Lead Issues

Hi B____ - I am very sorry to hear about your situation.  I am afraid that I am not really into either the regulatory or the legal end of water contaminant issues, and I don't know why there is no requirement for a statement detailing the type of pipe bringing water to the house (or the type of house plumbing for that matter).  It certainly seems as though there should be some avenue that would enable people to become aware of this type of serious serious health problem in their homes before someone's health is compromised.  How did you finally become aware of the lead pipe, and did you ask the city why they did not discover/report the lead pipe when they changed the meter?  Have you discussed this problem with anyone at your local health department or EPA office.  One of the national environmental groups like the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) might be interested in your story and/or have some advice. http://www.nrdc.org/ I wish I could offer some specific advice or answers to the questions you asked.  You might try asking your questions to one of the experts at AllExperts.com.
http://www.allexperts.com/getExpert.asp?Category=2463 One or two of the folks there might have the expertise to answer your questions or at least direct you to someone who can help better than I can. If using lead pipes was standard practice in your area in the past, I would suggest perhaps contacting a local paper and/or TV station to see if they would publish/broadcast your story.  The exposure and education might help others in your community recognize their need to understand their water quality and carefully check their plumbing or get their water tested for lead.

Randy

Answer to Question 2

Hi A____ -

There are a number of factors that will influence the amount of lead you have been exposed to. The only way to get even some idea of your potential exposure would be to have the water from the sink in your bathroom tested under conditions very similar to those in place when you typically filled your glass. The conditions that influence the amount of lead in the water include:
1) obviously the type of material the pipes are made from (lead, of course is not good)
2) the length of the lead pipes - shorter is better.
3) how long the water sat in the pipes before filling the glass The longerthe water sits in a lead pipe, the more chance for the water in contact with the pipe to pick up lead.
4) whether or not the water standing in the lead pipes was flushed out before filling your glass. If you let the water run until the water that had been sitting in the lead pipes had all gone down the drain before filling your glass (perhaps brushing your teeth or washing your face before filling your glass), there would be much less chance for encountering significant lead contamination - water flowing through a lead pipe would contain lower levels of lead than water that had been sitting in the pipe for hours before use. It is the same principle at work with filtration, only in reverse. In a filter, the longer the contact time with and the greater the amount of filtration media, the more contaminants that are removed. If only the pipes in your bathroom are lead, and they are not too long, it would not take very long to flush the pipes of the water containing most of the lead.
5) the corrosiveness of your water. The more corrosive, the greater the chance of lead dissolving into the water. If the staining you mentioned in the survey is blue/blue-green that would indicate copper dissolving into the water from the pipes and staining the fixtures. Copper dissolves under similar conditions as lead. If the staining occurs very quickly with new fixtures, that could indicate a serious problem. If you have some staining in an old home like yours that's been there for ages, that may not be as serious. The corrosiveness in influenced by a number of factors including low pH.
http://wilkes.edu/~eqc/corrosion.htm
6) hard water and old homes are good signs. Over the years, hard water can form a protective deposit on the pipe lining that may reduce the amount of contaminants like lead and copper that dissolve in the water when it sits in the pipe (# 3 above). Whether or not this coating forms, and how protective it is, depends on many factors like water, pressure in the pipes, pH, chemicals the water company might (add like Zinc orthophosphate) to encourage the formation of a coating, etc. http://mauiwater.org/phosphates.html
Hardness is due to the amount of calcium and magnesium dissolved in the water. "Hard" waters are less corrosive than "soft" waters. Hardness helps to prevent corrosion by adding to the buffering ability of the water and by forming a protective film on the pipe walls. http://www.scdhec.net/water/pubs/ml019012.pdf (P. 11)

Regarding possible effects of lead on pregnancy and children:
Unborn babies are also at risk for lead poisoning. A pregnant woman can pass lead on to her unborn child in the womb. This exposure can cause premature birth, low birth weight and small size, and miscarriage and stillbirth. A mother with an increased blood lead level (BLL) who breast-feeds can expose her child to lead.  
http://health.state.ga.us/programs/lead/faq.asp

