Basic Information about Lead in Drinking Water
Table of Content
Our Company, Builder Buddy Inspections & Testing, provides Well Inspections, Septic Inspections, Water Testing, and other Inspection services. We are a highly-rated Well Inspection company based out of Asheville that provides high-quality inspection and testing reports and services. If you are located within 40 miles of Asheville, call us today to set up an appointment or schedule here. These companies typically test for only a limited number of contaminants.
The big drawback with both of these kits is that their reports lack the clear explanations that set Tap Score apart. That lets you quickly scan your results for any problem areas, but it doesn’t help you understand what the results mean and what you can do to address any concerns. Tap Score found slightly elevated levels of bromodichloromethane in our test sample, and it explained the potential risks and solutions.
Home testing for lead in your soil
It includes the level of analytes present in your water compared to public health standards, potential health risks, aesthetic issues, and plumbing problems. The report also highlights possible water treatment options – think product recommendations. We do not recommend any of the more-comprehensive DIY test kits that are available. If you want a complete picture of what’s in your water, we strongly recommend that you go with one of the send-away kits and let a professional lab do the testing.
I tested six different DIY kits, taking close to a hundred measurements. And when I finished, I was less confident that I knew what was in my water than I had been at the beginning. For your tap from any hardware store, and also from many municipalities and government agencies.
Actions
Below are recommended actions that a person may take, separately or in combination, if they are concerned about lead in their drinking water. The list is not intended to be exhaustive or to imply that all actions equally reduce lead from drinking water. EPA recommends you also contact your local water system and health department. EPA's Public Notification Rule requires public water systems to alert you if there is a problem with your drinking water. Young children, infants, and fetuses are particularly vulnerable to lead because the physical and behavioral effects of lead occur at lower exposure levels in children than in adults. A dose of lead that would have little effect on an adult can have a significant effect on a child.
A recent example of lead still affecting our water today is the Flint water crisis, which took place between 2014 and 2019 in Flint, Michigan. It was discovered that within this period of time, a total of up to 12,000 children in the state were exposed to lead that was contaminated with lead and bacteria. Make sure you wash your hands thoroughly after conducting this test, especially if you have reason to believe your home’s water pipes are made from lead. Council member Josh Mandelbaum proposed adding language to the new housing code that would require rental property owners to test drinking water for lead as part of the rental certification process.
SimpleWater Tap Score Advanced City Water Test
You need to fill a glass of water, dip the test strip, and match its color with the chart, and you’re good to go. So, if you live in a home built before 1986 , you need to test your water for lead. Unfortunately, the scenario is pretty different for DIY test strips measuring lead concentrations. Yes, DIY strips come with detailed and easy-to-follow instructions. However, the procedure can be a little odd and highly prone to errors.
Registering our tests was simple thanks to Tap Score’s clean, modern website. The instructions for how to take your samples, included with the kit, are well written and sensibly organized. And Tap Score includes a mailing label and utilizes multiple carriers (USPS by default; UPS and FedEx by request), which means you’re likely to be near a convenient drop-off. None of our competitors matched all—or, in some cases, any—of these benefits.
It was amended again in 1996, and its sister law RLDWA in 2011 revised what “lead-free” actually means – which, at that point, was a weighted average of .25%. Lead in homes can also come from paint, dust, soil, air and food. More information can be found in the resource section at the end of this guide. Remember, before you consider purchasing a system to treat your potential lead problem, head online to check out customer reviews.
Aside from contaminant concentrations, the report also compares the detected levels to standard public health guidelines and recommends suitable treatment products. Another feature that set Tap Score apart from the competition was its customer support. When you get your report (it’s sent as a Web page, downloadable as a PDF), there’s a live chat function that you can use to ask questions about your report directly. To test each kit with identical water, I bought a water cooler—the kind you see on sidelines and at construction sites—so I could collect a single large (approximately 3-gallon) sample of my tap water. To minimize the cooler’s potential impact on the sample, I gave it a thorough wash with a simple industrial degreaser to remove any oily residues, followed by a rinse with pure white vinegar. That was followed by multiple rinses with plain tap water and 12 hours of drying in the airflow from our top-pick air purifier .
Again, we think DIY lead-test kits are an excellent value, and if lead is your only worry, they are a quick and inexpensive way to tell whether you have a problem. But if you want a broader analysis of what’s in your water, we strongly believe send-away lab tests provide value worth paying for. For the DIY kits, I dispensed samples from the cooler into clean glass cups or the provided vials and ran the tests according to the manufacturers’ instructions.
Option 1 is more affordable, but the latter provides much more accurate and thus reliable results. And when lead testing, accuracy is key – there is no safe lead level in drinking water. That result accorded with the results from our other send-away test kits and our independent control test. All of our send-away kits contained a separate set of collection vials for measuring VOCs—volatile organic compounds, like chloroform—that can contaminate tap water. For these, the best practice is to flush the pipes for several minutes before sampling. I did this, and then collected all the VOC samples one after the other, to best replicate common starting conditions.
Depending on the lab and the extent of testing that occurs, an at-home water lead test will cost between $15 to $100. Some cheaper tests offered online offer tests that look for dissolved lead. This test looks for overall lead levels but does not pick up particulate and other minerals. Many public suppliers put yearly reports online, so you can also find it yourself by typing your ZIP code into the EPA’s web site at /ccr. Remember that levels of lead above 0 in drinking water are considered unsafe, so if test results show that your tap water contains 1 ppm of lead, the EPA sees this as potentially harmful to health. Lead is tasteless, odorless and clear, so if you want to know whether it’s in your drinking water supply, you’ll be required to test for it.
To be clear, part of their higher cost is that both kits test for a somewhat wider range of contaminants than Tap Score. The WaterCheck CityCheck Deluxe gives readings for 114 contaminants, versus Tap Score’s 108, and the Safe Home Ultimate gives readings for 149. Choose the test kit that’s right for your paint color, and then carefully follow the instructions on the package to test many areas of your home. Lead test kits are available from hardware stores, and some municipalities have free test kits on request. This method of testing is not suitable for homes with children under the age of 6 or for landlords requiring testing—these situations require a licensed professional.
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