Aging infrastructure & lead pipes
Cities installed lead pipes for a century because they were cheap, durable, and easy to bend. We now know there is no safe level of lead, and the country is in the middle of a generational effort to dig every lead pipe out of the ground.
Why lead pipe was everywhere
Lead is soft, durable, and easy to shape, which made it the material of choice for the “service line” connecting a home to the water main from the 1800s through the mid-1900s. Many cities actively required it.
The hazard was known even then, but it took until a 1986 amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act to ban new lead pipes and solder. By then an estimated 9 million lead service lines were already in the ground, where most of them remain.
Flint changed the conversation
Lead usually stays put unless something disturbs the protective mineral scale inside the pipe. That is exactly what happened in Flint, Michigan in 2014, when a switch in water source without proper corrosion control let lead pour into thousands of homes.
Flint made lead in water a national issue again, and the health stakes are stark. The EPA and CDC agree there is no safe level of lead exposure, and children are most vulnerable, with links to lasting harm to the developing brain and nervous system.
Digging it all out
The response has accelerated. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dedicated $15 billion specifically to lead-line replacement, and in 2024 the EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule Improvements ordered nearly every U.S. water system to replace all of its lead service lines within 10 years.
It is one of the largest infrastructure undertakings in a generation, with much of the work prioritized in the lower-income communities where lead pipe is most common.
What you can do
- Find out whether your home has a lead service line; many utilities now offer an online inventory or lookup tool.
- Until a lead line is replaced, a filter certified to NSF/ANSI 53 for lead, or reverse osmosis, reliably removes it.
- Run the tap cold before drinking if water has been sitting, and never cook or make formula with hot tap water.
Air to water generation
A new countertop appliance makes clean drinking water from the air every day. No pipes, no advisories, no PFAS, no plastic bottles.
Sources
- U.S. EPA: Lead and Copper Rule Improvements ~9 million lead lines; 10-year replacement requirement; 1986 ban.
- CDC: About Lead in Drinking Water No safe level; children most vulnerable.
- U.S. EPA: Funding for Lead Service Line Replacement $15 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for lead lines.