Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Updated with a reference for the downvoters:
Sheets of lead were used to line Roman aqueducts (as was cement) and lead pipes to convey water. But lead also was known to be unwholesome and, for that reason, pipes made of clay were preferred—as Vitruvius, who wrote during the time of Augustus, explains.
"Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead [ceruse or lead carbonate, PbCO3] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigour of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome. That the flavour of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is shewn at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made of earth, from the purity of the flavour being preserved in them" (VIII.6.10-11).
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/win...
Do you have a source for this? At the same time, they used lead acetate to sweeten wine and food, which is way more dangerous. If they made the weaker connection between health and water pipes, they should have been able to connect health and this as well.
I doubt the poisonous nature of lead was well known when these cities were built.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_Unit...
> In the July 1904 edition of its monthly publication, Sherwin-Williams reported the dangers of paint containing lead, noting that a French expert had deemed lead paint "poisonous in a large degree, both for the workmen and for the inhabitants of a house painted with lead colors."
"Poisonous in a large degree" seems pretty serious to me.
People were regularly dropping dead due to lead poisoning in factories by the turn of the century, and it looks like lead was recognized as being capable of doing significant, though hard-to-recognize, harm:
"Although plumbism is usually easy to diagnose, lead occasionally induces obscure affections of the nervous system, the cause and true nature of which are not always easily recognized. As a cause of poverty, too, its influence is not sufficiently known nor the role it may be playing in the physical degeneracy of the race."
https://books.google.com/books?id=gQY9AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA29&ots=...
Lead paint looks to have been largely banned in Europe in favor of zinc-based paint by 1911; it was clearly viewed as a public health threat, not least by housepainters themselves, who were dying of lead poisoning (see the table on page 25).
I have a copy of De re Metallica[1] it has a whole chapter on stuff like this and that's 1500's Europe. Lead is kinda tricky since it tends to get passivized most of the time by sulfate and phosphate. Except when it doesn't and then it's insidiously bad.
[1] Translated Herbert Hoover (yes that one).
He and his wife (who was also a geologist) were fluent in Chinese and would speak in it if they wanted privacy.
He became known for international humanitarian missions during and after the first world war. He became a national figure by directing flood relief operations during the 1927 Mississippi Flood, which catapulted him into the White House a year later.
He was a much better humanitarian than he was a president. And pretty good geologist and linguist too.
Does anyone think that it's possible that there will be another career engineer as POTUS? I've heard that there remains a sort of stigma to such a thing, perhaps in part due to the Hoover administration.
I think there's a better batting average for college professors than engineers.
As a random aside, he also includes a proof that the water level mechanism he prefers works even though the Earth is a (roughly) spherical object and not a flat plane.
For when lead is smelted in casting the fumes from it settle upon their members and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs Hence water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes if we want to have it wholesome That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste.
Google books, pg 246 https://goo.gl/g19bhQ
Can't edit my original comment. Oh well.
The world has known of the danger of lead and many other dangerous substances, but often still chooses to use the dangerous substance.
Sometimes it's because there weren't alternative substances that could do what needed to be done. Sometimes it was just a matter of expense. Sometimes it's because the dangerous substance was supposed to be used in a safe fashion, however reality proved the safe fashion to be overly optimistic.
Course, then there are cases like the leaded gasoline that should be considered one of the greatest crimes of all time.
Yep, and it's still going on. Some small planes still use leaded fuels. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/
More modern aircraft can often get by with 94-octane premium unleaded. However, they cannot tolerate ethanol in their fuel, and due to congressional mandates for ethanol blends it's become increasingly difficult and expensive to source ethanol-free premium gasoline. Paradoxically, this pushes general aviation back to 100LL, which can easily be sourced without ethanol.
Modern aircraft also have a trend towards diesel engines (often adapted from automotive diesels) that can be run on Jet A-1 fuel. These are actually very promising because they have good performance-to-fuel economy. See the Diamond DA62 for an example.
http://www.gami.com/g100ul/avgas0211.pdf
http://www.aci-na.org/static/entransit/smallairports2011conf...
