I live on Capitol Hill in DC with my two young kids. The Bresslers are friends of ours. DC WASA dug up my front yard two summers ago and laid a new service line into my home. They've done this all over town, prioritizing homes with small children and/or people with high lead levels in their blood. Our levels went down after the new pipes were in, although my front sidewalk caved in twice as the ground settled over the following six months or so.

For the SF inquiry, test your water. Search for a reputable testing company in your area and pay for a test yourself. Better safe than sorry. We Brita filter all the water in our house - even for cooking and tooth brushing. I filter the bathwater for chlorine because my children have painfully dry skin and eczema.

As much as this freaks me out, that my water might be carrying poisons into my children's bodies, all my filtering reminds me that we are still lucky to have potable water, hot water even!, in our home. Not letting any agency off the hook, though because in the end, they are responsible for finding a way to deliver clean water free from toxins, contamination and bacteria.

And DC requires lead-level blood tests for all children. Mine have always been low, thank god.

the united states coast guard ( " coasties " ) wants to PUT lead INTO our drinking water here in the Great Lakes Region of the united states by conducting LIVE FIRE exercises with LIVE ammunition !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this unnecessary and probably illegal use of usa taxpayer dollars is due to the " The War On Terrorism " ( TWAT ).

the coasties and usa government are worried senseless that Osama and his minions are gonna sail up the St. Lawrence Seaway and enter the Great Lakes and create mayhem and loot and pillage.

so, by depositing ** 7,000 ** POUNDS of LEAD INTO the Great Lakes as a result of these live fire exercises, our drinking and bathing water becomes LESS secure yet we become MORE secure from Osama and his minions attacking us.

IS THIS A GREAT F***ING COUNTRY OR WHUT ?!?!?!?!

It's not enough to competitively handicap our children by neglecting our school system to the point of ruin, now we have to physically handicap them with lead poisoning? I would love to see a correlation study between the DC households and rates of autism or other developmental disorders, as well as academic performance.

The system is rotted through and through.

I believe in this case that EPA is being assigned too much blame for the some of the cases of elevated lead in drinking water. It is true that new drinking water regulations have created a situation where it is more difficult to simultaneously control all pollutants in drinking water. The rules that primarily conflict are the Disinfectants and Disinfection By-Products Rule and the Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule. The latter was enacted to ensure the microbial quality of drinking water--specifically to make sure that protozoans such as Cryptosporidia and Giardia are inactivated (killed). You may recall the outbreak of Cryptosporidium contamination in drinking water in Milwaukee some years back.

However, there is also legitimate concern with the chronic carcinogenic health effects of disinfectants and disinfection by-products in water, which spurred the Disinfectants and Disinfection By-Products Rule. This does present a big challenge for drinking water operators because, on the one hand, there is a rule saying "make sure you kill off all those nasty protozoans," and, on the other hand, there is another rule saying, "make sure you don't end up with too much residual disinfectants or disinfectant by-products in the water." The latter is not easy to do because there has to be enough residual disinfectant in the distribution system to keep bacteria etc. from growing in the pipes. In big systems, with an extended distribution systems, maintaining some, but not too much disinfectant is very challenging.

One of the ways to comply with the DDBP Rule is to change to an alternative disinfectant such as chloramine. However, any change in chemical treatment to the water can affect the chemical properties such as corrosivity, making lead and copper more soluble. This should have been anticipated by WASA however. A change in disinfectants does not necessitate an increase in lead concentrations--other adjustments can be made to control corrosivity.

This article implies that EPA did not foresee any of these problems, which is not the case. EPA knew that simultaneous compliance would be a challenge and published a Simultaneous Compliance Manual in April 1999. It includes information on simultaneous compliance between four rules--the two mentioned above, plus the Lead and Copper Rule and the Total Coliform Rule.

The responsibility for the lead problem in D.C. lays more heavily on WASA. They had time to figure out how to comply with all the rules and, as a large system, they should have had the technical and financial resources to make any necessary changes. For smaller water systems, with less technical expertise on-staff, I can understand how meeting the challenge would be difficult.

EPA is a legitimate target for criticism in a number of areas, but I think they are being overly blamed in this case. You might be able to make the argument that EPA underestimated the difficulty of complying with all the rules at the same time, but not that they were unaware or trying to cover up lead contamination problems.

Here is a link to EPA guidance documents for complying with the rules:

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/mdbp/implement.html.

I lived in Omaha for a number of years, as an epidemiologist in academia. I consulted with the local health department frequently, and the guy who ran the lead program told me one of their biggest problems was parents' refusal to have their child tested for lead. This was a social class thing - the parents thought that lead poisoning happens only to poor families in old, bad neighborhoods, which in Omaha also implies black. Therefore a large segment of the population did not get tested. And given the age and decripitude of Omaha's water system, I would bet a large number of those have high lead levels.