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- cross-posted to:
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The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.
“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.
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I’ve long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades. Lead that accumulates in the bones over one’s lifetime leaches out into the bloodstream when one becomes elderly, like calcium does with osteoporosis. Cognitive issues and rage are associated with lead exposure.
I love when people who grew up in the 70s tell me the world is so much less safe today.
Why replace lead pipes at huge costs when you can just shoot criminals?
It turns out that more lead was the answer all along
Think about how many bullets those old pipes can be turned into! This project would practically pay for itself with the cost of ammunition these days.
I’ve long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades.
That’s exactly what has happened.
Imagine, if you will, a country that has a lot of land area, which uses personal ground transport to grt around. Imagine if, for decades, those personal transport machines used large, ineffcient engines that ran on a fuel that caused aerosolized lead to be blown into the atmosphere at a staggering rate?
Do not forget lead paint, pipes and crystal.
Also more recently, people who will cycle 1000 rounds of cheap ammo through sixteen different guns as a hobby and then spread that lead contamination all through their car and home, and they’ll do this every week for years.
Shooting as a hobby isn’t new, but the volume and frequency people are doing it has definitely gone way up in some parts of the US in the past 30 years.
I remember watching a grand thumb (gun nut YouTuber) video where he found out about the lead poisoning and started wearing an N95 mask at the range.
He switched to lead free ammo IIRC. His buddies made fun of him.
I hadn’t thought of that one.
Imagine, if you will, a three by seven inch wooden frame – a frame that’s a gateway to a world of imagination. Wipe your mind on the welcome mat. You’re about to enter…
The Scary Door.
It turns out it’s man.
That’s a tiny door
I’m not sure about that, I’ve had lead poisoning for thirty years and I’m still not stupid enough to support those assholes.
it’s dose dependant, and while your particular neurological effects may be different, in population studies for almost every country where lead has been banned, there is a direct relationship to violent crimes as well. Lead gasoline use goes up, crime rate goes up. Lead gasoline stops, and as the lead is measured to leave the environment, the violent crime goes down.
Intelligence is only one possible thing affected. It’s also highly associated with emotional impulsiveness.
Oh I’m sure. I have many of those issues, but then I also did before I was poisoned and treated for it. How much it affected me is hard to say though overall because I’ve got adhd and have always been impulsive… My temper has been an issue since I was born, so I have a lot of practice suppressing it.
To me it seems there’s a lot more at play including lack of critical thinking skills and not just intelligence when it comes to their support.
How did you find out you had lead poisoning?
I burned my leg by getting splashed with a bit of molten metal when I was working at a metal foundry when I was around 21 years old. My family doc tending to it ran some tests and next thing I knew I was on medication for it… some kind of horse sized pills that were nearly impossible to keep down.
Late edit: Chelation therapy I guess it’s called.
People typically can see a ~3 IQ point deficit with long term lead poisoning.
I guess thankfully I had a couple to spare :)
I worry about this a little bit for myself.
I was just shy of twenty years old when leaded gas sales ended in California.
So I definitely grew up with lots of exposure. Hope it doesn’t dement me out in my final couple of decades.
I worked on a community gardening project in the city when I was in grad school. We had an ordinary urban residential lot and wanted to plant a community vegetable garden.
The soil was so incredibly contaminated with lead from 70 years old leaded gasoline that we had to scrape off the top 6 ft of topsoil and send it to a toxic waste dump, and the replace all of that. Then we built raised garden beds to mitigate lead uptake in the plants.
Most cities in the world are still heavily contaminated and lead will never go away.
“We don’t want any of your leftist ‘woke’ pipes!”
I can already hear my boomer father bitching
Came here to say this. I look forward to whatever their excuse is to not solve the toxic drinking water problem. And likely immediately spend more on DoD or cut taxes to the rich.
DoD
Dungeons or Dragons?
Department of Defense
That would be infinitely cooler and more useful.
Sadly it’s the department of defense.
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Lead makes Republicans
It’s funny, because the hexbears basically have the same “Biden bad” reaction. Almost like there’s a weird amount of ideological overlap.
Not a hexbear, but the leftist “Biden bad” narrative wouldn’t demonize investing in infrastructure, they would call out shit like unconditional support for Israel or failing to meaningfully improve social safety nets via Medicare for All, or other such measures. Biden is a Liberal, at the end of the day, and that’s not going to please any leftist except by not being a fascist.