The root problem is that the general aviation fleet turns over incredibly slowly due to intensive maintenance requirements imposed by the FAA (eg annual total overhauls). It's pretty normal for your average single-engine aircraft to reach a lifespan of 40-50 years, and there's still plenty of aircraft that are pushing 70 or 80 years old.
As such it's very difficult to achieve a phase-out of a fuel type within timeframes that people consider reasonable. Like I said, the shift towards 94-octane premium unleaded and diesels is already happening, but it will probably take another 20-30 years for the fleet to naturally rotate to engines that support alternative fuels.
FAA oversight requirements (parts sourcing and mechanic labor) make everything airplane-related insanely expensive. You could mandate engine replacements, but this would be so expensive it would basically total 50% of the general-aviation fleet in an instant. At the end of the day we're talking about <0.1% of the transportation fuel supply so it's just not that big a deal.
I do realize that in this case the harm is likely extremely difficult to even estimate.
Most of the fleet (~70%) would be OK switching to 94-octane unleaded. The biggest problem is that Congress/states have made it extremely difficult to source this type of fuel, because the overwhelming majority of fuel is produced for automotive usage. Ethanol and other mandated additive blends are unacceptable for aviation usage, and we're talking about 0.1% of the fuel market. Congress/states have put up barriers that impede a shift and they need to do something to help that overcome those barriers, not just ban 100LL.
Also, due to the nature of general aviation this is a very distributed problem. Most general aviation occurs at relatively small airfields/airstrips and there's many factors that make it difficult for GA pilots to use large airports (limited access to those airspace types, high traffic levels from commercial aviation, high ramp/fuel fees designed to discourage refueling, etc). So you've got to get 92UL available at a large number of small sites. Most small airports will carry at most two types of fuel, 100LL and Jet A1, and many will only carry 100LL. Most airports are running on super thin margins and adding 92UL would mean not carrying 100LL.
That leaves the 30% of aircraft that can't use 92UL pretty high-and-dry. Some can be modified, some will need engine replacements, a lot will be out of luck. Unfortunately they are likely concentrated at the affordable end of the fleet, and that translates into more cost increases in a sector that's already dying due to a cost spiral.
General aviation is a feeder for commercial aviation, and that's going to become an even tougher and more expensive path to follow. Going commercial requires a large number of flight hours which are typically accrued by getting an instructor license and training casual pilots - so cost increases that reduce casual pilot time percolate very directly into a reduced supply of commercial-eligible pilots. The only other route is ex-military pilots, or paying >$100k through a university (which is not commercially viable due to the ~$20k average salary of an entry-level regional pilot).
General aviation is also a neat cultural touchstone that I am sad to see shrivelling into nothing :(
Re being a commercial feeder, that's like lots of things, if individuals start refusing to bear the cost of obtaining hours, airlines will be required to make changes. They might increase pay for pilots, lobby for changes to the licensing process or provide alternative ways to get those flying hours (I'm not sure how you subsidize hours without perverse incentives, but I guess you could protect investment using loans that had forgiveness for service).
You've pointed out some purposes that GA fulfills, but you haven't addressed what harm those lead emissions are actually doing. It could be minimal. Or, it could be pretty severe when you look at the aggregate impact. At a structural, societal level, poisoning people to avoid higher direct costs for air transport is likely not a good trade-off, so it is necessary to look at both sides of it.
A few nits I'd pick. Even though 70% of the fleet could burn 94UL, that represents well under half of the gallons burned. Turbocharged engines (often in twin engine airplanes) fly far more hours than the average 7.5:1 compression piston single. Yes, flight school aircraft on the low end fly a lot, but most piston singles average under 75 hours per year and often at 8-9 gph. Turbo singles, IO550s (Cirrus and Bonanza), and turbo or IO550 twins are typically burning 1.5x that per engine and flying 2-3x the hours.
