Drinking Water Problems Corrosion Lead Copper Metals – My Drinking Water is it Safe?

Article for: private well owner, spring user, city water customer, regulated water supply, water utility customer, homeowner, landlord, tenant, drinking water

The Flint water crisis reportedly started in 2014 and ended in 2019, but in reality the “crisis” started prior to 2014 and probably has not ended.   Why?  The problem with corrosion within the water system and individual’s homes clearly started prior to 2014 and the customers and users within the system were not aware of the short-comings in their drinking water quality, the need for corrosion control, need to replace service laterals, plumbing within their homes, the need to be proactive in protecting your personal and families’ health, lack of public outreach and education, and not knowing the wrong signs of a corrosion problem   The main purpose of this article is to help identify the warning signs of a potential corrosion problem with your drinking water.    The signs of a corrosion problem come in many forms, but it is important for the user to take responsibility for keeping their eyes open.   Corrosion of our drinking water supplies is a very common water quality and public health issue that is related to not only the raw water quality, level of pretreatment, status of the community distribution system, the internal plumbing for a building, the usage and management of water within the building, and the fixtures used within the system.  This sounds overwhelming, but there are clear warning signs you may have a problems.

The most common signs of a problem with corrosion included the following:

  1. Blue-green or greenish water or even reddish brown or brown water that may be intermittent and worse in the hot water than the cold water.
  2. Staining of porcelain fixtures, such as sinks, drains, or tubs that appear green, blue-green, and reddish brown.
  3. Coatings on aeration devices that appears greenish-gray or bluish green and particles on the screen of the aerator that appear green, bluish-green, greenish-gray, reddish-brown, yellow-brown, or even bluish-gray.
  4. Discoloration of water piping near solder joints and/or pin-hole leaks in piping and the premature failure of water appliances and water heaters.
  5. Old piping in a home that may include lead pipes or piping that was installed using high lead solder, such as lead service lines and galvanized piping.
  6. The first flush of the water from the tap may have a bitter taste.

What is the age of your home, when was the house last remodeled, and the piping in your home?

YOUR household plumbing may be the cause for lead in your drinking water. In older homes, lead was used to make the piping and/or solder.  In homes, built prior to 1930’s water pipes were primarily made from lead. These pipes can be identified because the piping tends to have a dull gray color, can be scratched with a key, and a magnet will not stick to the piping. In buildings built between the 1930’s and early 1980’s, copper pipes were often used, but the solder contained elevated levels of lead. The primary source of the lead includes the use of lead pipes, lead lined tanks, and use of 50/50 lead/tin solder. Because of the concern with lead, the EPA banned the use of high lead solders in 1986.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s galvanized water lines was utilized in new home construction. Currently, this type of piping is not widely used, but it is more commonly used with well water applications.  This piping is steel piping that has a zinc coating to reduce the tendency for the piping to corrode.  When this pipe corrodes, the pipe rust from the inside of the pipe and then works outward.  When this occurs, the water may produce intermittent discolored water that tends to be brown, yellow, or reddish brown, and the piping will likely clog with rust and most likely collapse over time. This does not mean that a newer home is safe from lead contamination; in fact, the available data suggests that buildings less than 5 years old can have high levels of lead.

In fact, buildings built prior to 1986 likely contain some lead plumbing.  Prior to 2014, the legal definition for “lead free” was plumbing fixtures with a lead content of less than 8 %.  In 2014, the term was redefined to include only fixtures with a lead content of 0.25% and newly installed fixtures must use the “lead free” materials, but this did not apply to fixtures currently in use.

What You Can Do to Protect Yourself and Your Family?

After getting this information, you should do the following:

  1. Inspect your plumbing system for signs or evidence of a corrosion problem and low cost lead screening testing  (water) or (paint,dust, soil).
  2. Take note of the visual and aesthetic signs of a corrosive water problem.
  3. Try our Free Drinking Water Diagnostic Tool.
  4. Order the Drinking Water Guide.
  5. Get Your Drinking Water Tested and the Results Reviewed by a Professional. At a minimum, we recommend the “Corrosion Check” Water Test Kit.
  6. Act to improve your drinking water quality by reporting problems to your local water authority for public water supplies or if your water comes from a private water source take the necessary action to reduce the risk to the health of yourself and your family and to reduce the potential costs associated with the premature failure and/or invalidating the warranty of water related appliances, water leaks and associated damage, and/or the additional operational costs associated with inefficiencies associated with clogged or corroded piping/equipment.
  7. Update fixtures and piping and consider the use of point-of-use filters or a whole-house water treatment system. Before installing a water treatment system, please get a comprehensive water quality test (City Water) or (Well Water).

Our Motto is ” Learn / Diagnose / Test “

Learn – learn about your source and system.

Diagnose – determine the warning signs or symptoms of a problem and get the water tested and problem diagnosed.

Test – implement an approach to mitigate the problem and test to make sure the problem is corrected.

