We have a somewhat older house. And it was my mother who first told me this: flushing the toilet twice in the morning clears all the lead that has accumulated in your pipes. My mother didn’t tell me where specifically she heard this. And it was when we still had the old toilet, with its bigger flush capacity. So I’m guessing maybe to get the same effect now you’d have to flush the toilet three times or something. In either case, my question is the same: can you clear the lead from your pipes by flushing a couple times?
First of all your pipes don’t have lead in them if your home was built after 1985 when lead solder was banned for use in water systems. Secondly, no amount of flushing is going to exchange the water in pipes which branch off from the line running from the main to the toilet being flushed. In order to flush all the pipes in your home, you’d have to open all the taps and faucets, and flush all the toilets.
Well, if they’re lead pipes, trying to clear the lead from them is like trying to sweep all the sand off of a beach. If they’re copper pipes with leaded solder, it might be that flushing will temporarily remove some accumulated lead–which would be in minute amounts–but what’s the point? Do you drink from the toilet?
Just to be complete – if you do have older pipes with lead solder, and particularly if you have young children, it is recommended to run the faucet for a minute or two first thing in the morning to get rid of any dissolved contaminants. Or so says the brochure I got from my water company. So confused although it might be, Mom’s advice isn’t * completely * misguided. Just got weirdly garbled as it got passed down through generations.
The water faucets should be run for a couple minutes (a good indication for how long is when it turns really cold) whenever it’s been left unused for long periods of time. That means when you get home from work, if no one is home during the day, as well as first thing in the morning.
