Everything in this article sounds right to me and it would be great to get rid of lead pipes, but it's not like lead pipes turn water into a nerve agent.
The linings of lead pipes are oxidized to form a coating that keeps water out of chemical contact with elemental lead. For comparison, aluminum is a strong enough reducing agent that it reacts spontaneously with water (to produce hydrogen) and oxygen (if you don't know about aluminum air batteries, look it up, it's a fascinating story). However, it forms a self-limiting layer of aluminum oxide that keeps, for example, the contents of a can of soda pop from dissolving the thin walls of an aluminum can. Also many boats are made of aluminum. This is less of an issue now, but you cannot bring mercury thermometers on airplanes because mercury dissolves aluminum oxide and, in theory, a broken thermometer could compromise the structural integrity of the plane. If you've never seen what mercury does to aluminum, go have some fun on YouTube.
What Matt was describing in DC is essentially the same thing that happened in Flint. If the pH gets off (and/or certain ions are introduced to the water) the protective layer dissolves. In the case of DC it was caused by switching chemical treatments, in Flint it was switching the water source and the story about why they didn't check for that is scandalous.
The point is, lead pipes are perfectly safe if used properly. Nowadays you can easily replace them with copper, plastic (which can also leach toxic chemicals), ceramics, etc. But that wasn't always true. There was a time when expanding indoor plumbing and bringing fresh water into houses meant using lead because plastics and ceramics didn't exist, copper was too expensive and, unlike lead, iron oxides (rust) are brittle and flake off, meaning the pipes don't last. So, surely there was a point at which Big Lead was pushing its products needlessly, like leaded gasoline or continuing to use lead paint and lead pipes when better alternatives existed, but there was a time when there were legitimate reasons to build out infrastructure with lead pipes.
Tetraehtyl lead was really horrible because it volatilized the lead and spread it around. And since lead is an element, it cannot be broken down and instead enters the food chain. Besides the horrors of particular emissions, coal-fired electricity plants are horrible because they volatilize mercury, which is also and element and also a neurotoxin. Ditto for burning waste electronics, which are full of toxic elements.
As a minor cavil, there might be no lower limit to a damaging level of lead (the issue is probably untestable), but a true zero lead level is not possible. Measuring the level of a toxicant depends on the measurement technology, which has improved vastly over the past 50 years. Supposing that one molecule of lead in a glass of water is dangerous might have a certain logical appeal but is unrealistic at multiple levels.
Lead is also bad in soil, but the problem might resemble that of asbestos in walls. The technical issue is beyond my knowledge, but the surface of undisturbed soil becomes less hazardous over time (if lead is no longer emitted), and besides the cost, it might actually be less dangerous to leave the soil alone than to try to remove it. Probably there are some sites so contaminated that it would be wise to remediate, but it's a non-trivial task to figure that out.
I attended an interesting panel several years ago on lead by the Harvard project on the sciences of the human past. They had obtained an ice core from the alps that allowed them to trace lead levels back thousands of years. They were able to show that there is no natural background lead levels in the atmosphere. Silver production has led to measurable atmospheric lead levels since the Roman times. They were able to show this by the signal from the Black death when the mines temporarily closed due to the death of the miners and one saw the lead levels briefly drop to near zero.
This was meaningful because alot of the safe levels of lead is based on the notion that there is a natural lead background that produces a "safe" level of lead. But it turns out this is a myth. To a small degree, we've been poisoning ourselves for millenia.
Apparently there isn't much that environmental factors can do to enhance IQ, but there are a lot of ways that the environment can have a negative impact on IQ.
Makes sense - nothing can make you smarter by as much as getting smacked in the head with a shovel can make you dumber.
So while you probably cannot, like, make your baby smarter by playing Mozart to them in the womb, you can try to remove any negative impacts on IQ (lead poisoning, malnutrition etc.) and we can and should do this society-wide.
If we zoom out here...if we were recommending what a developing country could do to improve its infrastructure, of course water systems would be in the mix of policy considerations. No question about that. Water systems are infrastructure.
I worry about lead levels in urban/metro gardens. That's a much smaller problem but at this point, living in a city, I would pay to have lead testing for my soil if I were to plant vegetables.
"The interstate highway system, he said, raised productivity and GDP a lot."
Where do I go to report this incredibly specious claim? I think this is the great American myth. Like Rome has Romulus and Remus and America has this stupid highway system that everyone thinks was a good idea when it was really an unmitigated disaster.
I must commend you, you've been incredibly consistent on this issue and increased my education over the years. With the exception of the Flint (and briefly East Chicago) flashpoint moments, it doesn't seem to capture any public attention.