I think most of the engines that can't be easily modified to run on 94UL are concentrated on the expensive end of the fleet. Most 182s/172s/Cherokees/G-cats, etc can either already run today under the Petersen STC or could be easily modified. It's the Bonanza, Cirrus, Golden Eagle, P-Navajo, etc that need 100LL (or GAMI or similar) and can't run on 94UL. Those tend to be way more expensive than the lower end of the fleet.
The high powered planes are the ones that also fly the most hours and burn the most per hour, which is why the bias is so different by gallons rather than fleet size. Many of those perform critical functions (mail/parcel delivery, food delivery, remote people transport, pipeline patrol, traffic reporting, pilot training) and there is no certified replacement fuel available. The logistics are such that if an airport business has to carry leaded fuel for 75% of your avgas sales and the other 25% can also burn 100LL, there's little incentive to install duplicate tanks, fuel trucks, etc for zero additional sales of fuel.
There are promising unleaded fuels in testing (not derived from unleaded autogas) that the high-compression and turbo-charged aircraft can run without modification. The approval process via the FAA is very slow-moving, expensive, and risk-averse. (in many cases for very good reason, but it's still a significant barrier in that I cannot legally burn the prototype fuels, nor any unleaded fuels, in my aircraft).
I would switch to the GAMI fuel tomorrow if it was available for sale. For the small amount I burn per year (estimated 1500-2000 gallons), even an increase of $2/gallon would be no barrier for my adoption and the likely increase vs today is lower than that. There are other fuels also under consideration or certification testing, some of which require airframe or engine modifications, others of which are also "drop-in" replacements.
TEL really is fairly magical in terms of improving knock and detonation margins in highly stressed engines, so it's no surprise that its adoption became so widespread after World War II. The transition away from TEL is not a trivial exercise, which is why it's "taking so long" to make progress on this. The world needs a physically and chemically workable fuel, but also needs an economically workable fuel.
And the man who was responsible for this was also responsible for CFCs. "He had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."
I believe no truer words have been spoken than the opening of the section on Midgley in that article -
"Thomas Midgley Jr. Tried Really Hard to Destroy the World"
The man was the template for a Mad Scientist and the closest thing to a super villain there has been. It's a bit of poetic justice he died as a result of one of his own contraptions.
There is an episode of American Experience that has a part on the introduction of leaded gasoline that covers it better than the Cracked article, it's just not as funny.
I always supposed that that's where the word 'plumber' came from, or 'loodgieter' (lead caster, Dutch). Both words strongly refer to lead. Growing up in Holland in the early 80's our house had lead pipes. When I bought my first house in 2003 it too still had a lead water main. I drank a lot of that water, tap water over here has the same purity (basically actually is the same) as mineral water, with no side effects.
Lead has some advantages. Its melting point is low, so it's easy to weld. It doesn't corrode quickly, so pipes last a long time. And it's malleable, so pipes don't break when soil and foundation shift. But yes, it's very poisonous, so the advantages are moot for drinking water.
For corrosive waste plumbing, on the other hand, it can be a good choice. It even tolerates HF, which glass doesn't. Glass is sexier, however.
Repeat that to yourself the next time you read your cities water report. It's not "I know my water is safe" it's "I know I don't face these specific dangers. What else could be in the water that they don't test for?"
Look into reverse osmosis.
Look into three stage filtering, that's all you need.
The mineral issue is pretty much bunk, if the lack of trace minerals in your water is a concern you need to see a doctor. Food is your body's preferred source of minerals, you have to drink a lot to have much effect on your daily mineral intake.
The waste water is real, 4 to 1 is about average, it can be improved but it's pretty unavoidable in the process. They are water using appliances, we use 20-40 gallons of water to wash a load of clothes and most people don't think twice about it.
Also lots of cities/towns have RO water providers that will sell anywhere from single gallons to thousands.
source: used to be a marine aquarium hobbyist and bought thousands of gallons of RO water to make seawater.
