Lead pipes Damage Child Brains and Development. Replacement is Often More Expensive Than Homeowners Can Afford For Pittsburghers trying to guard their tap water from lead, the price can be steep.
Excavating and replacing a privately owned lead service line — the water connection into a house — can cost some $4,500, according to the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. The price may vary by thousands from property to property.
But an emerging technology could coat the insides of those pipes instead, a process shown elsewhere to prevent lead contamination for much less expense and disruption, authority spokesman Will Pickering said Wednesday. Under a pilot agreement with PWSA, a West Coast company is employing the approach at six Hill District homes to show its effectiveness here.
Water tests should reveal the results next week. Santa Ana, Calif.-based Pipe Restoration Technologies is providing the pilot at no charge to raise awareness of its epoxy coating method known as ePIPE, which the company has used to treat thousands of service lines in the United Kingdom since 2011, CEO Larry Gillanders said.
“The less you dig, the more the savings,” Mr. Gillanders said, donning a hard hat on the 3300 block of Webster Avenue. He estimated the company spent $20,000 to $25,000 on the project coating lead service lines for five homes on Webster and another on nearby Milwaukee Street. Workers finished the process Wednesday.
Expenses for the work typically would be closer to $1,500 to $2,000 per home, Mr. Gillanders said.
At Virginia Tech, professor Marc A. Edwards said the concept is well proven. He said coating costs can be 40 percent to 75 percent less than those for line replacement.
“It’s our experience that if these coatings are installed properly, they last what’s considered the lifetime of a plumbing system, which is 50 or 60 years. I think it’s under-utilized,” said Mr. Edwards, an expert in environmental and water resources engineering.
The coating concept has been used for years to shore up indoor plumbing systems. It’s been used rarely in exterior service lines in the U.S., although it’s adopted more widely for such lines Britain and Europe, industry observers said.
In Pittsburgh, PWSA estimates as many as 17,750 of 71,000 residential service lines contain lead. The connections, which tie household plumbing into a water main beneath the street, have two sections: the public portion that taps into the main, and the privately owned portion that finishes the link into the building.
Elevated lead levels triggered a federal remediation rule in 2016, requiring that PWSA replace at least 7 percent of its lead service lines each year. Exposure to the metal is linked to developmental problems and other ailments.
Still, the replacement mandate applies only to the public portion of the lines. Removing that segment while leaving intact the private portion — which is the property owner’s responsibility -— is known as a partial replacement. PWSA has halted partial replacements amid concerns that they may raise lead levels, at least in the short term, by disrupting lead particles inside the remaining pipe segment.
That’s where the coating method could be helpful, Mr. Pickering said, by giving homeowners a cheaper option to address the private lines and subdue contamination risks.
“It opens up a lot more properties where we can do the [public-side replacement] work,” he said.
While PWSA has carried out some 460 public-side line replacements since last summer, Mr. Pickering estimated fewer than 10 percent of those property owners are known to have performed private-side replacements. Most service connections with lead on the public side also have the metal on the private side, according to the authority.
A federally funded study released this year found that epoxy coatings hold promise for lead service lines, spurring PWSA to look at the idea more seriously. If PWSA moves forward, Pittsburgh would be the first U.S. city to use the coatings on a large scale in service lines, Mr. Pickering said.
In the meantime, city and state officials are exploring other ways to encourage work on private lines, including through government aid. On Webster Avenue, Gerald R. Brown Jr., 68, said he’s relieved that his mother, Sarah Dickey, is part of the pipe-coating pilot.
It might even prolong her life, he said.
“Even though she’s 94 years old, you don’t know what lead will do to an older person over a longer period of time,” Mr. Brown said.
"They could die an untimely death in their 30s or 40s because of the exposure in this product," an expert says
What could possibly be worse than finding out the makeup you use contains asbestos? Finding out the makeup your child uses contains asbestos.
The news team at WTVD, an ABC station in Durham, North Carolina, is reporting that its recent investigation into the ingredients of cosmetics aimed at tweens has revealed frightening results about a product sold at Justice, a national retail chain selling girls' apparel. According to the Scientific Analytical Institute in Greensboro, Just Shine Shimmer Powder tested positive for dangerous asbestos.
"In this powder designed for children, they could die an untimely death in their 30s or 40s because of the exposure to asbestos in this product," Sean Fitzgerald, the lab's Director of Research and Analytical Services, told WTVD.
Specifically, the lab found tremolite asbestos fibers, which contaminated the talc used in the Just Shine Shimmer Powder. Fitzgerald says the mineral reserve from which the talc was derived should have been tested for contamination; if it had been tested, it never would have been used by the manufacturer because the FDA prohibits asbestos-contaminated talc in cosmetics.
"Fibers like this get into your breathing zone, and when you inhale, these fibers can get into the lung and go to the very bottom of the lung, and that is exactly where you have the greatest likelihood of asbestos to cause disease," Fitzgerald said. "Children should not be allowed to breathe it. If a 10-year-old inhaled this fiber today, when he's 50 years old, it's still there." According to the National Cancer Institute, it can take at least 20 years for malignant mesothelioma to form after asbestos exposure.
As if the asbestos findings aren't scary enough, the lab also found the heavy metals barium, chromium, selenium and lead in Just Shine Shimmer Powder.
"The more lead you have in your system, the more negative health effects you're going to have," Fitzgerald explained. "Any amount of lead can be absorbed through the skin and go into your blood, and contribute to your overall poisoning of your blood."
You can find the station's full report here.
When WTVD's Diane Wilson showed Justice the lab results, the company issued a statement: "Justice is committed to the safety and integrity of our products. Upon receiving the inquiry from WTVD, we immediately began an independent investigation. We cannot speculate regarding the matter until we have more information. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, we have stopped the sale of this product while we investigate."
Birnur Aral, Ph.D., Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute's Health, Beauty and Environmental Sciences Lab, stresses that instances like this are examples of how cosmetics need to be regulated as tightly as pharmaceuticals and food.
"The Personal Care Safety Act, a bipartisan bill, has gained support from both small companies and giants of the industry as well as advocacy groups, and it has the best chance of modernizing our outdated cosmetics laws," Dr. Aral says. "Good Housekeeping has supported the bill for over a year. While it is not a cure-all in my opinion, it is a very good start toward safer cosmetics." (You can voice your own support at a petition here.)
Just Shine Shimmer Powder is no longer available for purchase on the brand's website, but it has not been added to their recalls section yet. Fitzgerald urges those who own the powder to stop using it and to "treat it like a deadly poison, because it is." The news station also notes in their report that other Justice products they tested did not come back positive for asbestos.
It is difficult to keep our own homes as free of environmental risks for our children, it is beyond our ability to control the toxins and biological exposures in a daycare facility. We can’t follow them all day in the daycare.
The best we can hope for is to select a daycare that is diligent in protecting our children by knowing the dangers and working at minimizing them in their facility.
Our children are at a much greater risk for harm from indoor air pollutants as they breath in more air as compared to their body weight that adults. Their growing bodies also absorb a higher percentage of toxins they are exposed to such as lead.
Common sources of indoor air pollution include:
The EPA states that there are so many sources of indoor air pollution in childcare facilities that the air is considered to be two to five times more polluted than outdoor air.