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posted by chromas on Monday September 03 2018, @02:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-the-lead-out dept.

exec and Arthur T Knackerbracket have found the following story:

Students returning to school in Detroit next week will find their water fountains entirely shut off over concerns of elevated lead and copper levels—something that federal lawmakers say is part of a "disturbing and unacceptable" nationwide issue.

The decision to shut off the drinking water in Detroit was based on a first round of results from testing that the school district carried out in its 106 schools earlier this year. The results from just 24 schools so far surfaced 16 that had water sources tainted with excessive levels of lead, copper, or both. For instance, tests at the district's Academy of the Americas Elementary school found a kitchen and drinking faucet in a basement cafeteria that had lead levels of 182 micrograms per liter (ug/L) and 154 ug/L, respectively. Those are more than ten times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limit of 15 ug/L. The full testing results can be found here.

[...] In a joint statement, the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) and the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) were quick to point out that the contamination is not due to a problem with the region's water system. Rather, the pair blamed aging plumbing within the schools for the contamination.

"The water at GLWA's treatment plants is tested hourly and DWSD has no lead service lines connected to any DPSCD building. The drinking water is of unquestionable quality," the statement read.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday September 03 2018, @10:08PM (1 child)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday September 03 2018, @10:08PM (#729982) Journal

    I've never verified this, but I was told once (by someone who should have knowledge about this) that many water testing protocols require you to run the tap for a long time first before taking a sample for testing. Which perhaps explains why contaminated water can go undetected in many cases.

    When I was a kid, my parents always taught me to run the cold water tap for a while first before we ever took water for drinking or cooking. I've always just done that and am always surprised by how few people do the same. Generally when I have had water from someone who just turns on the tap, it tastes funny... In various ways. How do people not notice this?

    Similarly, I almost never use hot tap water for drinking or cooking. Hot water absorbs even more junk from pipes and water tanks... And I've sometimes even tasted it when someone used it for an application like cooking pasta.

    Apparently some people notice this stuff and then decide to buy bottle water. In many (though not all) cases, you might just be able to get safer and better tasting water from your home tap by running some water first.

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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 04 2018, @06:18PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday September 04 2018, @06:18PM (#730379) Journal

    When I was a kid, our small town tap water was impossibly good. Most people will say you have to buy bottled distilled water if you want to try superheating it in a microwave...but I managed to do that when I was about ten years old heating tap water for hot chocolate. Didn't understand why yet, but I definitely learned to stand back a bit when dumping anything into that water...two minutes would give you a cup of boiling hot water; three minutes would give you a minor explosion; five minutes would blow so violently that it'd throw half the water in your cup all over the kitchen. Fun times.... :)

    But then I went to college, where the tap water was hard as nails, and started using a Brita filter. Still do -- the tap water where I live now isn't quite as bad, but it's still not great. I don't care if the tap runs for a bit first, because anything I drink or cook with is going to be filtered again anyway, and even if I run the water for twenty minutes it's still going to taste pretty awful without it. Not sure about cooking, but definitely everyone else that I know is also using extra filters for drinking water at least.

    Which...isn't great, really. Those filters are kinda expensive...and I don't think they even filter out stuff like lead, but most people don't really think about that. But the wealthy congress critters and even middle class Americans are becoming so habituated to these extra filters that they don't care as much about the tap water quality. They figure it doesn't have to be perfect since the filter is going to clean it up a bit more anyway, and they're so habituated to the filters that they'll still be buying them even if the tap water is perfect...so they don't see the point in spending extra money to improve the water quality. And the people who can't afford the filters get screwed...

    Unfortunately, companies like Brita and Coca-cola have a great financial interest in convincing people that tap water isn't safe. And they're quite good at spreading FUD about impurities without any real information about any legitimate problems...that way people don't fear lead or microbes or anything else that can be tested or filtered at the source; they only know that tap water is bad, all tap water is bad, all tap water will always be bad, it can't be fixed and sinking money into trying is a waste. Because that's what the nice man from Nestle said on TV. So instead of one consolidated, well-maintained, highly efficient public water filter...we get a million expensive private filters that don't get changed often enough and don't filter half of what we're worried about and don't get used properly and don't cover a large portion of the population....and the problem stays hidden and the infrastructure continues to decay...