How Will I Know If My Faucet is Lead-free?
With the latest advancements in science, people have realized the importance of healthy living. They have become more aware of what they are drinking and putting inside their bodies.
Lead that was traditionally used in a lot of plumbing work has been significantly reduced. This is because it poses a serious threat to human life.
Nowadays, people are trying to get their homes as lead-free as possible. However, there is still a chance of some form of lead exposure despite the precautions you take.
Lead can find its way to you in many different forms. Be it via drinking water faucets, drinking fountains, lead pipes, a brass faucet, brass fixtures, or other plumbing components. Lead leaching, especially through brass faucets is also very common.
All this exposed amount of lead can cause serious harm to you and your families, especially if it is not controlled. Hence, ensuring that your faucets and other parts of the house are lead-free is crucial.
Harmful Effects of Lead
As mentioned earlier, lead exposure is a serious threat to man and the overall public health. Be it, children or adults, no one is safe from this harmful and toxic metal.
If children get exposed to even low amounts of lead, it can result in devastating harm over time. It can accumulate in their bodies and cause harm to the vital organs.
The brain of children is at the most risk and there are chances of irreversible damage as well. Their mental and physical growth and development have a high chance of being impaired. This shall affect their academic achievement in the long run. It might even cause them to acquire different neurological diseases.
Children who have been exposed to lead may not be able to live full-flesh normal lives. They might have to face certain abnormalities that shall hinder their adult life as well.
As far as adults are concerned, lead exposure and accumulation also harm them in several ways. The toxicity caused by this metal can make them hypertensive. It can also damage vital organs like the kidney, brain, liver, and heart.
These diseases make life very difficult for them. Daily tasks also become troublesome to perform.
Pregnant women are also badly affected by exposure to any amount of lead. It can cause them to have a premature birth and deliver newborns with a low weighted average. In worse situations, miscarriages and stillbirths might even occur.
Therefore, to ensure safety in public health, it is important to have disease control programs for lead exposure.
Sources of Lead at Homes
Lead can be considered to be a hypothetical pathogen. It can not only make you fall sick but damage your life in multiple ways.
Many people have the habit to consume tap water. Even though it is an edible drinking water supply source, it can be fatal if your faucets contain lead.
To be safe from lead, it is important to identify its sources at home. Some of them are mentioned below.
- Lead service lines that connect the main water supply or water main to your house.
- Different plumbing parts and other fittings may contain lead solder.
- Brass faucets and brass alloy faucets leach lead at times.
- Old bathroom faucets and most faucets in ancient-built properties contain lead.
- A lead service line or supply line and many different service lines are sources of this metal.
The experts of the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that large amounts of lead intake occur through drinking water. This usually comes from the faucets people drink water from. Hence, the lead-infiltrated water you may drink is considered the main source of this toxic substance.
Therefore, it is important to have new faucets that are lead free installed at homes. Federal law also dictates new properties get rid of older faucets, if there may be any present.
The recent legislation also has instructions for companies to produce new lead free faucets. These new faucets should only have a weighted average of a quarter-percent lead in them compared to the wetted surface. This percent lead is considered a safe amount of lead.
Ways to Find if Your Faucet Contains Lead
Your faucet may contain lead, either directly or indirectly. It may be a kitchen faucet, a bathroom faucet, a brass faucet, or even a new faucet or tap. All of these can expose your home to this toxic metal.
To check for a lead free faucet, it is important to cover a few aspects of your house first.
Do You Have a Lead Service Line or Multiple Lead Service Lines at Home?
To find out if your house contains lead, it is a good idea to start surveying your service line.
The service line would usually be present in the basement of your property. If you do not have a basement, the service line would be located at the lowest point of the house.
Once you find the service line, scrape the external surface a bit. Notice the color on it after the top layer has been scraped off.
If you notice a brownish or copper color, it means you have a copper supply line.
