Ramenda Cyrus writes in the American Prospect this month that replacing lead water pipes is a problem:
Lead service lines have been a major public-health concern, one that became especially salient during the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. President Biden has repeatedly promised to replace all lead service lines in the country, a promise that became part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was passed in 2021.
....The work of replacing these lines falls to water agencies like Denver Water, which face a fundamental challenge. Water agencies can only replace the lines they own; the rest of the responsibility falls on private owners, many of whom are less than keen given the logistics.
Quick summary: water agencies don't own the service lines going into homes. There aren't good records of where all those service lines are. And replacing them all is hideously expensive.
I think my anti-lead bona fides are pretty good, but I'm not thrilled with this approach. For starters, most lead service lines are fine. At the very least we should focus on testing water in homes and replacing pipes only if the lead levels are high.
That would save a huge amount of money that could be put to a better use: soil remediation. For decades cars spewed out lead from their exhausts, and because lead is heavy it dropped straight down into the soil. Every summer, when temperatures go up, that lead gets kicked up into the atmosphere and resettles. Little kids play in the soil and then—because they're little kids—stick their fingers in their mouths and end up with lead in their system.
This is, once again, something that should be approached by measurement. There's no need to remediate all the soil in the country, just the parts that are most contaminated by lead. Doing this would probably do more for overall lead levels in children than any amount of water pipe replacement.
This two-pronged approach should guide our lead remediation efforts. The first prong is diversity: instead of focusing solely on lead pipes, look at pipes, soil, and anything else that contributes to lead poisoning in children. The second prong is measurement: map out where the lead is and work on the worst areas first. This will cost less and do more good than a monomaniacal focus on water pipes that's mostly based on a complete misunderstanding of what happened in Flint.
This is hardly an original suggestion on my part. It's the approach that most lead experts would recommend. So why aren't we doing it?
Many of us who grew up in old houses have just always known to flush the pipes in the morning before using water as drinking water. I have spent most of my life in old homes where lead is present in the pipes or solder, and we always knew to do that.
Universal screening for children in older homes/neighborhoods would help (or their mothers during pregnancy). We certainly screened our kids after window replacement, in case that disturbed old lead paint layers hidden below more recent paint.
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So why aren't we doing it?
Because we don't need no damn experts.
And because lead pipes are a simple, concrete thing people could get hold of and do something with, but dirt is everywhere and removing all of it, everywhere, or even anywhere, sounds simply impossible to the average guy.
All the dirt in the neighborhood, in the yards, the alleys and the parks? For the average wingnut who labors to be in denial anyway this sounds simply impossible. For them a lead pipe is a much more attractive and easy object to deal with, and because they'll try to prevent anything from happening anyway something they can understand is an easier sell.
"If you don't measure it, you can't manage it."
That's not new news. But "managing" is something that politicians are about as good at as most of the random folks in the street.
Sometimes, starting with a study IS a good way to undertake a big project.
The local water authority periodically tests water in a selection of houses who volunteer to be tested. The process involves using NO water after a certain hour of the evening, then taking the "first draw" out of a designated faucet in the morning. They pick up their sample container, with appropriate info filled in by the residents, and let you know the results.
My (1984) house has been clean through three cycles of testing. Actually knowing the lead content of the water beats running several gallons to throw away, just in case, every time I use the faucet. This is, after all, a desert.
Republicans are the guy you see masturbating on the subway,
Some House Republicans are now wearing an assault weapon lapel pin,
https://www.rawstory.com/absolutely-repulsive-some-house-republicans-are-now-wearing-an-weapon-lapel-pin/
They do it because they're special.
Yes, they've thrown away their American flag pins in favor of an AR-15. This cannot end well. Particularly since guns are now just fine in the House chamber.
Frankly, I hope Biden has some Secret Service sharpshooters stationed in the galleries and other places when he delivers the State of the Union next week. No telling whether some Republican or his brother in law might be "packin'" and could at some point be offended by what he hears.
I don’t know… seems like Florida has lots of lead poisoned criminals.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/02/florida-girl-9-beaten-by-two-boys-in-school-bus-attack/
Hilarious. Americans are barbarians.
Glad you're happy.
Why aren't we doing it? The typical stupid American zero-tolerance approach, favored by right and left, though applied to different problems, which dictates that there can never be any level of safe lead, or teen drinking, or what-have-you. Don't you care about the children?
Because the US is stuffed to the gills with ascientific nabobs who would rage apoplectic if someone else's lead is replaced while theirs is left in place. People don't understand data. They understand stories. Even scientists, whose job is to understand data, sometimes fall prey to this. Just look at the lingering death of string theory.
String theory is dead?? I hadn't even caught up with it yet!
They're coming to take our lawns!!!
"At the very least we should focus on testing water in homes and replacing pipes only if the lead levels are high.:
You'll then be happy to hear that's exactly what they did with my Denver home. First they sent a free Britta pitcher to use until they could determine if my pipes needed replacing, then some months later they sent a collection kit for me to send back free, then they determined my [pipes were OK. Job well done!