About 3 million lead service line pipes connect homes to water systems in the U.S., but there are zero in California, thanks to decades of actions to protect the public’s drinking water.
Across the country, many communities are racing to locate and replace lead service lines. That’s not the case in California, where a recent, painstaking inventory of these lines—which connect water mains in the street to homes and buildings—has yielded nothing but good news.
When it comes to drinking water, few words raise concern as quickly as lead — especially for parents of young children. That concern is well-founded: lead is a toxic metal with no safe level of exposure, and drinking water has historically been one of several pathways through which people could be exposed.
But in some regions of the United States, lead was once a common construction material because it was durable and easy to work with. In particular, it was often used in service lines, or the pipes that connect water mains in the street to homes and buildings.
That’s why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently required water systems nationwide to inventory the number of lead service lines in their water systems — a first-of-its-kind effort to identify where lead pipes may still be delivering drinking water to homes.
California completed that inventory this year and the result may surprise many people: no lead service lines were found among millions of water service connections statewide.
I’ll rate this as wishful thinking. We have been mining and processing lead from before the time of the Romans. Probably from the Stone Age. It is soft, easy to melt. Probably one of the first metals discovered by man.
Where is all the lead mined over the centuries. It is whereever man has lived. It is everywhere in the environment.
Yes, some lead gets recycled—mostly from lead acid storage batteries.
White lead pigment is one of the first synthetic chemicals made in the U.S. Bridges like SF Bay bridge are orange because they were painted w red lead paint. Not to mention leaded gasoline. Solder. Lead used to seal cast iron pipes. Putty. Driers for oil based paints. Lead used as an insecticide on ag crops. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Lead is everywhere. We better learn to live with it. Somehow we survived.
The Golden Gate Brige:
As the Bridge was built, it was painted International Orange, with a lead primer and a lead-based topcoat. Painting of the various Bridge structures then continued into the next several years. Spot painting of the steel continued in various areas of the span on an as needed basis until 1968.
By 1968, advancing corrosion sparked a program to remove the original lead based paint (primer and topcoat) and replace it with an inorganic zinc silicate primer and vinyl topcoats. This process was completed in 1995. Note that in 1990, the topcoat was changed from a vinyl to an acrylic emulsion to meet air quality (Volatile Organic Compounds or VOC) requirements.
Painting continues today and is based on priorities which are determined by inspections that assist in determining where the corrosion of the steel is advancing. In 2012, there were two major paint projects along with touch-up projects - repainting the two main cables and the painting of the north approach viaduct structures.