Noticing a deep matte grey color would indicate that you may have a lead service line. To confirm this, use a screwdriver to further scrape the surface off. You would notice that the metal underneath would be quite soft and would shine brightly. This would confirm that you have a lead service line. Copper would not be shiny nor soft compared to lead.
Copper and lead service lines are not just the only ones used in homes. You may also have pipes and fittings made-up of either plastic or galvanized steel.
To further distinguish steel from other metals, you can test it with a magnet. A magnet would stick to steel when brought close to it. However, this would not be the case with lead or copper.
If you have discovered a lead service line at your house, you must do something about it. Contact a plumbing agency and get in touch with a good plumber. Try to look at different quotations for lead service line replacement.
It is important to get rid of the lead service lines as fast as possible. This is because these service line could infiltrate your faucets with lead.
Make sure to hire a good project manager for this task. This will ensure a fast and smooth plumbing project.
Do You Have Old or Brass Faucets?
Many faucets, plumbing fixtures, and pipes through which water run contain brass. This is because brass is a widely used metal in plumbing work due to its reliability, strength, and availability.
Before 2014, some amount of lead used to be incorporated in brass for plumbing work. This leaded brass could be a major source of exposure to lead.
If you get drinking water from such faucets, you can potentially be consuming lead. These faucets cause lead leaching to occur which would then be mixed with the drinking water.
You might think that the lead leached drinking water shall contain trace amounts of lead. However, it is important to note that this leached lead would accumulate in your bodies overtime.
In this case, replacing faucets would be the right thing to do. You should get steel faucets installed. These shall not only be long-lasting but will also eliminate lead leaching.
How Pure is Your Drinking Water?
Another way to find out if your faucet is lead free is by getting your drinking water tested.
Contact a certified laboratory that would test the drinking water. Send them samples of the drinking water from the faucets to conduct water tests on.
After receiving the water test results, survey them properly. The test would show if the water contains lead in it or not. If it does even in trace amounts, stop consuming the tap water immediately. Contact a plumbing agency to get your faucets, fixtures, and pipes that are connected to the water main lines changed.
Rather, you must drink only cold water from the water purifier machines. If that option is unavailable, consume bottled water until the faucet, fixtures, and pipes become lead free.
What to Do if Faucets Contain Lead?
If you have concluded that your faucet, pipes, and other fixtures are not lead free, you must take some necessary precautions.
Even if there is less lead present compared to the wetted surfaces, the faucet is still harmful.
Here are some things you must do.
Flush Out the Water:
After your water test results have come back positive for lead, you should flush out the water. This would help get rid of the water that has stayed stagnant in your lead plumbing for some time.
If you flush out the water, its contact with the lead-wetted surface of the faucet and fixtures would be reduced.
Let the water run for around 30 to 45 seconds. This should be the ideal time to get rid of the water that has been contaminated by a lead faucet.
If the entire service line contains lead, flush until cold water starts running from the faucet.
Replace the Plumbing Parts:
If your plumbing components are not lead free, try replacing them immediately.
Whatever parts you think have lead, try to get them changed. A faucet that contains lead is easy to change. It will neither require a long time nor huge amounts of investment.
However, if the entire plumbing of the house is affected by lead, things would get difficult to manage.
Replacing the entire plumbing of your home would take up days. It would also require huge financial investments. You might also experience physical and mental fatigue during the entire task.
If you have the capacity to undergo the replacement process, you must proceed immediately. This is because having a lead free house is a necessity for your well-being.
However, if you cannot get the entire plumbing replaced, find alternate solutions to your problem.
Get a Water Filter System Installed
If your faucets contain lead, then you must install a water filtration system.
Many different kinds of water filters are available in the market. You can choose one depending on your needs and budget.
The filter can easily attach to your faucet. They are also very effective in removing lead from water. Thus, providing you clean, fresh, and lead free water to drink.
If you do not want to get a water filter, you can also choose other water purifying method. An example of this is the reverse osmosis system which is also effective in purifying the water from lead.
Summary
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