Never underestimate the effects of extremism on rational conclusions
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Flip your district blue in 18 years with this one weird trick!
This is a greater threat to the republicans than gerrymandering is to the democrats!
REPUBLICANS HATE THIS WEIRD HACK!
Huzzah! Another great move by the Biden administration that will probably be overlooked by most commenters, like his labor board appointments that led to the recent union resurgence were.
To be fair, a banana now costs $0.67 when it was $0.54 under Trump
How many Biden fellators does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Hooray Biden for doing less than the absolute bare minimum!!!
Do you do literally anything besides endless serial shitposting about how much you hate Joe Biden? It’s incessant. Get a grip, fucking weirdo.
Those who smelled it dealt it.
More than 2/3rds of democrats don’t think he should run. I have a feeling your head is in your ass
Fuck you and your made-up bullshit figures.
So you are denying your own farts don’t stink?
Edit: I was talking about policy not football
He’s doing a great job. He’s just too fucking old to go another four years.
But I’m certainly not going to pass on Biden to vote for a dumbass tyrant that’s just about as old.
I’ll look for someone to vote for in the primary, if there is one.
Better than selling national secrets to our enemies
This guy has lead pipes.
I’m afraid your opinion of the bare minimum is not the universal definition of it. You shouldn’t be surprised when people differ with you on that.
When everything’s below the bare minimum, it becomes a meaningless metric. You’ll still have to rank the available options, and there can still be a huge difference between those options.
Those that purposely destroyed the water systems with cuts in Flint Michigan should have been quartered in a public square.
Sadly in reality they probably received bonuses and perks.
Those that caused the switchover to Flint River water that resulted in the disaster surfacing definitely should be drawn and quartered, no question. Snyder and his city managers put all this nonsense in motion and should be charged with crimes against humanity.
However, it’s also a systemic, deeper problem in the US. Flint’s pipes didn’t suddenly become terrible overnight. The entire water system was in disrepair for decades. The only reason it didn’t surface sooner was they were regulating the water going through it to hold the demons at bay. Even when it was working, pre-disaster, the water was safe to drink, but horrible from a drinking water perspective.
The whole system was a giant leaking piece of junk that basically kept working due to positive pressure pushing contaminants out of the leaks, and the pH level being maintained so the old pipes wouldn’t start leeching into the water. That a GM engine plant had to switch water sources because the water was damaging the engine construction is just mind-blowing. Human bodies are vastly more delicate than engines.
Flint’s not the only one either, many American cities with aging water infrastructure that wasn’t properly maintained all have/had similar problems.
We are such a short-sighted country that seems to so quickly forget that our infrastructure requires constant maintenance and updates. I really think the generation that got to live among all the New Deal and post WWII infrastructure just thought they lived in a magic time where all this stuff just exists forever, rather than realizing it takes stewardship to keep things “the way they are”. Now, we on the back end, reap the rewards of everything falling apart at the same time, faster than we can fix it.
We are such a short-sighted country
We see about as far as the next quarter’s profits. That seems to be the marker. Apparently, the future isn’t really worth looking at past that.
A friend of mine was starting into a tirade a while back about how terrible it is that all water pipe installed in houses today is plastic even though we know BPAs are killing people. I suggested that they might be better than lead pipe. We still high five from time to time.
Does he mean PEX? Because that’s HDPE and is BPA-free.
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This is one of those times I’m like why are mass shootings always schools and bars and not assholes like the people responsible for this
Wasn’t it a theme there for awhile to go Postal? I can’t recall if that was about co-workers, management, the general public or all of the above?
I know people were charged for their involvement in the crisis but from what I can tell they got out of the charges. I think there may be a case that is still pending, though
I linked an article in one of my comments that describes the criminal cases. They did not get off scot free as of 2021.
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“Both sides are the same”
Just another day on which I as a European am absolutely shocked how shit the quality of life in the US is.
Europe has lead pipes as well, buddy.
They’re perfectly safe as long as idiots don’t change the water supply to one that’s more acidic without buffering the pH.
Hell, England and Wales have nearly 3x more than the entire US.
