In a recent column, noted brainiac Marilyn Vos Savant posits that I shouldn’t use the hot water that comes out of my tap initially due to lead dangers. Call me skeptical, but this sounds like B.S. Here’s the actual column. Is she right or horribly misinformed?
Am I wasting time and water running the tap for a while before I drink from it, especially at the start of the day?
—Robert Marten, Bowie, Md.
No. We all need to manage our use of household water so we ingest as little lead as possible.
Lead is rarely found in rivers and other sources of water. It gets into the supply after water leaves the local treatment plants and travels through public water-service lines and household plumbing. These conduits commonly contain lead. The EPA cites home plumbing as the most likely culprit. Even so-called “lead-free” plumbing may contain up to 8% lead.
To reduce the lead in your drinking water: 1) flush pipes before drinking by running the water until it gets as cold as possible; and 2) use only cold water for consumption. Never use hot water from the tap. For example, don’t run hot water to save time when you want to boil water for pasta. Hot water from the tap has the most lead. When you need hot water, take cold tap water and heat it.
To reduce waste, shower or bathe first, which starts the flushing process for your home. Then run the tap you’re going to use for drinking water for a minute and fill a pitcher for the day.
Public water supplies are regularly tested. Lead is included in the standard testing. If the water has dangerous levels of lead the public is informed.
If for some reason you thought your water supply was tainted and they were dishonest you could always take a sample of hot water first thing in the morning and test it yourself.
I suspect the advice about lead is posited on the assumption that you have lead pipes leading into your house (not that the general water supply is tainted - otherwise, how would running it a few minutes help?)
I would be surprised if you did these days, but I’m not up on the US situation. I understood copper was in more general use.
We had lead pipes in the house I used to live in in Scotland. My mum would not let my infant brother have water from them, but all the rest of us used to drink the water and we’re all perfectly alrdsakjfhsakdjfhsajkdfh…
Ms. Savant is perpetuating and confusing some used-to-be facts.
50/50 lead/tin solder was at one time THE solder to sweat copper piping with, but has been banned and replaced with 95/5 tin/antimony for at least a decade. There are likely joints/systems still extant.
For that matter, lead distribution mains exist in some municipalities, often the meter-to-house run.
The real hazard isn’t hot water per se, but acidic water, which will leach many metals.
There could be hazards using water from domestic storage tank heaters relating to legionella, another topic. Hard water can precipitate in the tanks and one could potentially get a dose of extra minerals, though seldom seen as harmful, at least to human health. ( Not so the heater )
Running water for as long as possible to “flush the system” in most cases just wastes water.
Don’t waste water that way (particularly the hot water that you’ve just paid to heat). Lead is not going to be in the water coming into your house. If the house is moderately new, it won’t have lead in the solder. If you’re an adult, there’s probably not going to be enough lead to bother you anyway (children are very susceptible to lead poisoning; adults much less so).
IF you have children (or are about to) AND you live in an older house AND you’re worried about lead, then get your tap water tested for lead (following the test directions carefully, etc. etc.). Only if it comes up positive should you start taking steps to avoid lead.
If you have interior pipes and/or a house connection that are more than 10-20 years old, I would run the cold water tap for a few seconds before drinking it to avoid the first flush, which contains a higher concentration of any contaminants that may be present.
However, I wouldn’t drink the hot water in an old house at all. (Washing dishes, washing laundry, and bathing are fine, but I wouldn’t use hot water out of the tap for drinking or cooking.)
Lead comes from lead solder used to join copper pipes. Particularly in older cities, it’s far more common than some people above seem to think. Some very old systems may still have lead pipes, but this would be unusual.
Many water systems raise the pH of the water they supply to decrease the chance of leaching lead into the water. In some cases, this is the only way they can get the concentration of lead within standards.
Furthermore, lead is only significantly dangerous to children (in small quantities). Your body can excrete small amounts of lead so it is not stored like other heavy metals, such as mercury.
I don’t get it-antimony is poisonous as well. I had heard that the preferred subsititute is yin-silver-but that solder costs 10x as much, and does not flow well.
It si so stupid-you get more lead exposure from checking the battery in your car!
I think water borne bateria is a problem too. My mum used to tell me water from the hot tap can give you legionaires disease. This may be an exaggeration, but I would think that bateria might multiply to dangerous levels in warm water in old pipes.
This is not entirely true. As has been noted, the source of lead in drinking water is not the water supply itself, but corrosion of your plumbing. The drinking water standard for lead is that 90% of houses tested are below the action level. If yours is an older house, it may well have elevated lead levels, even though your water system is in full compliance with the standard. You could be part of that (up to) 10% that is over the action level.
Hot water dissolves things much more readily than cold water. I’m concerned about any constituent of the hot water heater and plumbing dissolving and adding contaminants to the water. This would include solder (for metal pipes) and volatile organics (for plastic pipes).
Bacteriological buildup can also be a problem, particularly if the temperature of the water in the heater is on the low end (as is recommended).
Brita filters use activated carbon, which are most suited for removal of organics (including trihalomethanes, which are a byproduct of chlorination). Activated carbon is moderately effective for removal of lead.
For those who may be concerned, they do not remove fluoride.
For the record, Brita pitcher filters use activated carbon and an ion exchange resin. The faucet filters use a zeolite instead of the ion exchange resin. The ion exchange resin and zeolite will both remove lead.
(I suppose the flow rate for the faucet filters is too high for an ion exchange resin to be effective.)
What exactly is “New” housing. 10 - 20 years is a huge span. In Chicago for example most of this “new” housing is in fact converted. All the mansions and new condos I’ve seen in my area are simply converted from old factories and lofts. They don’t redo the plumbing in any major way.
A lot of time it’s just a matter of knocking walls and putting some new fixtures in a factory.
Regular use of hot, or cold water, prevents any significant leaching to occur; assuming lead is present. Impossible for water to leach out lead in just several hours of sitting, and we run water many, many times a day.