Source:  Oram, Brian; “Lead In Drinking Water – Is There Lead In My City Drinking Water ?”, Water Research Center / Know Your H20 Program, 2020.

Recommended Reading:

The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water

More on Lead

Your Drinking Water and Your Health – You are Not an Observer !

Even though 60% of the human body is water, water is a resource that is often taken for granted.  The primary concerns with water relate to having adequate quantity of the proper quality.  In terms of hydration, drinking water is probably one of the best ways to keep your body healthy.  Water is used in your body to help maintain your temperature and ensures the proper operation of your circulatory, digestive, and neurological systems.   Water is one of the pathways that potential contaminants and disease causing agents can enter the body, so the quality is also important.   Therefore, we need drinking water of adequate quantity of the proper quality.

When the body is not properly hydrated, our body’s response is to make us feel thirsty, but if you miss this clue watch out for dry mouth, swollen tongue, weakness, dizziness, confusion, palpitations, and fainting.   If over hydrated, you can become water intoxicated or hyperhydration.  If hyperhydration occurs, the kidneys can not process all the water and the system becomes overwhelmed.   There are phone apps and other tools to help you to remember to drink enough water, but our general recommendation is if you feel thirsty it is time to get a drink and given a choice pick water.

Water comes in many forms, which can include premium bottled water, tap water, spring water, carbonated water, soda, coffee, tap water, nutrient infused water, juices, and purified water.   Of all these, it is my professional opinion that we just need to drink water.   The two most common sources of drinking water for a community is either public water or a private water source.  A public water source is always regulated by both the federal and state governments and many may call this city water or tapwater, but well or spring water may be from a public or private source.   If you get your water directly from a well or spring, this is a private source and this is not commonly regulated.

If you get your water from city water, the most common health concerns are related to the presence of chlorine-by-products or corrosive by-product in the United States, the public water supply systems are disinfected using various forms of chlorine and phosphate is added to attempt to control corrosion.  The chlorine is used to disinfect the water, but it can react with naturally occurring organics to form trihalomethanes, i.e., a potential carcinogen; while phosphate will react with the metals in the water to form a scale or coating on the inside of the piping, see “Flint, Michigan”.    If you are on well water, the most common problems are the presence of bacteria and elevated levels of salts in the water, like nitrate, chloride, and sulfate, or corrosive water.   In some cases, the water may contain elevated levels of radionuclides and trace metals, like arsenic, iron, lead, and manganese.      The quality of the drinking water depends on type of water, location, level of treatment, the condition of your plumbing, and your home or house.   In some areas, the community is concerned about pipelines and natural gas development, but a hidden problem may be the existing quality of their drinking water.

For citizens, our general recommendations related to drinking water are:

1. http://thebandchoice.com/contact-us/ City Water Customers– Review any annual “Consumer Confident Reports” produced by your water supplier and act accordingly.
2. http://eecoswitch.com//c.php Private Water Sources -Get your water tested, at least annually, and have the results review by an expert (our Mail order program) or maybe conduct a in-home screening test yourself and calculate your Water Quality Rank.
3. Look out for potential problems with your drinking water, based on what you can see, taste, smell, or otherwise detect with your senses or problems that may be caused by the water.
4. Review our Drinking Water Diagnostic Web Application.

A few short phrases we should try to remember.

We ALL Live Downstream !
Groundwater and Surface water are Connected!
We are Part of the Water Cycle – Not just an Observer!

Websites of Interest

Consumer Confidence Reports
https://www.epa.gov/ccr/ccr-information-consumers

Neighborhood Hazardous Reports and Water Testing
http://www.knowyourh2o.com

 

Flint Authority Falsely Reports Water Quality Testing for Lead in Drinking Water

Not our work – but Great Story

“FLINT, MI – As concerns about Flint’s water quality were mounting earlier this year, the city disregarded federal rules requiring it to seek out homes with lead plumbing for testing, potentially leading the city and state to underestimate for months the extent of toxic lead leaching into Flint’s tap water.

City water officials filed certified documents with state regulators that claimed the city only tested tap water from homes where residents were at the highest risk of lead poisoning, but records obtained by The Flint Journal-MLive show those claims were false and may have delayed efforts to fix the public health emergency.

Water samples sent to state labs for testing in the first six months of this year were all marked as having come from homes with lead service lines, but actually almost always came from homes at less risk of lead leaching – houses with underground plumbing made of copper, galvanized steel or materials that could not be identified, according to the city’s own documents given to The Journal through the Freedom of Information Act.

In response to questioning, Flint Utilities Administrator Mike Glasgow said the city was struggling to collect the number of samples that were required following the city’s switch to the Flint River as its water source in April 2014.”

