Is there Lead in my Water???

Many people have heard about lead being in their water - especially those drinking tap water.  I'm often asked if it's there - unfortunately, the answer is YES.  Health Canada sets guidelines for contaminants and they determine the levels which their experts feel these contaminants will pose a risk to the health of Canadians.  Lead is one of the contaminants tested and while lead has been constantly found in the water, it is monitored so that it is delivered at what is thought to be a 'safe' limit.

The limits for contaminants like lead are reviewed, usually every year, and can be revised as necessary.  Usually, the limits of what is considered to be "safe" are raised from time to time.  I'm not entirely sure why that is, other than by calling higher limits "safe" they are less expensive to maintain...  One thing that has recently increased the levels of lead in drinking water is the switch from chlorine to "chloramine" as the disinfecting agent for municipal or "city" water.

Edmonton, among many other municipalities, switched to chloramine a few years ago.  It has longer "staying power" in the water, so although it is not as strong a disinfectant as chlorine, less is required to ensure delivery to the people receiving water at the "end of the line," ie. the people furthest away from the treatment facility.  Chloramine is toxic to fish - just ask anyone that sells aquariums.  Although it kills fish, this mixture of chlorine and ammonia we call chloramine is considered safe for human consumption.

Before this switch, if you wanted to remove the taste of chlorine from the water, you could simply pour tap water into a jug and let it sit overnight.  The chlorine would evaporate and you'd be left with better-tasting water.  As a kid, I used to do this all the time.  (I guess even at the age of 10 I had concerns about water quality!  -I used to call it "mountain water" because it tasted similar to the water we used to stop for on trips to Banff...)  Leaving the water to sit works with chlorine because chlorine is technically a gas trapped in the water.  Leaving it out allows it to dissipate and leave the water (into the air in your home, but that's a topic for another discussion...)  Now that chloramine is being used, leaving tap water out no longer removes it.  If you have fish, you MUST purchase a filtration system or use special tablets which consume and react with the chloramine.

The main drawback of chloramine, and the reason for this blog post, is that it causes water to become "aggressive" - meaning it can leach toxins from the plumbing system.  If it comes into contact with lead-containing pipes anywhere along the upwards of 20 miles of pipe between the treatment plant and your home, it will pull lead out of the plumbing.  If you have any galvanized pipe in your home, that is also lead-containing so you will be increasing lead levels in your water there as well.

If you are concerned about lead, DO NOT boil the water.  This will NOT remove the lead, it will actually just reduce the volume of water in the pot and actually INCREASE the lead levels - actually making it worse for you.  If you want to remove lead, you need to either distill the water or use a reverse osmosis system.  Because of environmental impacts, my preference is clearly reverse osmosis.  They are about 10x more efficient than distillers when it comes to the amount of water used compared to water produced.  Distillers also have a boiler unit which use at least 800 Watts of power (usually 1200 to 1600 or more!) to produce the steam which purifies the water.  RO just makes more sense - they are less expensive systems and a LOT easier and less expensive to operate and maintain.

Even though the water meets Health Canada guidelines when it leaves the treatment plants, I always use a reverse osmosis system to remove the chemicals and toxins in it.  For my family, the closer to ZERO contaminants in the water, the better.  I also don't know what has been in contact with the water AFTER it left the treatment plant.  Better safe than sorry, so reverse osmosis water is all we use for drinking and cooking.