There are plenty of properties in the UK still fed by lead water pipes. It's not something people talk about often, but it can be a problem and should be part of a good property survey.
Our Victorian property still has a (shared) lead supply pipe. I've been repeatedly told it's not an issue due to (presumed) calcification on the inside of the pipe. All the interior pipework is copper.
Our water was tested years ago by the waterboard and came back way below the legal limit.
Yet still... I'm suspicious. Can anyone point me at resources to help prove it's unsafe?
Look at what happened in flint Michigan. Lead pipes were calcified, but then the water bureau stopped adding an agent to reduce the natural ph of the river water. This caused the calcification to get stripped and for lead to start leaching into the water.
All it takes is a change in ph of your water supply to put you at risk.
Similar fiasco when EPA did a showcase project converting DC water supply away from chlorine treatment. Hugely embarrassing and expensive "fix" for a non-problem, that created a much worse problem.
(ETA: It also caused lead to be released- non-lead pipes had actually leached lead from the water over many years, acting as a filter. The lead was chemically bound to both lead and non-lead pipes. Changing the chemistry caused the process to reverse and dump all that lead back into the water at much higher concentrations than would occur just using a 100% lead pipe system.)
And lead paint is similar. In-situ it's pretty harmless. It's the removal that's dangerous and is more likely to poison.
This is why people arguing for "do-something!" actions using "What harm could it do?" reasoning should always be fought until safety is confirmed experimentally the field.
"What harm could it do?" should always be a red flag for "don't know what you don't know" ignorance, and responded to as if it's a real, non-rhetorical question.
> And lead paint is similar. In-situ it's pretty harmless. It's the removal that's dangerous and is more likely to poison.
This is not completely true. I remember some studies looking at lead accumulation in dust. It's not just macroscopic paint chips on the outside of houses that children ingest, it's dust in the house as well.
> Our Victorian property still has a (shared) lead supply pipe. I've been repeatedly told it's not an issue due to (presumed) calcification on the inside of the pipe
In London or the general area? The water is lousy with calcium, hard AF, so that's a good bet.
The notorious lead in the water issue in Flint, Michigan was not just "pipes made from lead" but also that they carelessly switched water supply to a new one that over time, corroded the deposits off the inside of the pipes so that the lead could leach out.
Once that had happened, "the damage already done to Flint’s water supply infrastructure by more than 18 months of exposure to corrosive water. Even after the water supply was reconnected to the (original water supply), officials advised against drinking Flint water."
No, but Thames Water will replace the external lead pipe for free if you get your internal lead pipe replaced (as in, up to the demarcation point, which is probably the external stop valve). (More complicated if it's shared, of course). Other areas might be similar.
Look up Flint, Michigan. The layer on the inside of the pipe is great until something happens to the chemical composition of the water without planning for the effects. The city changed its water supply and all of a sudden everybody got poisoned.
> Our water was tested years ago by the waterboard and came back way below the legal limit.
Where was the water tested? I've heard that here in France, water is often tested before going into the pipes, and not after flowing for the faucet. If that's the case for you too, I'd encourage you to test the water going out of the faucet, since this is the water you actually drink. In France we can do that at labs that take care of stuff like blood samples. A naive search gave me this website https://watersafetestkits.co.uk/which-water-test-kit/ that sells water test kits, for example.
I have seen books from the 1920s that recommended chemicals you could add to your water to prevent the water from eroding the lead. Water is a great solvent for almost anything, and so if you are not careful water will pick up whatever is in the pipes.
I'm not going to look up those chemicals - I doubt that they would pass modern safety standards. If you maintain a water supply that has lead anywhere you should figure out what modern chemicals to use to prevent lead (or whatever your pipes are made of) from being eroded. I hope the people who maintain water supplies already know about this though.
Well, the Drinking Water Inspectorate talks about it all the time and carry out a pretty comprehensive survey programme to make sure that orthophospate is being added in areas likely to have remaining lead pipes. Lead service pipes are getting pretty rare now (but yes, should check on a survey and not included as standard) but there are still quite a few older buildings with interior lead pipes.