To read more on this story – go to http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/11/documents_show_city_filed_fals.html

Learn More about Your Drinking Water

  1. Get the Know Your H20? Phone App (Free) – http://www.knowyourh20.us
  2. Learn more about Corrosive Water and Affordable Water Testing – http://www.water-research.ne

 

Flint Michigan Officials Drinking Water We Have Problems

Flint Officials Are No Longer Saying the Water Is Fine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/us/reassurances-end-in-flint-after-months-of-concern.html?_r=0

By MONICA DAVEY

OCT. 7, 2015

“FLINT, Mich. — All along, through months of complaints from residents of this city about the peculiar colors and odors they said were coming from their faucets, the overriding message from the authorities here was that the water would be just fine.

Yes, there had been a boil order when fecal coliform bacteria turned up in some neighborhoods last year. And yes, the extra chlorine that was pumped in to solve that problem seemed to create another one — increased levels of a different contaminant.

Still, the guidance from Flint officials about the temporary water supply they switched to in 2014 — partly to save money — sounded reassuring. In a notice sent to residents in July, city officials declared: “This is not an emergency. If a situation arises where the water is no longer safe to drink, you will be notified within 24 hours.”

The soothing talk has vanished. In recent weeks, testing has shown increased levels of lead in the blood of some Flint children — and health officials pointed to the water as a possible source.

First, the city advised residents to run their water for five minutes before using it, to use only cold water for drinking and cooking, and to install lead-removing water filters. Then county officials issued an emergency advisory recommending that people not drink Flint’s water unless it is tested for lead or filtered.

And last Friday, after corroborating that lead levels had risen in some children, state officials called for the water to be tested at all Flint public schools and for stepped-up efforts to replace lead service lines; they also promised $1 million to provide filters.

Officials met here on Wednesday afternoon, and talks were underway, officials said, for additional solutions that could come as early as Thursday. Gov. Rick Snyder said on Twitter late Wednesday that he planned to make an announcement about the situation on Thursday morning.

Private groups have raced to donate bottled water to schools, where the water fountains are now shut off, as well as filters to families who cannot afford them. Saying “we’re just in a heck of a bind,” Robert J. Pickell, the Genesee County sheriff, began serving bottled water and food that need not be cooked in water to hundreds of inmates in the county jail. Some residents have begun washing their children and pets with bottled water.

And Flint’s mayor, Dayne Walling, who had attended a 2014 event to celebrate the switch to the new water supply, called for returning to the city’s old water supply and urged state officials to provide millions of dollars to help pay for it.

The contaminated water was just the latest blow to Flint, an economically battered city that has struggled for years with factory closings, job losses and population decline.”

Full Article

Comments

  1. This can be a problem associated with bacterial regrowth, Microbiologically induced corrosion, corrosive water, and a plumbing problem.
  2. The primary recommendations get a comprehensive water quality test of the first flush and flushed water sample.
  3. Always flush the water line prior to use and use cold water and not hot water.
  4. Base decisions on facts not fear.
  5. Special Informational Water Screening Testing – Get your water screened for water contamination including lead – unflushed and flushed water samples tested for  30 parameters including corrosion potential for only $ 175.00.  Email

Private Well Owners Workshop in Luzerne County Pennsylvania

We ARE What We Drink !
Learning More About Our Water In Northeast Pennsylvania

A private well owner workshop designed to educate and protect citizens from common and potential contaminants. Join us for a great day of education and an opportunity to test a sample of your own well water (pH and a few other parameters).

Saturday, July 27,2013
10:00AM –12:00PM

9:00AM –9:45AM
Check-in & Family Nature Walk •
The Educational Workshop is free!
• All children are welcome to attend as well!
• Please bring a sample of your tap water to the workshop for an initial pH test!

Workshop Sessions:

10:00 AM Your Water: The Contaminants You Can’t See! presented by Brian Oram, B.F. Environmental Consultants  (PDF version of presentation)

11:00 AM Protecting Your Water: Taking the First Step presented by Brian Oram, B.F. Environmental Consultants  (PDF version of presentation)

11:45PM Test your well water’s pH and a few other factors

Limit of 40 attendees—Pre-registration is required by July 19th. Brian Oram’s attendance is made possible by the Carbon County Groundwater Guardians.

The mission of the Luzerne Conservation District is to conserve land and water resources in Luzerne County by promoting public awareness, providing technical assistance, and encouraging regulatory compliance.  (PDF Document for Event)- Other outreach in Luzerne County, PA

Volunteer
We seek new people at all skill levels for a variety of programs. One thing that everyone can do is attend meetings to share ideas on improving CCGG, enabling us to better understand and address the concerns of well owners.

Everything we do began with an idea.

We realize your time is precious and the world is hectic. CCGG’s volunteers do only what they’re comfortable with. It can be a little or a lot.

For more information, please go to CCGG’s About Page or contact us.

Carbon County Groundwater Guardians is a 501(c)(3) IRS approved nonprofit, volunteer organization and your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.  Help the Organization and Get Your Water Tested or Order the Private Well Owner Guide (proceeds benefit This Organiazation).