward Off Regulators
By Carol D. Leonnig, Jo Becker and David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 5, 2004; Page A01


Cities across the country are manipulating the results of tests used to detect lead in water, violating federal law and putting millions of Americans at risk of drinking more of the contaminant than their suppliers are reporting.

Some cities, including Philadelphia and Boston, have thrown out tests that show high readings or have avoided testing homes most likely to have lead, records show. In New York City, the nation's largest water provider has for the past three years assured its 9.3 million customers that its water was safe because the lead content fell below federal limits. But the city has withheld from regulators hundreds of test results that would have raised lead levels above the safety standard in two of those years, according to records.

The result is that communities large and small may have a false sense of security about the quality of their water and that utilities can avoid spending money to correct the problem.

In some cases, state regulators have helped the utilities avoid costly fixes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is supposed to ensure that states are monitoring utilities, has also let communities ignore requirements to reduce lead. In 2003, records show, the EPA ordered utilities to remedy violations in just 14 cases, less than one-tenth of the number ordered in 1997.

Taken together, the records point to a national problem just months after disclosures that lead levels in the District's water are among the highest in the country, a problem the city's utility concealed for months. Documents from other cities show that many have made similar efforts to hide high lead readings, taking advantage of lax national and state oversight and regulations riddled with loopholes.

The Washington Post examined 65 large water systems whose reported lead levels have hovered near or exceeded federal standards. Federal, state and utility records show that dozens of utilities obscured the extent of lead contamination, ignored requirements to correct problems and failed to turn over data to regulators.

[Cyber Wolf]

I wonder where Alexandria/Fairfax-Alexandria gets water from. I just know that on occasion you turn the tap on and the water looks fine but smells off. Fortunately, the only tap water I drink is first filtered for stuff like lead, things with phaelangii and other weird odds-and-ends. Can't abide the taste of straight tap water anyhow.

[Undertoad]

Where is the lead coming from?

My own personal fix:

[glatt]

In D.C., they switched to a new, stronger, treatment for the water to deal with an intermittent problem with microorganisms in the water. That new treatment was a little more corrosive and caused lead to leach out of solder joints and even the relatively few old lead supply lines that were still in use. A few homes had somthing like 10,000 time the legal level for lead in the water. Those older homes had lead supply pipes that went from the water main to their house.

I forget the numbers, but I think there were several thousand houses in the DC area that still have lead supply pipes. In many cases, the homeowners had no idea.

Filters reduce the lead by something like 99%. If you are 10,000 times over the legal limit of lead, and your filter reduces that by 99%, then your filtered water will be 100 times the legal limit.

[glatt]

I got my test kits for lead direct from the manufacturer. They are 9.99 each. I bought three of them and tested the water as it first came out of the tap, after letting it run for 1 minute, and then after letting it run for 5 minutes. Usually, in problem homes, the water that comes out after letting it run for 1 minute is the highest in lead level, because that is the water that was sitting in the supply pipe overnight, just soaking up the lead.

[Happy Monkey]

I grew up on DC water.

I got a bit suspicious when they sent me a water testing kit, and never told me the results.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by glatt

Filters reduce the lead by something like 99%. If you are 10,000 times over the legal limit of lead, and your filter reduces that by 99%, then your filtered water will be 100 times the legal limit.

Which is a thousand times better than drinking the water straight!

Clean water supplies are a problem everywhere, as well as lying water authorities. When I lived in the dinky town of Nucla, Colorado our water supply came from the San Miguel River. There are precisely 4 towns which get their water from that river - 3 of them are small, poor ranching and mining communities. On the top of the river in the mountains is the wealthy ski resort of Telluride/Mountain Village. With the haughty disdain of royalty for peasants, the town of Telluride dumped raw sewage into the San Miguel a year ago last summer. EVERYTHING became contaminated and the residents in the towns down valley had to drink bottled water for months. Telluride tried to absolve itself of all responsibility by claiming that the pollution was due to upstream "Manufacturing." The only thing upstream of Telluride is a couple of marmots and the peaks of several 14,000 foot mountains!

[Elspode]

The PUR filters are a *very* cost-effective solution to bottled water. We had a Hinckley & Schmidt cooler for a couple of years. We paid something like $6.00 a bottle for the water, and $9.00/month for the cooler, and it got rather pricey.

Now, I can get three filters at Sam's Club for $40.00, and that gives me 300 gallons of filtered water. Even factoring in the $30.00 purchase of the filter housing unit (which gave me a filter included), that gives me the equivalent of 100 bottles of water for the cost of about 17.5 cents per gallon, and that drops as the filter housing amortizes out. All I give up is the pre-chilled water, which I can remedy using nice, filtered-water ice.

[jinx]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Where is the lead coming from?

Often, it's added to the water supply in the form of silicofluoride (no, I won't stop harping about fluoride, it pisses me off). Arsenic too. Yum.

[lookout123]

you know fluoride is a communist plot right?

[jinx]

Originally Posted by lookout123

you know fluoride is a communist plot right?

Well, no, it's more likely a capitalist plot.

[lookout123]

no, my crazy ass social studies teacher back in the 5th grade told us all that it was a communist plot. if it wasn't true i wouldn't have been taught that in a public school.

[Happy Monkey]

It's an international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And my fix.