That isn’t perfectly safe. That is normally safe, but once in a while something will go wrong and they become unsafe.
If it goes wrong long enough after the pipes have been in service it’s barely an issue iirc because there is now a coat of corroded lead inside the pipes that does not cause lead poisoning
That corroded lead can sometimes break off and then you get lead again.
When people say europe they usually aren’t thinking of countries such as Russia, Turkey, or the UK.
What. I can maybe give you Russia (“Eastern Europe”) and Turkey (seems more culturally Middle East than Europe), but most people are absolutely thinking of the UK. What other group would they be part of?
Svalbard.
Their own group? They voted to leave Europe after all.
Did you not read my whole comment?
We currently have the freedom to drink lead tainted water, can you say the same?
Yes. 25% of domestic residences still use lead piping in the EU, compared to 10% in the US.
Europeans “Try Not To Talk Shit About Something You’re Actually Worse About” Challenge:
Impossible.
But it feeeels like they should be better! Don’t bring facts into the Europe self-suck contest
Do they even have people in wheelchairs in Europe? Would really suck ass for those people if true.
That data is still from 2009 though, but sadly there doesn’t seem to be a newer statistic. Since that time many changes were made to push for the removal of old lead piping in the EU.
Anyway the threshold for lead in drinking water in the EU is 10ug/L since 2013.
Since 2020 a regulation has been in effect with the goal to have less than 5 ug/L drinking water at the consumer until 2036 everywhere in the EU.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125733The US has a threshold of 15 ug/L.
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ok do prison populations
European here, how is that relevant?
We are shit at stuff, Americans are shit at stuff, your comment does not solve anything.
Ha, checkmate Europe
That explains a lot about the Republican party
It doesn’t, but lead gas and paint do.
Yeah! Tell that bad British person to shut up about my freedom water! They almost made me drop my crayon and I’m trying to find dot #6! I can’t wait to find out which shape these dots are going to make me draw… There’s seven dots and the word “stop” in the middle, so I’m thinking a school bus!
The funny thing is that England has more residences with lead pipes than the entire US.
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You don’t even have pipes in Europe. You drink water that you squeeze out of your sheep’s wool
Delicious sheepwater. You will never take away my sheepwater.
It’s worth noting that 9.2 million homes is an extremely small percentage of American homes and I’d say almost all of them are extremely rural homes or dying rural towns that just need relocated. Think of North Dakota as akin to the Siberian oblasts or northern Finland, neither get a lot of infrastructure care because no almost one is there. This is the Biden admin trying to look out for the little guy that’s been ignored the last century
He should do high speed internet next. My mom has been stuck on a 3mbps WISP since 2007.
Agreed, the ISPs pissed away the billions they got in the early 2000s. It’s time to pony up another few billion but let the military do the work this time then hand the actually completed project to gouvernement ran ISPs.
My dad is still paying frontier like $80 a month for 4mbps that doesn’t work half the time
Eh, it doesn’t need to be installed by the military, but it definitely needs to be a public works project.
And if the telecoms push back, it’s time to start an audit on where that tax money went.
But yeah, AT&T’s fiber trunk line runs 50ft from my mom’s front door, but they wont even put a dsl relay out there (it’s been 2 years away for the past 20 years)
I only say the military because they’re answerable to the executive branch, the public ISPs are beholden only to shareholders who do not have the best interests of the public in mind. If given the opportunity the ISPs will squander it again and there’s nothing an after the fact audit will do about it, the military will at least complete the job even if it takes longer and is slightly over budget.
And by military I mostly mean army Corp of engineers and whichever division wants to offer up its IT ops crew for the setup
Have you ever been here?
While we’re digging shit up, lets lay some fiber.
AT&T after taking my tax money: “hahahahahahahahahahahahahah no”
I would rather DRINK LEAD then to not be allowed to call a black person the N WORD! I’m a NOT RACIST REPUBLICAN!
For some reason I read that last post with an Italian accent. I’ma noot racist
Let’s a go!
👌
This has the potential to save democracy itself. If we can hold out 30-50 years.
You also gotta get rid of microplastics and forever chemicals, and bump public education funding up about 80%, lol. Once a generation gets a bad education, they are pretty stoved in.
What are the odds that this is just a campaign promise and he never even attempts to actually do this?
