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?
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.
I do not live the infrastructure bill, and I think there are some things in here Biden could probably pass in a bipartisan way (if he took them singularly instead of all at once), but I will take the overall bill (with its warts) over begging the GOP to get its act together.
If the GOP does not want to address America's problems: do it alone.
It seems like the biggest problem with gardening in lead contaminated soils is that we end up eating small amounts of dirt when we eat the vegetables. Is that it? I would have thought that the plants would absorb some of the lead into their own "bodies".
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?
Does it count as public infrastructure when the FBI takes it upon itself to provide free cybersecurity services to American companies, by "accessing" their servers unannounced and removing malicious code left by hackers?
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?
Kevin Drum has all of the data but cities have lower levels of easily accessible lead than they used to, but yeah, there probably is greater lead exposure among those kids than their suburban-raised parents. But rich families probably have less exposure than poor families even in the same city because of greater distance from expressways and less chipping paint among other reasons. Having the advantages of yuppie parents also may disguise some of the impact of similar exposures too.
Hi Eric. We can cancel your subscription, which will give you a pro-rated refund, and then you can repurchase using the educator's discount here: https://www.slowboring.com/education . Would you like us to do that?
Sorry to be such a bother. I got the notice in my work email and logged in with it. It only gave me access to the free plan (So I couldn't click on Friday's post). When I tried to sign up for a different plan, the educator discount wasn't available.
Sorry to troubleshoot this in the comments section. I got the discount offer, but it wouldn't let me use it with this email. Happy to switch the account over to my school email (eric.kumbier@asd.edu.qa), but I can't seem to figure out how to do so.
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.
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.
Nope. Whether lead passivates or not is irrelevant. It forms corrosion cells in contact with other materials that can only be limited but not eradicated by corrosion inhibitors.It is never safe to use in plumbing.
Isn't at least part of the point that scandalous incompetence by local government is sort of guaranteed to happen somewhere over the long term? Failing safer is a real benefit.
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.
Just because something is at a natural background level doesn't mean it is "safe". The natural level of UV light causes plenty of skin cancer. We can only think in terms of increased risk due to human activity that we may want to modify but dichotomizing this into "safe" and "unsafe" is inherently misleading.
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?
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.
I do not live the infrastructure bill, and I think there are some things in here Biden could probably pass in a bipartisan way (if he took them singularly instead of all at once), but I will take the overall bill (with its warts) over begging the GOP to get its act together.
If the GOP does not want to address America's problems: do it alone.
Extremely annoyed that as a first day full year subscriber I can no longer login
And then, magically, I can.
Also welcome reading this every day makes my life slightly better.
It seems like the biggest problem with gardening in lead contaminated soils is that we end up eating small amounts of dirt when we eat the vegetables. Is that it? I would have thought that the plants would absorb some of the lead into their own "bodies".
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-08/documents/plv-gardening-fs-2013-en.pdf#:~:text=If%20you%20eat%20vegetables%20grown%20in%20soil%20that,garden%3A%20Clean%20vegetables%20well%20before%20cooking%20or%20eating.
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/
Does it count as public infrastructure when the FBI takes it upon itself to provide free cybersecurity services to American companies, by "accessing" their servers unannounced and removing malicious code left by hackers?
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/fbi-might-gone-ahead-fixed-microsoft-email-server-rcna680
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?
Kevin Drum has all of the data but cities have lower levels of easily accessible lead than they used to, but yeah, there probably is greater lead exposure among those kids than their suburban-raised parents. But rich families probably have less exposure than poor families even in the same city because of greater distance from expressways and less chipping paint among other reasons. Having the advantages of yuppie parents also may disguise some of the impact of similar exposures too.
Educator here. Just wondering about the educator discount and how to access it.
Hi Eric. We can cancel your subscription, which will give you a pro-rated refund, and then you can repurchase using the educator's discount here: https://www.slowboring.com/education . Would you like us to do that?
Me too please! Technically I'm an educator and a student as I'm teachers training college! Those discounts are multiplicative right ;-) ?
Canceled!
Sure, Marc! Thanks. Let me know once you have done so.
I have done so!
Update: I resubscribed then switched the email address. I paid another $80 though.
Sorry to be such a bother. I got the notice in my work email and logged in with it. It only gave me access to the free plan (So I couldn't click on Friday's post). When I tried to sign up for a different plan, the educator discount wasn't available.
Sorry to troubleshoot this in the comments section. I got the discount offer, but it wouldn't let me use it with this email. Happy to switch the account over to my school email (eric.kumbier@asd.edu.qa), but I can't seem to figure out how to do so.
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.
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.
Nope. Whether lead passivates or not is irrelevant. It forms corrosion cells in contact with other materials that can only be limited but not eradicated by corrosion inhibitors.It is never safe to use in plumbing.
Isn't at least part of the point that scandalous incompetence by local government is sort of guaranteed to happen somewhere over the long term? Failing safer is a real benefit.
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.
Just because something is at a natural background level doesn't mean it is "safe". The natural level of UV light causes plenty of skin cancer. We can only think in terms of increased risk due to human activity that we may want to modify but dichotomizing this into "safe" and "unsafe" is inherently misleading.
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.
During wildfire season, mulch is a fire hazard. Having it around your house is especially bad as it makes it more likely that your house will burn.
That's exactly right. Much remediation is leaving things in place so long as it won't make it to the water supply and we can eliminate human contact.
Excellent as always.
What does one do with the old lead pipes?