The real truth about plumbing, is this: Plumbing KILLS !!!
All types of plumbing used in the past, and currently in use, can and will damage your health and eventually kill you.
At one time, Lead pipes were very common. Lead pipes are probably the worst, they cause all sorts of illness, including severe brain damage.
Steel and Iron pipes rust and that rust gets into our bodies, and no one has ever really said why rust is bad for our health, but it supposedly is.
Copper pipes themselves are pretty safe, but the solder used to connect them, contains dangerous metals. The old solder contained lead (see lead above). Lead solder was banned (for plumbing), several decades ago, and other types of solder have been introduced and their formula has changed in recent decades, because none are perfectly safe.
PVC, CPVC, Polyethylene, and PEX are used more than metal pipes these days, but all of them cause cancer, and other health ailments. People are not supposed to drink water that has contacted all the dangerous chemicals in plastics.
Therefore, the only safe water must be the Bottled Water sold in stores, right? *WRONG*. Bottled water is sold in cancer causing plastic bottles, and it's been said that that the water in those bottles is much more contaminated with the chemicals from the plastic, than water in pipes, because it sits in those bottles a lot longer, than it does in pipes. However the companies that sell that bottled water have been getting wealthy for years, by making ill-informed people believe their lies about it's safety.
The bottom line is this. DO NOT DRINK WATER, UNLESS YOU DIP YOUR HEAD IN A RIVER, STREAM, OR LAKE AND DRINK IT STRAIGHT FROM MOTHER EARTH! (A glass or paper cup is probably safe if you dont want to stick your head in the water).
If you dont have a lake, river or stream available. It appears that your only choice is to drink BEER instead of water!!! This may sound objectionable to some people, but if you dont drink anything, you will die from dyhydration. So just drink your life saving beer and shutup....
The Future: The concept of glass water pipes may be the solution, but this technology is not yet developed. Hopefully this will become the plumbing of the future, and our water pipes will resemble neon signs, except they wont glow, when you turn the handle on your glass spigot....... This may be our only hope!