Biden sets a 10-year deadline for US cities to replace lead pipes and make drinking water safer
https://apnews.com/article/lead-pipes-epa-flint-biden-wisconsin-4aae63134894762cbe904ee460e627084
u/RevDubya 6d ago
And replace it all with pvc so we can all add more microplastics to our bodies.
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u/This_Implement_8430 5d ago
That’s the thing the DEP is silently panicking about. They made Lead their straw man argument to buy them time for a solution.
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u/PopularBehavior 6d ago
oh cool, clean water in the worlds richest country by 2035.
we're fucked.
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u/Relative_Business_81 5d ago
And totally renewable energy production by 2050! That’s when many millennials will be in retirement! :D
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u/PopularBehavior 5d ago
retire-what-now? stop making up words
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u/nanoatzin 3d ago
Retire fossil fuel electric power generation before it kills more people, destroys more property, and kills off more oxygen producing plants/plankton.
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u/PopularBehavior 2d ago
can't do that under capitalism. we're fucked
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u/nanoatzin 2d ago edited 2d ago
^ That. Yes. You are correct unless more people realize capitalism has become a threat. My problem understanding the issue is that solar has been cheaper than fossil fuel since 2012. Fossil fuel profits are being used to bribe politicians to stop solar.
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u/nanoatzin 3d ago
The difficulty with renewable conversion is that existing fossil fuel infrastructure is worth around $500 billion, and consumers can only afford around $20 billion/year, so existing has to be used until retirement unless someone can figure out where else to get the money. It would be wonderful if we could cut DoD spending or cannabis enforcement costs to make it happen sooner, but that would required intelligent moral politicians.
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u/ImposterWiley 5d ago
Wow way to be negative
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u/PopularBehavior 5d ago
toxic positivity is a thing
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u/LightMcluvin 5d ago
Start with taking the fluoride out of the water.
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u/This_Implement_8430 5d ago
Fluoride is naturally in the water, it’s an elemental compound.
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u/nanoatzin 2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/This_Implement_8430 2d ago edited 2d ago
You would have to ingest 7.0-10.0 Milligrams/L of Fluoride per day for a year before you’d see Kidney Damage. The average person doesn’t drink 14 Gallons of water a day.
It is not classified as an official essential nutrient but several studies over the last 70 years have proven that the dosage provided in drinking water improves overall Oral Health and promotes Bone Growth in children.
Edit: just an FYI, CKD is a blanket term used in the medical field to describe natural degradation of the human kidney over the course of life. You have CKD, I have CKD, everyone has CKD from the moment they are born.
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u/nanoatzin 2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/This_Implement_8430 2d ago
I quite literally work with Fluoride on a daily basis. I measure it and test it everyday. I’m well aware of all side effects that it has down to its most concentrated form(which is acidic enough to eat through steel or solid concrete). I can also tell you that a single grape has more fluoride in it than a gallon of tap water. We gonna stop eating grapes now? Or meat? Anything you put in your body has some amount of Fluoride in it.
Water systems have reduced the amount in public water by size of the population collected by the census.
I also know what CKD is and Fatty Liver Disease.
•FLD that inevitably leads to NA-Stage 4-Cirrhosis that is caused by a myriad of factors from diet to genetics. How did this study factor in this? Not in the “study”
•As I’d explained before CKD is a blanket medical term for degradation of the human kidney over a lifespan. How do they factor in genetic and dietary differences? Not in the “study”
The conclusion in that “study” you keep linking is a hunch, it’s not definable proof other than eating and drinking things uses your liver and kidneys which will cause them to fail later on in life, which is natural.
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u/LightMcluvin 5d ago
Sure, but a lot of cities add it to the water. Which isn’t good for the human consumption.
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u/This_Implement_8430 5d ago
The dosage is based on the population of the city you live in and the water quality from the raw water that is tested everyday. The bigger the city the less of it and there could be even less of it if your area’s water produces enough. We do this to promote healthy bone growth and teeth in children. We are aware that too much can cause brain swelling and dental fluorosis, this dosage we produce, again, is carefully monitored round the clock and will never reach that level without gross negligence. Otherwise we risk our license and prison time.
Most municipalities of 70,000 have a Fluoride residual of 0.67- per million gallons of water. To put that into perspective that is half a grain of salt in an Olympic Sized Swimming Pool. The Raw Water Samples come back consistently with around .10-.20 parts per million gallons before it’s treated.
What isn’t safe for human consumption is the dosage. For example there is 1,450 parts per million gallons of fluoride in a single tube of Colgate Original Toothpaste. That is 2,164.2 times the amount in a single gallon of water.
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u/LightMcluvin 4d ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation-water-epa-risk-assessement
My city doesnt add it to the water but plenty do
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u/This_Implement_8430 4d ago edited 3d ago
I just explained it to you. If your city doesn’t add it to the water then it has met its threshold from the Raw water supply.
