I've done no research, but I wonder what the risk tradeoff is between a tiny amount of lead in contact with my drinking water (assuming copper pipes joined together with lead-based solder, not lead-free solder) versus the new plastic pipes that are becoming standard. I'm sure PEX is designed so that it doesn't leach plastic nastiness into the water, but I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that after a few decades it starts breaking down anyway and suddenly we have a whole new toxin in our drinking water and we need to replace half of the pipes in America again.
PEX is easy to work with and cheap up front. The cost and risk are shifted onto the future owners.
I mean yes, you chopped down your forests millennia ago ;).
Either way, if you have rodents inside… that’s its own issue.
Of course rodent issues are related to PEX: now if a rodent ever does get in, the damage is multiplied when they eat your delicious PEX water pipes and you get a flood in addition to all the other horrors. Not so with metal piping.
It would be nice if all homes on earth could be completely 100% rodent proof forever. And it would be nice if attackers never breached computer systems. But some of us have to live in a world where such things happen.
If you want to talk about blast radius: PEX is substantially more resistant to freeze bursting. What about houses that are poorly insulated, so they are prone to pipe freezes? Copper pipes would be ill advised in that situation. I assume the same houses that are prone to rodent infestations are also poorly insulated. Which is more likely to happen I suppose depends on your climate.
For good measure, I might also remind her that notwithstanding the flooding, the rats were a "major issue". Just in case she was confused about that!
The longer I have a home, the more I realize every thing has its gotcha's.
IIR, larger chemistry laboratories often use glass & quartz pipes to distribute distilled water. Though the direct costs of such a system are relatively high.
It sounds like a big facepalm, and it kind of is, but it's not a crazy idea to filter your water at the taps: you probably only have 2-6 of them anyway. I'm a fan of the whole-home water filter, but yeah then you've gotta be confident about your pipes.
I'd choose micro plastics vs an equivalent mass dose of lead.
If it was 1000x the amount of micro plastics vs lead it's maybe less obvious which is the less bad poison. I'd have to do some research at that point.
I think framing it this way it's obvious that lead is worse than micro plastics. But when you go from lead soldered copper pipes to PEX I don't know what the doses you get from each are.
Maybe if you said a billion times.
The reason we know there isn't a safe dose of lead is a lot of study.
Every month there's a new study about some crazy micro plastics things where they got found in some new place. We're in the early days of figuring out how bad it is. We don't really know yet.
How much lead is permissible before it’s bad? The answer is, very very very little.
In comparison, you get copper contamination from copper pipes (especially if the water is too acidic), however the body handles a little copper just fine. It doesn’t build up in the body unlike lead.
Then you’re left with plastics: PEX or PVC. As of yet, there’s some potential concerns with microplastics in general… but that is from all the tiny plastic particles found everywhere, not solid pieces of pipe. And there hasn’t really be any evidence that it causes any specific known issue. If it was some giant problem (like lead in drinking water!) then the magnitude of effect would be much more obvious.
Common wisdom is "there is no safe level of lead".
Both are made from Polyethylene, which is the exact same stuff oil (including food), gas, wax, natural gas, etc is made off. i.e. you body handles that all the time.
- polyethylene oil?
- gas?
- natural gas?
- wax (I'm assuming candle wax)?
I understand you don't mean "drink" when you say our body "handles" it, but you do realize we don't make food from PET, nor do we usually "handle" gas and natural gas in any form of direct contact?*
* with the fun exception of a brief craze in my high school years where people would mix hard alcohol with gasoline to make cocktails "stronger". That's another story though
It's the same way that, even though you shouldn't drink it, acetone is barely toxic, because your body knows how to process it.
I should remind you that there are other plastics, but polyethylene is not one of the toxic ones.
(Gas, as in gasoline, has benzene which is a different category. Note also that many plastics have plasticizers which are also a different category, although polyethylene rarely has any, it's possible that it could.)
If that was such an obvious problem, they wouldn't have put the lead pipes in the first place...
I am not advocating for lead or copper soldered water pipes, but I am conservatively skeptical about PVC being totally safe for the same timeline existing lead pipes have been in use. In July the EPA proposed raising the priority rating of vinyl chloride on its toxic substances list. It doesn't seem implausible to me that in 50 years we'll be taking about PVC pipes the same way were talking about lead pipes today.
I am not claiming that PVC water pipes are dangerous just that I am skeptical there is enough historical data to claim they are totally risk free. I am not a scientist or expert on this subject
1.https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/lead...
Edit: added source
Regarding PVC: It already is not used in almost any new construction for water supply lines, at least in the US. It's used for drains, but the leeching concern isn't really an issue for drain pipes. No water pressure, and no continuous immersion typically. Issues about BPA/vinyl compounds are
As per PEX, I can't say for certain that it's 100% risk free, but overall there is increased scrutiny on drinking water and contaminates and PEX right now seems to be the best choice.
I wouldn't use PEX for fresh water pipes.
I’ve seen ABS and PVC (and, of course, cast iron) for DWV, but don’t think I’ve ever heard of Pex for that.
Many things have no safe value but a low level is less likely to play a major role in a life than another risk.. Cars, guns, opioids, suicide, cancer, maybe the last two have a minor lead influence, mostly outweighed by alcohol.
The problem with heavy metals is that they're cumulative, but it's also impossible to avoid them completely, so minimization is the strategy.
-20db is 1/100th which is a dramatic improvement, at least for that threat source.
This means is damages your neurons in any amount.
Contrast to say, copper, which doesn't start causing damage until levels exceed a certain tolerable threshold.
While lead is toxic at any amount, low amounts of lead cause low amounts of damage. It doesn't change the fact that the ideal exposure is 0 and over 99% of people have about 5 to 10 times the bond lead levels found in remains of our ancestors, and that even relatively low lead exposure levels from breathing lead in the air from just air pollution are linked to dramatically reduced IQ.
99% of people live better lives than all of our ancestors, in every dimension.
if you're telling me it's because of lead, then lead is a good thing.
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1825584397363589312
Basically the IQ gap between the lead exposed and non exposed has stayed the same even though the amount of lead in the bloodstream has dropped by orders of magnitude. So either the first part of lead exposure is 100x more damaging then the 100th part of lead exposure (which animal models do not bear out) or a lot of the lead exposure IQ research is confounded.
Effects of calcium supplementation on blood lead levels and short term memory of chronically exposed children https://oamjms.eu/index.php/mjms/article/view/3285
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/basic-in...
It's not trying to be alarmist, it's just different from things like, say, table salt, where small amounts over time are fine but 1 pound will kill.
When really the last mile is the most variable aspect. All of it needs to be clean the whole way.
The way people talk about local water is absurd.