Understanding Lead in Drinking Water
Knowledge is power: The first step in reducing your exposure to lead is understanding how it gets into your drinking water.
The Source of Our Drinking Water
Most people who live in U.S. cities, towns, and suburbs get their drinking water through pipes maintained by a local water utility. If you receive your water this way, the utility flows treated water to your neighborhood through a pipe called a water main under the street.
To reach your home, water moves from the water main through a pipe called a service line. The service line has two parts: The public portion connects the city’s water main to the curb outside your home. The private portion connects the pipes coming from the curb to your home’s water meter, which measures your water usage. From there, it moves into your home’s plumbing and out your faucets.
The Risk of Lead in Our Drinking Water
As major cities were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, lead water pipes were used because of their durability. They can last from 75 to 100 years! What we once saw as a good thing has become an ongoing threat.
We now understand that lead is toxic and use safer materials. However, even in homes where pipes are newer or updated, lead may still exist in the service lines that connect our homes to the water mains under our streets.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 9 million lead service lines serving water to our communities. These service lines are the largest source of lead in our drinking water today. And yet, many local and state governments and utilities do not have complete records of their location.
Why We Don’t Know the Location of Most Lead Pipes
The U.S. first set standards for lead in drinking water in the 1970s. However, states and water systems were not required to keep consistent records of the materials used in pipes and other infrastructure. Some paper records have been lost or damaged; others exist in different places and formats.
The U.S. government has a plan to eliminate all lead service lines. This includes a new requirement that all water systems make lead pipe inventories publicly available.
By creating a clearer picture of risk, we can protect our communities.
The Goal: Get the Lead Out
LeadOut Map estimates the location of lead service lines based on data that includes water system reports, census and real estate data, historical records, and more. This can help in two ways:
- Empower our communities, including our local water systems, with knowledge by collecting publicly available data and using machine learning to provide estimates where records may be incomplete or unavailable.
- Support the federal government in meeting its goal of replacing all lead service lines in the next decade.
To learn more about where lead service line replacement programs are—and are not—underway, check out the Environmental Defense Fund’s new map.