During pregnancy, lead is known to cross from the mother to the unborn child. Researchers believe that late pregnancy may be the most critical time for this to occur. In the past when workers were exposed to high levels of lead, increased spontaneous abortions and stillbirths were noted in female workers in the lead industry.
children  Young children are a high-risk group for several reasons. They take in more lead by body weight than adults. They are also developing at a rapid rate and are more susceptible to the adverse effects of lead than adults. Children also absorb a higher proportion of lead from food sources (up to 50 per cent absorption, compared to about 10 per cent absorption for adults).  Failure to treat children in the early stages can cause long-term or permanent damage. Over the past ten years, some researchers have found that exposure to even low levels of lead before birth, or during infancy and early childhood, can cause impairment to intellectual development, behavioral problems, impairment to hearing and growth. Early symptoms may include persistent tiredness, irritability, loss of appetite, stomach discomfort, reduced attention span, insomnia, constipation and headache. Longer-term health effects, seen mostly in adults, may include a rise in blood pressure, anaemia, kidney problems and possible impairment of sperm.  Lead is absorbed into the blood stream and deposited into the bones and other tissues where it is stored. Elevated blood lead levels can be detected by a simple finger-prick blood test. Because the early symptoms of lead poisoning are difficult to detect, it is difficult to diagnose lead poisoning without medical testing.
http://www.gnb.ca/0053/disprev/LeadPoisoning-e.asp

Over a lifetime, women can store lead in their body. Some of that lead can be passed to the unborn baby through the placenta. The transfer of lead to the baby is the greatest during the last three months of pregnancy when the baby's growth is most rapid.  What can a mother with lead in her blood do to protect her baby?  She can eat plenty of calcium foods during pregnancy. Much of the lead in her body may be stored in her bones. Like calcium, lead can leave bones and travel in the blood. If she gets plenty of calcium during pregnancy, she is less likely to lose calcium and lead from her bones than if she does not get enough calcium.  http://extension.tennessee.edu/publications/spfiles/SP421.pdf

My suggestions:

1) If you regularly drank water from the bathroom faucet before it had a chance to flush out, you might want to test water from the first gallon or so to see what lead levels you could have been exposed to.
2) You might ask your doctor to run a blood test on you for lead.
3) Make sure you are taking in enough calcium in your diet (consult your doctor for optimal amounts in your situation).
4) Obviously, stop drinking water from the bathroom faucet - which I assume you have already done.
5) Be aware that lead can leach into water in other areas of your home without lead pipe (from lead-containing solder, brass fixtures, etc.). The pitcher filter you mentioned in the survey is not a bad place to start reducing contaminants, but if you look at the total spectrum of contaminants that you might be exposed to throughout your life and the lives of your children (particularly the disinfection byproducts), you might want to invest in a more comprehensive treatment solution. Read my comparison between pitcher filters (and granulated activated carbon, GAC, filters in general) and a high-end, solid block activated carbon (SBAC) filtration system like I recommend:
http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/Solutions.html#gac
Also, as you begin to drink more water as a family, the economic advantage of the cheap pitcher filters (with their relatively expensive cartridges) decreases. Also, the amount of filtration media in a pitcher filter is about 4 oz compared to about 31 oz in a good SBAC filter - the amount of filtration media does impact their effectiveness.
http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/5gallonsperweek.htm
http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/10gallonsperweek.htm
http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/15gallonsperweek.htm
http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/20gallonsperweek.htm
http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/25gallonsperweek.htm
6) You also indicated in the survey that you do not receive a water quality report (WQR). It may be that your water supplier is small enough that it is not required to mail the reports to customers, but it IS REQUIRED to make a report available to its customers. Check with your water company and obtain the reports from the most recent couple of years. Read them carefully to see what contaminants show up regularly at concentrations that approach the EPA limits. With a young child on the way, pay particular attention to nitrate levels. You might also want to take a close look at the disinfection byproduct levels.  Although the MCL level for total trihalomethanes (one group of DBPs) of 0.10 mg/l (or 100 ug/l), from what I've read, even average levels of 0.025 mg/l (25 ug/l) and above would be enough to cause me to take steps to reduce those levels.  It is important to note that the WQR is NOT particularly useful for determining if there is lead contamination in your drinking water since the home plumbing is responsible for most lead contamination. - RJ

Hope this information helps, and best wishes.

Randy