Where’s the lead poisoning infrastructure disaster looming? Anywhere. Actually, everywhere.
In the wake of the Flint water crisis, local governments nationwide have had to assure residents worried about brain damage and miscarriages that their drinking water meets or exceeds all federal standards.
It may not be perfect, but keeping the values below the 15 parts per billion of lead required by federal guidelines is certainly a start. Even if ...
Complying with federal water regulation, it turns out, doesn’t necessarily mean a city’s water is lead-free. All it means is that the amount of lead coming through faucets is beneath an arbitrary level. The rule essentially says that using lead pipes for drinking water is fine, even though childhood exposure to lead can cause permanently diminished intelligence and behavioral problems — serious ones.
Still, there’s another part of this problem that’s even more … problematic. Cities aren’t built in a day. Like more visible components such as streets and sidewalks, the infrastructure that you can’t see varies in age and quality. In a city that’s a century or more old, some water supply lines may be made from modern, safer materials while homes right next door draw their water from aging lead pipes. Short of testing, there’s often no way to know. And when that’s paired with the current way lead testing is done, it can mean a crisis can go on for years before anyone notices.
In theory, half the samples taken in evaluating an area should come from homes with lead supply lines. However, federal rules give local water authorities considerable leeway in how they conduct their sampling programs, and participation in sampling from homes is generally voluntary. If only a fraction of the homes in a city are supplied through lead pipes, and only a fraction of people with those homes respond to requests for samples, it’s very easy to end up with a passing grade from the EPA, even if there’s a problem.
If the level of lead in 90 percent of the samples is below 15 parts per billion, then the federal standard has been met. (Incredibly, the other 10 percent of samples can have any amount of lead.)
In Flint, 2.4 percent of kids were suffering from lead poisoning before the changeover that took that number up to 4.9 percent.
Right now there are thousands of kids in homes all across the country absorbing lead from old, corroded supply lines. Some of those homes simply aren’t being tested. Others may be tested, but they’re in areas where the preponderance of newer supply lines obscures the localized disaster taking place where lead lines are still in place.
The immediate cause of the crisis in Flint was penny-pinching mismanagement. But solving lead poisoning in other areas will require changing the EPA rules to permit more comprehensive sampling and accurate reporting—something local water districts in many areas are bound to fight.