I was just at the store looking at garden hoses and I noticed that all of their labels carry a warning which says that they contain lead, one should not drink from them, and one should wash their hands after use.
I am wondering if anyone knows where I can find information on lead exposure from using these hoses.
Just let the water run for a minute or two before you drink from the hose. The pipes in your house probably have lead solder, unless they were put in in the last 10 years, which is why your mother always told to let the tap run for a bit before you drank from it. You haven't suffered any ill effects from your pipes so you shouldn't worry about the water from your hose.
We'd answer that question by saying it's OK to drink from a hose only if you know it was labeled safe on the package and if you flush it first. If you don't flush out the hose, the water standing inside may contain worrisome amounts of lead and other chemicals that leach from the hose itself. Many hoses are made of polyvinyl chloride, which uses lead as a stabilizer.
We recently tested hoses sold at national chains and on the Internet. Some had packaging indicating they were safe for drinking; others had warning labels. But some of the hoses weren't labeled either way.
The hoses labeled safe for drinking typically contained less lead in their construction than the others. In our tests, those hoses leached minuscule amounts of lead into water that had been standing in the hose for 20 hours or more. We measured concentrations well below 15 parts per billion, the level in drinking water at which the Environmental Protection Agency requires remedial action. In fact, tap water contained as much lead as some samples. (The time the water stands in the hose, water temperature and acidity all affect the amount of lead leaching.) Hoses containing the highest amounts of lead, only two of which carried a "do not drink" label, leached 10 to
100 times allowable lead levels in the first draw of standing water.However, even extremely low levels of lead may cause health problems. A recent study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that lead levels in the blood even lower than the current definition of toxicity may adversely affect a child's IQ.
The bottom line. When you buy a hose, choose one labeled safe for drinking. If you use a hose whose package label you haven't seen, assume it's not safe for drinking. With any hose, flush it by letting the water run for a minute or so before you drink.
This is a good argument for plastic faucets for people, especially those with young children because a metal faucet is a source of lead in drinking water.
It's a better argument for teaching your children to run the water a minute before filling the glass. Not every faucet they encounter in their lives will be safe.
Both our children have had no problems learning this.
Ted
Actually, the only lead in the water system of a house is from soldered joints. There are plenty of options other then solder for joining metal pipe. The fact that a valve is metal has nothing to do with if it has led in the water. It is all about how you joined that valve to the line, and how the line is joined at each connection.
First I ramble. Actually, if you buy a faucet, in CA, there will often be a lead warning notice, saying something about the faucet having lead, and to let it run for a moment, to flush it out, before using it for drinking water. There was one in my new faucet, purchased a couple of years ago.
Google ( lead faucet ca )
I don't know where you live, but in california, brass plumbing fixtures do contain lead.
My pipes are copper with "Lead Free" solder. ( is "Lead Free" solder really lead free? ) and run under dirt, all the way to my faucet, so if I run the water for 20 seconds, it is nice and cold. The lead from the brass, if any, is rinsed away, and all I taste is chlorine and copper.
City water sucks.
Why don't you add a big carbon filter to your water line?. I have a well with huge amounts of iron so I have an iron filter followed by a water softener followed by a 6" whole house carbon filter, after all that my water tastes great.
"General Schvantzkopf" wrote
Do you chlorinate or otherwise kill potential bacteria?
If not, you're lucky it hasn't feasted on the carbon filter for lunch.
Once it does, you'll have trouble telling which smells worse,
your sewer or your house water :(
I wipe the housing with bleach when I change filters every six months but that's it. As long as I change the filter twice a year I don't have a problem, if I let it go longer than 6 months there will be a smell which is easily remedied by a filter change. I've been using whole house carbon filters for 25 years.
My well water filtration system, prior to house plumbing entry, runs like this in series. Sediment filter, air injection bottle, carbon filter. Change the sediment filter once a month, and the carbon filter every 3 months. Bacteria that come from deep wells are normally anaerobic, not aerobic in nature. The odor, most likely, is hydrogen sulfide gas made by such bacteria.