Edit: this was a genuine question. I’ve seen lots of broken campaign promises in my day. Politicians will promise you the moon every election cycle, but very few ever deliver.
Biden has had more accomplishments in his presidency than most.
TL;DR: largest economic stimulus packages ever passed in US history. Designed to prevent a COVID depression, build US manufacturing, support western democracies and compete against chinese manufacturing, and to decarbonize the US to fight climate change.
Plus there was the whole clean up the trumpian COVID mess and support Ukraine being invaded by Russia.
I found a good list here: https://www.upworthy.com/joe-biden-s-23-greatest-achievements-as-president-of-the-united-states-so-far
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Passed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package to increase investment in the national network of bridges and roads, airports, public transport and national broadband internet, as well as waterways and energy systems.
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Helped get more than 500 million life-saving COVID-19 vaccinations in the arms of Americans through the American Rescue Plan.
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Stopped a 30-year streak of federal inaction on gun violence by signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that created enhanced background checks, closed the “boyfriend” loophole and provided funds for youth mental health.
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Made a $369 billion investment in climate change, the largest in American history, through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
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Ended the longest war in American history by pulling the troops out of Afghanistan.
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Provided $10,000 to $20,000 in college debt relief to Americans with loans who make under $125,000 a year.
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Cut child poverty in half through the American Rescue Plan.
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Capped prescription drug prices at $2,000 per year for seniors on Medicare through the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Passed the COVID-19 relief deal that provided payments of up to $1,400 to many struggling U.S. citizens while supporting renters and increasing unemployment benefits.
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Achieved historically low unemployment rates after the pandemic caused them to skyrocket.
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Imposed a 15% minimum corporate tax on some of the largest corporations in the country, ensuring that they pay their fair share, as part of the historic Inflation Reduction Act.
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Recommitted America to the global fight against climate change by rejoining the Paris Agreement.
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Strengthened the NATO alliance in support of Ukraine after the Russian invasion by endorsing the inclusion of world military powers Sweden and Finland.
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Authorized the assassination of the Al Qaeda terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became head of the organization after the death of Osama bin Laden.
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Gave Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices through the Inflation Reduction Act while also reducing government health spending.
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Held Vladimir Putin accountable for his invasion of Ukraine by imposing stiff economic sanctions.
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Boosted the budget of the Internal Revenue Service by nearly $80 billion to reduce tax evasion and increase revenue.
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Created more jobs in one year (6.6 million) than any other president in U.S. history.
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Reduced healthcare premiums under the Affordable Care Act by $800 a year as part of the American Rescue Plan.
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Signed the PACT Act to address service members’ exposure to burn pits and other toxins.
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Signed the CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen American manufacturing and innovation.
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Reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act through 2027.
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Halted all federal executions after the previous administration reinstated them after a 17-year freeze.
Here’s what the Whitehouse says:
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Amazing that this has not been done decades ago.
To be completely fair, a layer builds up in the pipe which stops the lead being an issue unless you royally fuck up like Flint. That said, it still should’ve been fixed
As someone who thankfulky doesn’t like in the un-united states of america How exactly did flint royally fuck up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
They were buying water from Detroit’s water system. In order to save money, they switched to getting it from the nearby river, but they failed to account for how the new water source would interact with their pipes. They didn’t treat the new water correctly and it corroded all their old lead pipes, dumping lead into the water and giving everyone lead poisoning.
Even years later, after they switched back to Detroit water, they’re still having problems because the damage to the pipes is already done.
They switched to a water source that wasn’t treated with orthophosphates. This change in water chemistry created an environment where the lead would dissolve off and be replaced with other metal deposits. My layman understanding is the water was treated in a way to bind lead to the pipes and the untreated water created an environment where the effect was counteracted.
“Orthophosphates create a mineral coating that keeps toxic lead stuck to pipes.”
“The absence of orthophosphates made the lead vulnerable to dissolving off the pipes and into the water supply. Meanwhile, other metals like aluminum and magnesium appeared to take the lead’s place.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/study-confirms-lead-got-flints-water
Well, the appointed officials switched to a water source and specifically chose to not treat it with required chemicals to save money.
Slightly different than just switching water sources.
Thank you, I wasn’t entirely confident that part got proven or not so I didn’t want to inappropriately make the statement.
