3 Scary Dangers of Having Lead in Your Water
Most people don’t think of lead as a problem in today’s day and age, particularly when it comes to their drinking water. However, even though we’ve stopped using lead in our water pipes and fixtures today, there are still decades worth of old pipes across the country transporting our water. And all it takes for your safe, clean drinking water to become a hazard to your health is one, small change in how those pipes and fixtures are settling.
What’s so bad about lead in your water? Well…
#1: Lead is Toxic
As humans, we put all kinds of things into our bodies that we shouldn’t. Often we do it for fun, but lead is not a recreational kind of poison that our body can handle. Lead can have seriously negative effects on your long-term health, it can stunt growth (particularly brain development in children), and in large enough quantities it leads to cardiovascular problems, kidney issues, and death. Also, given how poisonous lead is, those “large” quantities really don’t have to be very big at all.
Lead is so toxic that the EPA set its acceptable level in water at zero. There’s all sorts of stuff that can be allowed in minute quantities in water because just a little bit of it is harmless… there is no harmless amount of lead.
#2: Lead Piles Up Over Time
The human body is quite good at filtering out toxins and unwanted elements in order to keep us safe… but it can’t get rid of lead. Once lead gets into your body, it stays, and there’s no removing it. For tiny quantities of lead this can be a negligible risk, but all lead that winds up in someone’s body stays. So even if there’s only a small fraction coming in from any given glass of water, that lead is going to add up over time. And it will have the same, disastrous consequences as if you’d put it into yourself all at once.
This is made even worse when you consider that babies in the womb are affected by lead that gets into the mother’s bloodstream, which can lead to birth defects and other problems.
#3: Lead Hides in Your Bones
According to Popular Science, lead actually muscles out calcium in our bodies in a lot of cases. While lead also attaches itself to red blood cells (which is why blood tests are the accepted way to see how much lead is in someone’s body), it’s possible for lead to be incorporated into your bones. This can both weaken the bone, and release the lead back into your bloodstream in large quantities when you break a bone, thus causing a huge, likely life-threatening complication.
You Can Do Something About Lead in Your Water
Lots of people think their homes are safe from lead, but it’s important to get your water tested just to make sure that’s the case. And if you find that your home’s water has lead in it, you need to take steps to deal with that.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that a water softener will do anything about lead in their water. Water softeners have no effect on lead, and even if you have a water softener in place it won’t do anything to limit the lead running through your pipes. You instead need to install a filter to specifically screen out lead in order to keep you and your loved ones safe.
For more about how to keep your home safe from lead, and about the steps you can take to keep your water safe and clean, simply contact us today!