I have few critiques, it seems obvious to me as well. I gotta say, it's a low ticket price relative to the complete circus that some of these train projects are likely to produce. Count me in.
Great post and as a believer in the Kevin Drum Unified Theory of Lead, I'm a big proponent of any and all actions to get the lead out. So Biden's proposal is great. But I do wonder how much of a *federal* action this has to be. Are states and localities moving out on this? If not, why not? Can it only happen if the federal government pays for it? I know that in California they have just started moving on this, by first requiring community water services (CWSs) to inventory lead service lines and then calling for a timeline for the CWSs to replace the pipes. Presumably this will be captured in future utilities bills, so local users will pay the cost. (And since rich people in California use vastly more water than poorer ones, this could actually be a progressive tax.)
California has a relatively small proportion of lead pipes, so it's less of an issue here. But have other states and cities been forward-thinking on this? And would the Biden bill reward the slothful ones while the ones who took more proactive action lose out?
One thing I don't understand about the lead issue is that as urban areas gentrify and we see more higher-earning families in urban areas, then shouldn't we see an increase in learning disabilities in high-income families that corresponds to their return to cities?
Most people in my age and income bracket would have lived in the suburbs 20 years ago, but like a lot of millennials, I live Instead in a building built in 1925 that prob has lead paint in an old city that also has lead water service lines. Shouldn’t we see a generational effect?
Thanks for bringing more attention to this. As for cleaning up lead in soil, one relatively easy mitigation strategy is to spread mulch over the soil in areas that have high lead concentrations & where children are likely to spend time i.e. around the outside of houses and in playgrounds. It's not a national, long-term strategy for preventing lead poisoning, but some local grant programs to do mulch mitigation would be really cheap and could help.
If we can credibly guarantee that there will be money for this type of labor, over the next decade, maybe we also get more people to move into the industry? System-scale plumbing contractors start hiring people as apprentices for on-the-job training? The other "real economy" concern is whether you need to build some new factories to produce the replacement pipes -- how does this project compare to the normal consumption of new plumbing mains?
Everything in this article sounds right to me and it would be great to get rid of lead pipes, but it's not like lead pipes turn water into a nerve agent.
The linings of lead pipes are oxidized to form a coating that keeps water out of chemical contact with elemental lead. For comparison, aluminum is a strong enough reducing agent that it reacts spontaneously with water (to produce hydrogen) and oxygen (if you don't know about aluminum air batteries, look it up, it's a fascinating story). However, it forms a self-limiting layer of aluminum oxide that keeps, for example, the contents of a can of soda pop from dissolving the thin walls of an aluminum can. Also many boats are made of aluminum. This is less of an issue now, but you cannot bring mercury thermometers on airplanes because mercury dissolves aluminum oxide and, in theory, a broken thermometer could compromise the structural integrity of the plane. If you've never seen what mercury does to aluminum, go have some fun on YouTube.
What Matt was describing in DC is essentially the same thing that happened in Flint. If the pH gets off (and/or certain ions are introduced to the water) the protective layer dissolves. In the case of DC it was caused by switching chemical treatments, in Flint it was switching the water source and the story about why they didn't check for that is scandalous.
The point is, lead pipes are perfectly safe if used properly. Nowadays you can easily replace them with copper, plastic (which can also leach toxic chemicals), ceramics, etc. But that wasn't always true. There was a time when expanding indoor plumbing and bringing fresh water into houses meant using lead because plastics and ceramics didn't exist, copper was too expensive and, unlike lead, iron oxides (rust) are brittle and flake off, meaning the pipes don't last. So, surely there was a point at which Big Lead was pushing its products needlessly, like leaded gasoline or continuing to use lead paint and lead pipes when better alternatives existed, but there was a time when there were legitimate reasons to build out infrastructure with lead pipes.
Tetraehtyl lead was really horrible because it volatilized the lead and spread it around. And since lead is an element, it cannot be broken down and instead enters the food chain. Besides the horrors of particular emissions, coal-fired electricity plants are horrible because they volatilize mercury, which is also and element and also a neurotoxin. Ditto for burning waste electronics, which are full of toxic elements.
Your title says it precisely; well-done.
As a minor cavil, there might be no lower limit to a damaging level of lead (the issue is probably untestable), but a true zero lead level is not possible. Measuring the level of a toxicant depends on the measurement technology, which has improved vastly over the past 50 years. Supposing that one molecule of lead in a glass of water is dangerous might have a certain logical appeal but is unrealistic at multiple levels.