It’s such a staggering amount of work and money that I think is hard for most people to comprehend. Though, if dispersed properly, will benefit local workers as they usually require they get paid prevailing wage. Which can be pretty fucking high depending on where you live.
And even once all of the lead service lines are replaced, that’s just from main to the meter at most. All of the internal fixtures are the owner’s responsibility, and you better believe tons of old houses are still full of lead pipes.
This is something that is going to take decades, and you’re absolutely right that we should have started decades ago.
Germany outlawed installing lead pipes in 1973, this year operating them got outlawed, though already ten years ago the permissible lead concentrations were so low as to be basically impossible achieve if you had even short runs of lead pipes. All the main lines got replaced IIRC in the 80s, latest, can’t find numbers right now, though apparently they rarely used lead there in the first place.
Also, btw, if you’re already digging up water pipes it’s quite easy to install some cable ducts while you’re at it, put all those power and telco lines underground and stop looking like a 3rd world country. That kind of last-mile infrastructure should be managed by municipal-level monopoly, if an ISP wants to sell you something they can hook up to the municipality’s IXP and rent the rest of the way to your house at fixed, fair, rates. It’s a natural monopoly: It makes as much economical sense to run more than two power or telco connections to a house as it makes to run more than one street to your house: Costs a lot of money to run that second street and as soon as you did your competitor is going to lower their prices, which they can do because their investment already amortised, and leave you stranded with your investment because why would the residents of the house switch to your offering if your competitor is cheaper. There’s an opportunity when switching from copper to fiber but fiber will last for the next 1000 years so it’s not really a solution.
Come on now, you’re actually making sense, we don’t do that here in the US. Money and the amount of effort required rule everything.
It’s just another case of “it costs too much to fix it, so just keep slapping a bandaid on it and kick it down the road”, just like the rest of our infrastructure. Yet we have billions available to “defend” ourselves 🙄
More than billions, I think our defense budget was $766 billion in 2022 alone, at around 12% which was actually lower than 2021 which cost taxpayers 15% and 801 billion.
It’s… it’s a big big problem, especially in a time where the U.S hasn’t had a war on it’s soil in a long, long time.
I get that we go to other countries and
help out a bitget involved but we have issues on our own turf killing us from the inside.Yeah, I just saw a YouTube video where the US has “frozen” the access to mega-yachts owned by Russian billionaires, but they can’t seize them because they can’t legally prove that the billionaires own them since they’re registered in one country and owned by a shell corporation in another country. So if we (and other countries who are doing this) can eventually prove that they own said yachts, we can sell them, but until then we have to pay the constant upkeep on them to keep them in pristine condition… Which costs like 10 million a year per yacht…and we have multiple of them🤦♂️
No money to pay our citizens more, invest in our own infrastructure, or fund programs that our citizens need!
Nope, none of that. Can’t even support our veterans that fought in the past wars that taxpayers had to pay trillions for but they can afford the salaries of the soldiers currently out there. It’s like when a corporation cuts the 401k’s of thousands of employees then turns around and hires thousands more…
The yachts ordeal is yet another example. All this $ frivolously spent on excess before basic needs of citizens are being met. The U.S could damned near be a utopia if we’d elect some people with common sense and quit voting in corrupt politicians.
I could rant about this for hours as it’s just basic stuff. It’s petty and boring so read on at your own risk.
We can’t afford guns until the needs of the common people have been met.
We can’t afford to imprison people for trivial stuff when they’re not an active threat to society.
Healthcare is a right, not a privilege.
Food is a right. No one should have to decide between paying the rent and eating a proper meal.
Housing is a right and shouldn’t be a for profit industry. Buying up tons of land in a scheme to get wealthy isn’t good for anyone.
Banks just… shouldn’t exist the way that they do. Neither should the credit system, predatory loaning practices etc. Prices just keep going up due to this.
If banks/credit ceased to exist and loans stopped being made, then the price of things would have to adjust to reflect what the average person can actually afford which just makes sense right? If an average person can’t make enough to afford their own home at regular wages within a few years by their self then either they aren’t getting paid enough or asking prices are way too damned high.
There are just some practices in this world that are bad for it. Everyone knows the shit but no one will do anything because the people with the power to actually enforce change are benefitting too much from the same system to kill it.
