If you have children, be careful about lead in drinking water

4 points

6 years ago

Not the usual post, but as many of us reach the age where we have young children, I wanted to make a post about lead in drinking water.

Here's a recent article about lead concerns in Canadian water (including affluent areas like Victoria and Vancouver): https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/water-in-crd-being-tested-for-presence-of-lead-1.23997842

For American friends, here's an excellent 2018 NPR interview: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/623126968?storyId=623126968?storyId=623126968

Quote from that article: "So you would be drinking bottled or filtered water no matter where you lived in the U.S." - Terry Gross

"Yes." - Dr. Hanna-Attisha

Now, it seems that tests later showed that Victoria and Bay area water is OK. But as Dr. Hanna-Attisha said, lead in drinking can exist anywhere. If you have children, it's especially important to take care.

Some tips:

- Never use hot water from the tap for cooking or drinking

- Flush your taps with cold water before taking water for cooking or drinking

Educate your children to do the same.

Note that problems can occur in an unexpected way. For example, by upstream chemical changes in water, which is what happened in Flint. This makes it seem worthwhile to consider a filtration system (instead of that second Tesla).