I always let the water run for a while before drinking but mainly to let it cool down, not over any worries about lead. This whole lead thing seems like a scam to me, like global warming or the asbestos panic. Or the cranberries-cause-cancer scare of 30 years ago. Based on my observations over the last 50 years or so, they'll probably be recommending that we take lead supplements regularlty within the next 5 years. And there will probably be asbestos dust inhalers issued by the FDA to clean your lungs. Anything the "experts" say will probably be wrong, like the high-carb diet they touted for so long to prevent obesity and heart attacks.
Paul
Do you remember the Woody Allen movie sleeper where he wakes up 200 years in the future and they give him a cigarette?. He says I don't smoke and they tell him don't worry it's tobacco, it's one of the healthiest things for you.
Yes, and when the one scientist tells the other that Woody ran a health food store, selling wheat germ and soy oil, the other replies in amazement, "Didn't they have deep fried food and hot fudge sundaes?".
And of course, the 200-year-old Volkswagen Beetle they find in a cave that starts on the first turn of the key.
Great movie; highly recommended to those who haven't seen it.
If you are joking I cannot tell so I will assume that you are serious about this.
Asbestos panic? Have you never heard of mesotheliom or asbestosis? These are real and very serious conditions proven to be caused by asbestos and accepted as such around the world.
Or the
Likewise lead ingestion is proven to be a serious long term health hazard accepted by the medical profession around the world. Did you never wonder why leaded petrol was banned?
I am not saying that every fad diet or new thought about food or ingestion of substances is good science - far from it. But the fact that there are silly and unproved fads about eating does not mean you dismiss dangers that have been supported by powerful evidence for a long time.
David
Wow, I'll be dammed. Even the faucet it's self is contaminated? We are screwed.
My well water has tested clean, I'd guess mostly because it's drilled thru almost solid rock. That unfortunately means it's also some of the hardest water the testers have seen.
Are there any filters effective for hardness, other than a Na or Ka based softener?
Though your well was undoubtable expensive to drill, you will probably never encounter bacteria and organic material entering through surface water migrating into the aquafier.
Reverse osmosis will remove the minerals, but it isn't practical for whole house use. Many do it for drinking water only. Personally, I drink hard water and send the house water through a softener. We have a separate cold hard water spout at the kitchen sink. There is evidence that drinking hard well water reduces heart attacks. Speculation is that it's the magnesium in hard water. Along with calcium, magnesium also gets replaced with sodium or potassium for soft water. If I had to choose which of the 2 soft waters I had to drink, it would be potassium.
Steve Young
Yes, the testing company recommended a softener for the house, and an RO under the kitchen sink for drinking water. I believe the price for installation of both systems was quoted to be around $2300.
I believe the RO price was somewhere around $800 for a 50 gpd system , and then had to deal with expense of the filters. After thinking hard about it, decided that paying $33 cents a gallon for the RO Culligan water at Walmart made more sense, and even with a softener, will continue to do this for my drinking water.
As for the softener, I've been delaying installation, because of the way my outside lines are laid out. I used to have public water and the outside lines to my pastures and barn was teed off where the public line came. Unfortunately, I had to dig the well on the other side of the house, resulting in the animal and garden water sources now going first into the house.
I am/was concerned about my cattle/pigs and small animals (rabbits/chickens/ducks) drinking the sodium boosted water, so I've held off for about a year trying to come up with another solution other than redigging all of the outside lines. But my water is so hard (36) that I fear for my appliances and hot water heaters, clothes don't seem to come as clean, and I'm tired of eating off of plates and glasses that look like they've been dipped in chalk, or rather my wife is tired of having guests do so.
"JustTom" wrote
How does water straight from your well taste? If it isn't so high in iron that it makes it unpalatable, I would be inclined, (for health reasons), to drink it with only minimal processing. ( i.e. a .5 micron beverage filter). The only problem/concern is where the hard water is used in coffee makers and other boiling devices, as it requires frequent cleaning to not become clogged with mineral deposits.
I would supply hard unprocessed water for all drinking, gardening, livestock and then route the household water through a softener and into the house distribution system. I would install a separate line for a hard water tap at the kitchen sink and to ice makers. Personally, I have no love for RO or distilled water. I believe they are damaging to ones health. Distilled water is a leaching solvent and I would rather keep the minerals in my bones.
I had a hardy 6 foot tall uncle that drank only distilled water the last 30 years of his life and when he died, he was a little over 3 feet tall. (a little exaggeration, but not by that much :(
Steve Young
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