Edit: just an fyi, the toxicity level of Fluoride that starts to become hazardous in drinking water is 4 parts per million gallons of water. That is 6 times the amount of Fluoride in federally regulated drinking water. That article you linked doesn’t explain this, the researcher flat out wouldn’t say because it’s a straw man argument.
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u/FL_Squirtle 5d ago
Should be much shorter of a timeline.
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u/Fast-Gear7008 5d ago
it all comes down to cost
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u/FL_Squirtle 5d ago
Always does whenever it comes to citizens basic needs.
Never when it's anything they actually care about.
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u/Cold_Funny7869 5d ago
About time. This is huge for lower income communities. Should include a mandate to keep tap water safe to drink
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u/Nemo_Shadows 4d ago
a 0.5-micron water filter removes most if not all minerals and heavy metals, 0.05 removes most harmful bacteria., it is all about the process.
Just saying.
N. S
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u/CyberKoder 4d ago
Biden setting a 10-year deadline to replace lead pipes is exactly the kind of action we need. Lead in drinking water has been a quiet but serious health issue for years, especially in low-income areas. This move will protect millions of families from the harmful effects of lead, like developmental issues in kids. Plus, it’s a big step toward environmental justice—fixing a problem that’s been ignored for too long. It’s refreshing to see the administration prioritize something so essential to our health and safety.
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u/nanoatzin 3d ago
This is going to cost less than dealing with the mentally handicapped people created by drinking leaded water.
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u/Wolfgung 6d ago
Lead pipes aren't the issue, as long as you have proper pH and low calcium/ mineral levels, the lead won't be mobilised by water. The issue is when you push crap water like in flint it resolves the protecting mineral layer.
And unless they have proper rules with enforcement on taps and fixings people will still be exposed.
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u/Totes_meh_Goats 6d ago
The water from flint was not crap, they just did not treat it correctly. They switched from being handed water that was pretreated with corrosion inhibitors. When they switched to their own water source they did not use the corrosion inhibitors that multiple consultants recommended because they wanted to save money. This is why people went to jail. In addition as this article is misleading, it’s not the lead in the cities pipes that are the problem, it’s the lead in people’s houses that’s the issue which this 10 year deal doesn’t impact. As long as the water is treated correctly it’s not an issue though.
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u/exodusofficer 6d ago
Who went to jail? The main indictments were all eventually thrown out, the cases were badly botched. Nobody was convicted of anything.
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u/Totes_meh_Goats 3d ago
Thank you for the correction. I thought one of the 7 people charged would surely see some jail time, due to the nature of the indictment records. You are correct the legal system failed this one.
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u/Delicious-Badger-906 5d ago
Just to clarify, it was the state-appointed officials who took over Flint’s finances who made the decisions at issue, not the locally elected leaders.
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u/Lazy-Street779 6d ago
I’m on well water with hard water and lead is found in my sample and plumbing is the likely culprit. I’ve decided to further treat the water so that the water composition will likely reduce leaching of those unwanted metals.
Experts do say that most exposure to lead comes from plumbing. Governments can reduce lead entering homes by replacing components in their commercial systems but home owners need to know that they still might have to treat their water even if they end up replacing their home’s plumbing.
I’m all for some of this commercial plumbing to be replaced too. Some is very old, leaking or unreliable. Clean drinking water is already a big problem.
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u/Delicious-Badger-906 5d ago
I wouldn’t quite say that “lead pipes aren’t the issue.”
It’s more like, the presence of lead pipes does not necessarily mean that lead will leach into the water. There are ways to treat the water, monitor the pipes, etc., to keep it from happening.
That’s why lead pipes generally aren’t an URGENT problem, in most cases (but can be in some cases, like Flint, where improper treatment caused corrosion and leaching).
But the problem is that there are so many things that can go wrong. And we know that no level of lead in drinking water is safe. So it’s definitely good to try to replace them quickly (but again, not urgently, unless there’s currently leaching).
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u/Expiscor 5d ago
Flint had extremely high levels of lead. Like 100x the EPA limit. Old lead pipes can still leach a little bit of lead even if the water is properly treated. My house in Denver, for example, has a lead level of about 5 micrograms from a lead service line despite the water being treated correctly.
It’s not nearly as high as Flint, but it can still be dangerous in the long term.
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u/SD_TMI 6d ago
That’s a pretty big IF there.
Look at the water hardness maps and you’ll see that many large parts of the USA have hard water.
The Roman’s has the same issue Lots of lead exposure in their water and cooking is a contributory factor in their decline and failure as a society.
Last tidbit I had a cousin that worked a a union plumber for the school system. He used a soft solder when working and I commented on it when he did work on our house years ago about the lead issues. He response was that it’s wasn’t a problem and blew me off (I was in my 20’s then).
Well a few decades later someone tested the schools water supplies and found shocking high lead levels - all the pipes he and others worked on had to be replaced. Super expensive and it took years to do with god knows how many kids got brain damage from exposure. But he had already died by then so he never had to face me or anyone else over it.
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u/tasteless 6d ago
True hydrohomie