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Safe Pipes Mean Safe Water
Bill Baue
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Stacey Lindell of Putney, Vermont, always runs her cold water tap for at least 30 seconds before helping herself, or her children, to some.
She does so to prevent a recurrence of an event that occurred five years ago: A blood test had revealed that Stacey’s then-15-month-old son, Clay, had a high concentration of lead in his blood. The Lindells moved out of their home, which tested positive for lead paint. Clay’s pediatrician also recommended, to be on the safe side, that the family let their water – the second most-common source of lead exposure – run from the tap before use, since most houses in the region contain lead pipes or lead-soldered copper pipes. Clay’s lead levels have dropped, but Stacey continues to flush the pipes of standing water that may have leached lead from the pipes. "It’s a simple way to avoid lead," Stacey says.
Even though lead pipes are no longer sold or placed in new homes, they sometimes still linger in older homes. In newer homes, the pipes usually are made from polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which can present its own set of problems.
Get the Lead Out
Lead is the "single most significant environmental health threat to American children," according to the National Resource Defense Council. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that one in six children, or nearly one million kids, under the age of six in the U.S has worrisome levels of lead in their blood. Drinking water remains the second most-common source of lead poisoning in kids, after lead paint. Drinking water is usually contaminated in transport between the local water utility and your faucet – via lead pipes in houses built before the 1920s, lead pipes serving as water mains connecting to homes, and lead solder used to join copper piping found in houses built between the 1950s and 1980s.
"The younger the child, the greater the risk" of lead poisoning, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Children’s still-developing bodies are more susceptible to the effects of lead, which can cause decreased IQ, learning disabilities, memory loss, aggression, and other harmful effects, many of which are irreversible. What’s more, children are exposed to more lead than adults. Taking relative body weight into account, children drink more than twice as much water per day as adults, while also absorbing and retaining more of the lead they drink than adults.
Since lead is stored in bones and can be released later into the body, early exposure can continue to cause problems into adulthood. For example, lead exposure can lower men’s sperm counts and increase women’s risk of spontaneous abortions and delivering a baby pre-term or with a low birth weight. The risks are easily avoided, however, by following a few simple precautions.
PVC: Safer than Lead?
By the 1990s, lead had disappeared as a component of new plumbing, primarily replaced by PVC. Some of the chemicals used to make PVC, such as vinyl chloride and organotin compounds are dangerous. Most of the time, these chemicals remain tightly bound to the plastic, but it is possible, in some cases, for them to leach into the water carried by the pipes.
Vinyl chloride, the building block ingredient of PVC, was discovered to be carcinogenic in the 1970s, after a significant number of workers exposed to it developed a rare liver cancer called angiosarcoma. Soon after the discovery, the EPA began regulating vinyl chloride air emissions and levels in drinking water.
In August 1976, the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) established guidelines limiting the amount of vinyl chloride residue allowable in PVC water pipes. In response, PVC producers developed methods to minimize the vinyl chloride content in PVC, according to Alex Wilson and Nadav Malin, editors of Environmental Building News.
While PVC pipes manufactured after 1977 are safer, many public water systems continue to use pipes manufactured prior to the implementation of the new process. These older pipes could still leach vinyl chloride into the water they carry. In 1998, for example, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) discovered that almost 10 percent of rural drinking water supplies tested positive for levels of vinyl chloride above EPA standards of two parts per billion.
Another component of PVC pipes of concern are organotins. These metallic compounds, used to stabilize PVC plastic and guard against heat degradation, are found in about 30 percent of PVC products. Animal studies conducted worldwide throughout the 1990s have identified potential health problems associated with organotins, including birth defects, damage to the nervous system, and inflammation of the pancreas, resulting in bans or restrictions in use in some countries. In humans, organotins are known to cause memory loss and insomnia. In 1996, Canadian researchers discovered that organotins can seep from PVC pipes into drinking water. Polyethylene, by contrast, doesn’t contain organotins, making it a preferable pipe material. Other alternatives to PVC pipes are also available.
Phthalates, the plastic softener used in soft vinyl products, are not found in water pipes, which are made from rigid, "unplasticized" PVC. Of greater concern is dioxin, a potent carcinogen and hormone disruptor created during PVC’s production and incineration. Though dioxin is not present in the pipes, its emission from PVC factories and incinerators poses a health threat to everyone.