For varying definitions of extremely
I have handled and, against my better judgement, quaffed many types of deionised water: triple glass distilled, reverse osmosis, ion exchange, etc. They taste more or less the same to store-bought distilled water and I have not yet had any of the ailments in your complaint. There is also a certain coworker who developed a pechant for the MilliQ water machine and regularly filled her drink bottle with ultrapure (>18.2 megaohms) water there. Suffice to say she is still doing it.
>But really, get over it, 99% of the US has safe tap water
This is not necesarily true given the state of water infrastructure in the US. The water leaving a treatment plant is not the same as water coming out of a tap.
http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%290733-9372%28199...
There are carbon cartridges with ion-exchanges resins blended into the block that seem to be effective for lead removal at low flow rates. They tend to have lower flow-rates and capacity than is ideal.
Berkey filters http://bit.ly/1WdBneq (Edit to add arsenic and Berkey link)
According to this WHO report[1], it seems like a real concern:
"Low-mineral water markedly: 1.) increased diuresis (almost by 20%, on average), body water volume, and serum sodium concentrations, 2.) decreased serum potassium concentration, and 3.) increased the elimination of sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium and magnesium ions from the body. It was thought that low-mineral water acts on osmoreceptors of the gastrointestinal tract, causing an increased flow of sodium ions into the intestinal lumen and slight reduction in osmotic pressure in the portal venous system with subsequent enhanced release of sodium into the blood as an adaptation response. This osmotic change in the blood plasma results in the redistribution of body water; that is, there is an increase in the total extracellular fluid volume and the transfer of water from erythrocytes and interstitial fluid into the plasma and between intracellular and interstitial fluids."
It might not be enough to outweigh the benefits of highly filtered water, but just because you have enough minerals from food doesn't mean that minerals in water aren't having an effect.
[1]: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap...
>It was thought that low-mineral water acts on osmoreceptors of the gastrointestinal tract
This is not how osmolarity sensing works.
http://www.vanislewater.com/what-total-alkalinity-swimming-p...
From the WHO report[1] on water quality:
"Sufficient evidence is now available to confirm the health consequences from drinking water deficient in calcium or magnesium. Many studies show that higher water magnesium is related to decreased risks for CVD and especially for sudden death from CVD. This relationship has been independently described in epidemiological studies with different study designs, performed in different areas, different populations, and at different times. The consistent epidemiological observations are supported by the data from autopsy, clinical, and animal studies. Biological plausibility for a protective effect of magnesium is substantial, but the specificity is less evident due to the multifactorial aetiology of CVD."
[1]: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap...
Feynman had some interesting comments on this problem regarding NASA's "it worked ok last time" approach to risk assessment before the Challenger Disaster.
I suppose we'll ban those now too, and we can see we can test some other plasticizer out on a few billion people.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/what-did...
> To save money, the city began drawing its water from the Flint River, rather than from Detroit’s system, which was deemed too costly. But the river’s water was high in salt, which helped corrode Flint’s aging pipes, leaching lead into the water supply.
These were old pipes - they pre-date this problem by decades.
What raspberry pi sensors can you use to figure out if our water is polluted, etc.
It should be noticeable, I'm just asking for basic testing. Nothing too crazy.
There's a reason the kits are like this, instead of an electronic device: http://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-WT1-Drinking-Water/dp/B000...
Since the flint lead news, I have been exploring how can I get my tap water tested on a routine.
Second, brita is useless http://www.naturalnews.com/046536_water_filters_heavy_metals...
"Nassim Taleb taught me that the absence of known danger is not the same as safety."
To conduct the tests, we created a multi-element "spike" solution containing from 1300 ppb to 2300 ppb concentrations of each of the tested elements.
The EPA limit for lead is 15 ppb. So the test is 80-150x the limit. This is 4-8x what's been seen in Flint (up to 20x the limit).
It should not be surprising that these filters were overwhelmed.
Depending on which element is being tested.. this 1300-2300 represents significantly more than or less than EPA limits.