Lead is also bad in soil, but the problem might resemble that of asbestos in walls. The technical issue is beyond my knowledge, but the surface of undisturbed soil becomes less hazardous over time (if lead is no longer emitted), and besides the cost, it might actually be less dangerous to leave the soil alone than to try to remove it. Probably there are some sites so contaminated that it would be wise to remediate, but it's a non-trivial task to figure that out.
I'd say that lead paint abatement in dwelling places is similarly low hanging fruit.
I attended an interesting panel several years ago on lead by the Harvard project on the sciences of the human past. They had obtained an ice core from the alps that allowed them to trace lead levels back thousands of years. They were able to show that there is no natural background lead levels in the atmosphere. Silver production has led to measurable atmospheric lead levels since the Roman times. They were able to show this by the signal from the Black death when the mines temporarily closed due to the death of the miners and one saw the lead levels briefly drop to near zero.
This was meaningful because alot of the safe levels of lead is based on the notion that there is a natural lead background that produces a "safe" level of lead. But it turns out this is a myth. To a small degree, we've been poisoning ourselves for millenia.
Apparently there isn't much that environmental factors can do to enhance IQ, but there are a lot of ways that the environment can have a negative impact on IQ.
Makes sense - nothing can make you smarter by as much as getting smacked in the head with a shovel can make you dumber.
So while you probably cannot, like, make your baby smarter by playing Mozart to them in the womb, you can try to remove any negative impacts on IQ (lead poisoning, malnutrition etc.) and we can and should do this society-wide.
Educator here. Just wondering about the educator discount and how to access it.
If we zoom out here...if we were recommending what a developing country could do to improve its infrastructure, of course water systems would be in the mix of policy considerations. No question about that. Water systems are infrastructure.
I worry about lead levels in urban/metro gardens. That's a much smaller problem but at this point, living in a city, I would pay to have lead testing for my soil if I were to plant vegetables.
"The interstate highway system, he said, raised productivity and GDP a lot."
Where do I go to report this incredibly specious claim? I think this is the great American myth. Like Rome has Romulus and Remus and America has this stupid highway system that everyone thinks was a good idea when it was really an unmitigated disaster.
Matt -
I must commend you, you've been incredibly consistent on this issue and increased my education over the years. With the exception of the Flint (and briefly East Chicago) flashpoint moments, it doesn't seem to capture any public attention.
I have few critiques, it seems obvious to me as well. I gotta say, it's a low ticket price relative to the complete circus that some of these train projects are likely to produce. Count me in.
Extremely annoyed that as a first day full year subscriber I can no longer login
Great post and as a believer in the Kevin Drum Unified Theory of Lead, I'm a big proponent of any and all actions to get the lead out. So Biden's proposal is great. But I do wonder how much of a *federal* action this has to be. Are states and localities moving out on this? If not, why not? Can it only happen if the federal government pays for it? I know that in California they have just started moving on this, by first requiring community water services (CWSs) to inventory lead service lines and then calling for a timeline for the CWSs to replace the pipes. Presumably this will be captured in future utilities bills, so local users will pay the cost. (And since rich people in California use vastly more water than poorer ones, this could actually be a progressive tax.)
California has a relatively small proportion of lead pipes, so it's less of an issue here. But have other states and cities been forward-thinking on this? And would the Biden bill reward the slothful ones while the ones who took more proactive action lose out?
On California, see https://blogs.edf.org/health/2017/01/19/california-sb1398-on-lsls/
One thing I don't understand about the lead issue is that as urban areas gentrify and we see more higher-earning families in urban areas, then shouldn't we see an increase in learning disabilities in high-income families that corresponds to their return to cities?
Most people in my age and income bracket would have lived in the suburbs 20 years ago, but like a lot of millennials, I live Instead in a building built in 1925 that prob has lead paint in an old city that also has lead water service lines. Shouldn’t we see a generational effect?
Hey, did youse see that Joe Biden once said Andrew Cuomo's balls were infrastructure?
Thanks for bringing more attention to this. As for cleaning up lead in soil, one relatively easy mitigation strategy is to spread mulch over the soil in areas that have high lead concentrations & where children are likely to spend time i.e. around the outside of houses and in playgrounds. It's not a national, long-term strategy for preventing lead poisoning, but some local grant programs to do mulch mitigation would be really cheap and could help.
What does one do with the old lead pipes?
If we can credibly guarantee that there will be money for this type of labor, over the next decade, maybe we also get more people to move into the industry? System-scale plumbing contractors start hiring people as apprentices for on-the-job training? The other "real economy" concern is whether you need to build some new factories to produce the replacement pipes -- how does this project compare to the normal consumption of new plumbing mains?