Oh, and another one. Flint Michigan is supposedly enacting an (iirc) $9-10 million dollar bill to repair/replace their pipes in order for the people their to have clean drinking water and not get sick or die from lead poisoning. $9-10 mill would make all that difference yet our government won’t pay it even though we’re spending the better part of a trillion each year blowing things up. How petty is that? Can’t take a penny out of our war money so people can have clean drinking water… pathetic!
Yep it’s disgusting. They’re only willing to put money into things that will (potentially) make them money.
That, and bombs. Nice username btw
I actually just listened to a podcast about NYCs water supply. To back up your claim, they started pipe #3 around the 1970s and only recently finished (or should have by 2021, the episode was from before then)
Portland replaced most of its water and sewer pipes, AND built a massive 21 ft diameter sewer bypass and storage line 250 ft below the city over the course of about 10 years. When I was living there, the city went up and down every building on every street in my neighborhood to put in new sewer and water connections. Those crews were fast.
NYC is just too big, old and bureaucratic compared to other US cities.
Those crews were fast.
Doing whole cities and streets in one go is always the better option: The crews know what they’re doing, all the material and materiel is already on site and scheduling is uncomplicated.
Norderstedt’s utility hooked up the whole city to fibre 1999 to 2002, total investment 43 million Euro for just over 80k inhabitants, roughly 540 Euro per head… but that number is a bit misleading the utility only made a loss of 10 million over that time span, or 125 Euro per inhabitant. A couple of years later all the money was recouped and they started expanding to neighbouring villages and the north of Hamburg. Asymmetric gigabit for 50 bucks (upload actually costs ISPs money while download gets paid by whoever’s upload that is which is why asymmetric makes sense even if the connection is symmetric).
Kinda hard to do nowadays as the second Deutsche Telekom gets wind of any such initiative they suddenly decide that laying down fibre to replace their copper would, after all, make economical sense. Which is the reason why elsewhere here I’m advocating for municipal monopolies: Municipalities should be able to say “ok you didn’t want to invest here, now it’s too late you don’t get to compete”.
(And just in case btw you thought T-Mobile was a grand and nice company: No it isn’t. It’s a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary. The only reason they are customer-friendly in the US is because they’re up against the baby bells there, in Germany Deutsche Telekom is the bell, created by splitting up and privatising the postal service, they own pretty much all the copper everywhere in the country).
This has been often speculated as being the cause of the “Stupid American” stereotype. Good decision
That seems implausible. Lead pipes are common pretty much everywhere and it’s usually not a problem due to a coating on the pipes.
It’s just an issue in the US because there’s been a few notable examples of that coating being damaged and causing contamination, which creates political will to do the replacements that everyone is doing at an accelerated pace.
Most places, in the US or not, just replace them during routine maintenance. The UK and Germany should have theirs replaced by 2100, if nothing comes up to make them accelerate the process.
hydrofluorosilicic acid is the cause of all the problems with lead pipes. It is being used as a replacement for standard fluoride
The US hasn’t been good about replacing pipes in general, there’s even a good amount that aren’t even documented in some areas.
Didn’t they pull out some wooden pipes somewhere in the US within the last couple years? I remember seeing an article about it.
I believe someone found wood pipes still in use, it may have been flint, since they got a complete overhaul of their pipes.
30 years ago Boston was trying to map their pre revolutionary war wood pipes. I would expect flint was built with metal pipes, as that area is mostly known for iron.
Iron was further north, Michigan was a huge lumber state.
This year Germany passed a law to completely remove all lead pipes until January 2026.
But the allowed levels of lead in drinking water have already been lowered so much since 2013 (10 microgram per liter, this has been lowered again since to 5 microgram per liter) that any water that passed through a lead pipe cannot realistically fulfill the requirements, thus there are only extremely few households left with any lead in their pipes.
Coating the pipes is not a way out of this, since Germany has expressly forbidden this as a way to renovate.
Oh, I’m not saying we should coat the pipes, I’m saying that it’s not a massive continuous crisis is because there is a coating on the pipes created by the water treatment.
