My mother always used to tell me when running water for cooking (pasta, taters, rice, anything where you fill a pot with water and then boil it) you should always fill it with COLD water, rather than hot (in case you were trying to hurry up the boiling process) because when you run the hot water, lead leeches out of the pipes, so you would be cooking your food in lead-laced water.
My husband (who is rather knowledgable about these things) says she’s wrong, and I tend to believe him over her.
Any truth to this? Is she getting this from an old urban legend maybe?
Thanks!
Let’s start with this: it would only make a difference supposing you have leaden pipes between the water heater and the faucet. I don’t know how old your house is but I think the odds are slim that this would be the case.
If you have copper or steel pipes the question is moot.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say all your pipes are lead. if you want to get hot water, you’ll let the cold water sitting in the pipes all run out and take hot water that came from the heater and passed rapidly through the pipes. Where as if you take cold water, you might take the water that forst comes out which has been sitting (or standing, as the case may be) in the pipes.
Look, there’s too many variables. I say buy bottled water and get the lead from the factory direct.
As I understand it, the solder used to connect copper pipes contained lead until a couple of decades ago. I’ll try to find out. Also, copper could very well contain lead as an impurity.
One of the things that was not true to form in the PBS series “1900 House” was the lead solder in the plumbing connections.
Before 1986, solder used in copper pipe connections was up to 50% lead. In that year, Congress banned solder containing more than 0.2%. For a good overview of the sources of lead in drinking water, see http://www.ci.frostburg.md.us/lead.htm
Well, hey, that was easy. Here’s the Straight Dope, courtesy of the EPA. Your mother was right, Kinsey. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/Pubs/lead1.html
Also don’t use cold water that’s not been run for several hours. While it doesn’t dissolve lead as readily as hot water, cold water sitting in a pipe for a long time can pick up enough lead to be dangerous. So the first thing in the morning or after you get home from work, run the cold water for a couple minutes to flush the pipes out.
Well, thanks, now I don’t want to drink anything that comes out of the faucet, hot or cold! 
Thanks for all your replies. I didn’t even think of looking in the EPA site. I was looking at plumbing sites and places like that.
We did replace a lot of the piping in our 50-year-old house and I think most of it is copper or steel.
Guess Mom was right about something!