Reducing lead in drinking water is critical to ensure the safety of our communities and children. This website content aims to explain how lead enters the water system and what can be done to reduce lead levels at your home, school or business. Plumbing Manufacturers International and its members were leaders in developing and securing passage of the bipartisan Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act, which became effective on Jan.
This law lowered the amount of lead that can be used across the wetted surfaces of pipes, fittings and fixtures to a weighted average of 0. Since then, plumbing manufactures have continued to reduce lead from products through the use of materials such as brass alloys, other metals, ceramics or plastics.
Environmental Protection Agency enacted a treatment technique regulation for lead in to mitigate problems associated with lead contamination occurring from corrosive water.
Water systems must follow the Lead and Copper Rule , which calls for regular water sampling and the replacement of lead service lines. These rules were last revised in State governments may have stricter guidelines in place for drinking water than the EPA. The guidelines apply only to public water systems. More information about drinking water quality protections and standards is available from the EPA.
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Unfortunately, a lot of those are still in place today. The installation of new lead service lines was prohibited in , and the ban became effective in To date, there have been no national requirements to remove lead lines that were already installed and estimates indicate there may be 6. The year of first water service is typically the same year the original house was built, but some communities may have used private wells prior to connecting to a public water system.
If this information exists, it is most likely to be available from previous homeowners or the water utility. If your home was built after with a new water connection, you can be confident that you do not have a lead service line. If your house or property first got water service before , there is a chance you may have a lead service line, even if your home was remodeled or replaced later. At the same time, many homes built before do not have lead service lines. Lead service lines began to be phased out in many communities around World War II because the lead supply was diverted for weapons.
This is where determining your service line material can get tricky—every community is different. Some communities never used lead lines at all. Service lines can consist of many different parts and materials, and your water system may not know the material of every portion of the service line.
A service line may have up to four distinct portions, as shown in the figure above, and any one portion, or all portions, can be made of lead. If you know for certain that the entire lead service line was replaced at your house and you know the material that was used to replace it, there is no need to walk through the steps in this blog. In this case, call your water system to make sure their records are up to date for your home.
The first step for identifying your service line material is to call your water system to ask what materials your water service line is made of. Some water systems may consider lead goosenecks or pigtails to be separate from the rest of the service line. When you are on the phone, ask your water system if lead goosenecks or pigtails were ever used and during which years they were common.
If this information is not clearly documented at the water system, a conversation with an experienced maintenance and repair utility worker can reveal important information about the water system in general and your home in particular. No matter what they answer, ask your water system to describe their confidence in their service line inventory data.
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