We definitely should replace all of them because that coating is too easy to damage and there’s no reason to take the risk, but “lead pipes” is unlikely to be a US specific health issue like was originally insinuated.
but “lead pipes” is unlikely to be a US specific health issue like was originally insinuated
With this I agree wholeheartedly, the biggest factors for differences between the rest of the developed world and the US, including USians being considered more agressive, less intelligent, less patient and with less empathy are definitely located in different fields.
Imho. culturally religiosity, difference in education, worldlyness and levels of societal cohesion are the biggest factors, along with good old prejudice against the militarily superior.
We’ll see how dumb Americans are in a generation or two. Hopefully this’ll fix it!
I’ve seen leaded gasoline cited, but not lead pipes.
There was lead in so many products in our parent’s generation, not just the water pipes and gasoline. Cosmetics and paint are also two notable ones that, combined with all the other sources of lead, increased exposure to hazardous levels.
Humans are just stupid, not just Americans.
This is great. 10 years seems long, but it is a huge project. Glad it will be started soon.
Edit: Aw shit. This is only a proposal. At least we are talking about it.
Huh, my reaction is how would you even find them all so quickly
There’s likely records of most currently used infrastructure. At least enough that the amount you have to go spelunking for would be negligible.
These are service lines, as in assuming all the mains are already lead-free, these are the feeds onto each house. Many of them owned by the homeowner, not the utility. An estimated 9 million of which are lead.
When’s the last time leaded pipes were allowed? Surely at least half a century ago. I find it hard to believe there are good records that old, for every house, many of which lines are not even owned by the utility.
I’m picturing something much more exhaustive, like:
- search for all properties over half a century old (or whenever the last time leaded pipes were allowed)
- filter out any with a record of replacing the service
- test. Goto every fricken one and test
I have no way of knowing what records the water utility has but my house is almost 80 years old and the town’s property records are awfully spotty. And I’m in one of the newer houses in my town - my search included some back to 1890
Edit: 1986. Leaded pipes were allowed that recently, wtf. ( and Florida is number one in leaded pipes remaining: that explains a lot)
I think they were banned that year but basically nobody installed them after the late 70s.
But yeah some places are dabbling with machine learning or algorithmic data set collection. Most are just using what historic records they have and doing shovel tests for the rest.
You don’t need to do that though. Unless there are records otherwise you can just assume it is lead because they all are. Bring in a underground crew to the neighborhood and they can go house to house replacing service lines. Transporting equipment to one house for this is often more expensive than the work itself, but since they are doing an entire neighborhood they can do 10 houses in a day and the cost isn’t too much. Just dig the pipe into wherever, then go inside and hook it up.
Of course many houses have lead pipes as well. That is a lot more money. I’m working on getting the lead out of my house (copper pipes, but old enough to assume they have lead solder), but there are a lot of pipes in the walls that I don’t really have an easy way to get at without a major remodel. (I have a RO drinking water system to every sink so the lead pipes are mostly used for hand washing not drinking)
I think service water line replacement takes longer than a day. Probably a half a day to dig the trench and expose the utilities - and hopefully they aren’t under a driveway or a roadway, and then do the connection. Repave afterward.
The other issue is a lot of houses have lead pipes and lead solder in the copper piping, so they may still have life contamination after replacement of the water lines.
I just has natural gas installed, the outside work was a couple hours, but a crew that did a neighborhood could do a lot of things in parallel
And within the home, there’s a lot of local, federally-funded programs where your water department will come out and test to see if you have lead pipes, and either help or completely cover the replacement costs.
I assume you can test the water at the outlet for lead.
Most of the time these pipes are not actually leeching lead into the water supply. Most of the time. The whole problem is kind of that it happens just often enough, and just locally enough that monitoring doesn’t catch it immediately.
The water authority where I live makes a point of saying they keep the water on the alkaline side to prevent leaching lead from pipes and solder. Presumably that costs money
They must know where at least some of them are so I guess they can start with those and work outwards on the connection. After all I lead the pipe is likely connected to another lead pipe.
Then I guess it’s just a matter of doing a lot of water monitoring for the remaining pipes.
Nope, you have to use historic records or dig holes in the ground. Lead Service Line Inventory projects can take a while, and many cities are already going as fast as they can.
30+ years after we found out they were bad for us “guys, we should talk about replacing those pipes…”
Good. Drinking water is easy more important than many people realize. I hope we are always updating our pipes to the current standards.
