INC NEWS - lead (Pb) in the water

[pat carstensen]

Patrick Baker had a guest editorial in the Herald-Sun yesterday.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/columnists/guests/68-808939.cfm

We will discuss lead in the water at the January meeting.  I have been 
reading the report on the apartment building where they first found lead in 
the water.  It was writen by Dr. Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech (I couldn't 
find anything bad about his research in 7 pages of google results, for what 
that is worth).

A couple key points:
1) Greenville, NC has had similar problems

2) It doesn't seem anyone understands very well how to decide before hand 
how chemicals you add to the water for water treatment will interact with 
the natural water chemistry -- whether or not it will do nasty things to 
lead in the pipes.  Durham water had OK Ph and was not corrosive by 
conventional measures, but it seems to have too much of Cl:SO4,2 (this is 
the best approximation I can do without subscripts)

3) High flow rates bring out a lot more lead than low flow rates, so if you 
are flushing your taps in the morning, do it at the fastest rate you will be 
doing all day.

4) particles of lead can get trapped in aerators, and flushing doesn't help 
with these at all.  Worst case is that a particle gets flushed out into 
water you are drinking, which is more likely at high rates of water flow 
than at low rates.  This is why you should be cleaning aerators and any 
other filters periodically.

5) Different pipes, even within the same building and installed by the same 
person, showed different levels of lead in the water.

Folks at Duke have also done some work in lead in the water in Wayne County: 
M.L. Miranda, M. Overstreet, D. Kim, A. Hull, C. Paul. “Changes in Blood 
Lead Levels Associated with Use of Chloramines in Water Treatment Systems.” 
Environmental Health Perspectives. Online November 2006.
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cehi/about/publications.htm

Regards, pat

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