This was a very sloppy test.. and it would be difficult to draw conclusions from it.
Why?? Tap water is highly regulated, and 1000 times cheaper than bottled water. It does not produce tons of plastic waste (much of which is not recycled). It does not leach possible carcinogens like BPA, DEHA, or BBP. Furthermore, much of the bottled water comes from municipal tap water!
The Mayo Clinic says that tap water and bottled water are about equally safe. If you can't trust top-notch doctors, who can you trust?
This myth about bottled water being better needs to stop.
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100310/why-t...
[2] http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-he...
Flint issue has more to do with delivery.
I don't carry my own water, but tap water served by many restaurants tastes absolutely awful. So that might be one reason why.
Unless you're in Flint, or a paranoiac, tap water in the US is safe. Period.
Flint's problem is not endemic, it was isolated. The article is really reaching - they cite 3 instances over ~15 years of problems in city water supplies. In 2 of the 3 cases it was caught and rectified quickly - Flint is the exception.
Given the size of the United States that's a very brave statement. Water quality in Europe is typically measured on on commune level and even in countries like Austria which pride themselves for drinkable tap water there are incidents which cause tap water to not be drinkable at times.
If you want one independent source of proof that U.S. water is safe, consider that almost every U.S. child has blood work done on an annual basis. If elevated levels of lead are a problem, they would be detected at that time, as they were in Flint.
I remember getting a finger stick almost every visit to the doctor as a kid, but that was just for cell counts and maybe sugar that they did in the office, not a full panel of tests.
What? I hated needles as a kid. I think I would have remembered having my blood drawn once a year.
At http://www.mamapedia.com/article/how-often-do-children-get-r... , there are a lot of people who had never heard of routine bloodwork. At http://www.metroparent.com/daily/health-fitness/childrens-he... is a doctor talking about routine bloodwork for children, but only every other year after the age of 5.
With the recent worries about BPA and other components of plastics, it's unclear if bottled water from plastic is safer than tap at the 99.9th percentile of paranoia. I don't know about exotic risks from bottled water in glass (radioactive Evian from Chernobyl?), but I assume they are there also.
Nonetheless, in my circle of friends, I do know people who drink bottled water because they think it's more pure. I also know people who don't use microwave ovens because of harmful radio waves, and others who do not use plastic containers or plastic-lined metal cans because of hormone disruptors in plastics. I think they're nuts, and they compensate by thinking I'm naive and complacent.
If you know otherwise, please post a link.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
Read the intro, "Health Effects" section, and sources.
Bisphenol-S (still in use):
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/bisphenol-s-d...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150112154606.ht...
I suppose that demonstrates the dangers of your "ask some local" approach :)
Though the safety of tap water in CZ is well known, and has been well known for decades, and any local would tell you as much. So I'm not sure where that came from. Perhaps some temporary local incident?
Even Google may be a safer source of information on tap water quality.
Better to go with facts over hearsay.
The EPA requires yearly water quality reports (called Consumer Confidence Reports) for all municipal water supplies in the United States. Specifically they are due by July 1st each year.
LA - https://dpw.lacounty.gov/wwd/web/YourWater/AnnualWaterQualit...
Seattle - http://www.seattle.gov/util/MyServices/Water/Water_Quality/W...
New York - http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/wsstate.shtm...
I have tested water at home for lead and pesticides and found it to be safe to drink. [Sunnyvale]
The one place we know it isn't safe - Flint - says that you should not use tap water for cooking as the lead will get in the food.
Nor does it make sense to diversify sources. You pay a lot more for non-tap water, bottled water doesn't have a track record of being better than tap water, and it's harder to track any recall issues or other warnings if you have multiple sources.
Plus, there are other ethical questions. Did you want to support the military government of Fiji? Or Nestlé's success in limiting the rights of Michigan citizens to bring legal action to "protect the state's natural resources from pollution, impairment or destruction"? Because those are some of the side-effects of choosing bottled water.
In addition, of course, to all the packaging waste and transport costs.