Lots of other pipes have been replaced, it’s just a few hours that are left. Detroit, Pittsburgh and other older cities.
"An initial estimate is that 25% of domestic dwellings in the EU have a lead pipe, either as a connection to the water main, or as part of the internal plumbing, or both, potentially putting 120 million people at risk from lead in drinking water within the EU. "
As of 14 years ago! And Europe has a lot of former communist countries that hasn’t fully reached Western European standards yet.
Led has been illegal to use in many contexts for decades in EU, including water pipes, and for instance electrical wiring and soldering.At what level though and how was the lead content assessed?
High levels of lead has been illegal to use in US water systems since 1986. Regulations have gotten more and more strict since then. The EPA’s current goal is ZERO lead, but we still have too much in the water.
It just doesn’t appear to be that much better in the EU, if at all.
At what level though and how was the lead content assessed?
You obviously don’t understand, in piping led was used as in actual led, not just contaminated metals with trace amounts of led. Trace amounts too have been banned for many years in mostly anything people come into contact with. Like porcelain colors, and paints where it was used to avoid for instance mold.
Zero led has been the standard in almost anything here (Denmark) since the 70’s, and it’s been an EU standard for at least 2 decades.
I cannot take seriously that EU should not be way way ahead of USA, maybe with the exception of former Soviet block countries.You obviously don’t understand
I assure you I am fully aware of the many ways lead has made its way into water in both Europe and the US including literal lead pipes. Actual lead pipes have been banned in the US since 1986 as per my link but of course many remain.
Denmark appears to be ahead of most of Europe, but it’s not just former soviet countries that struggle. England and Wales have lead pipes running to an estimated 25% of households and don’t expect that problem to be cleared up by 2040 or later.
England and Wales are no more EU though, they don’t have to follow EU regulations.
But yeah many EU countries still have some areas with lead pipes, even Germany, France and so on. It seems to be hard to track
They’re still in Europe, and I said Europe, not the EU. Also Brexit was in 2020 and I’m relatively certain those pipes were there before that.
Oh yeah I forgot UK, but to be fair it’s about 45 years since I heard they still used it, despite evidence dating back to the Roman empire that it is toxic. I got the impression UK was the only place in Europe that still used it, obviously possibly excluding the soviet block who were always way way behind on everything.
Still to claim EU isn’t ahead of USA is wrong:
https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/metals/an-update-on-the-lead-free-by-2014-mandate-europe/
Apparently Ireland had a problem too, but apart from that the problems are mostly old German buildings that have led in their plumbing.And then Italy that has led lined aqueducts that aren’t used anymore, why that’s worth mentioning in the report IDK?
So I maintain EU doesn’t have nearly the quality problems USA has with water supply, not with led and not with any other toxins. IDK why England is so backwards in this regard, but maybe it’s because they had the first industrialization in the world, and safety wasn’t as much of an issue back then.
https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/668177/-/comment/3862164
In short:
since 2013 EU has 10 ug/L limit. since 2020 a goal was set for 5 ug/L to be achieved until 2036.EPA current limit is 15 ug/L. Yes, they have set a 0 goal, but with apparently no timeline, so until than there will still be many areas with 15 ug/L. Bidens proposal would probably set this 0 goal into a 10 year timeframe, making it much better than the EU goal.
It should be noted that 0 is probably not realistic at all because even bottled water is allowed to have 5. His plan is to replace the service lines, but people in older houses can still have internal lead piping. This is mostly the issue with the UK’s water. There’s pretty much no lead (<2, which is background levels tbh) going to people’s houses, but because we’ve got a load of 100+ year old houses all over the place, they will still have more lead than people in newer homes.
But I don’t think the level is really the issue. <15 is probably fine.
The issue is that a bunch of poor people get a lot more than that and nobody has done anything about it. This plan should have been announced in 2014 when the problem first occurred at Flint.
This is a hugely underrated win imo. We have no idea the damage lead is doing to us, we can only guess the damage in health problems is in the billions. Politicians usually don’t give a shit about this so for Biden to do so is a big outstretched hand and big achievement
Republican might loose a lot of it’s voter base
It’s a win, but not really underrated. We can test for lead easily in both the water supply and people, there are some isolated areas it’s bad, but it’s not a problem in most areas.
Why suit man take my sweet water?
