Reflections on the Lead and Copper Rule and Lead Levels in Flint's Water

Masten, Susan J.; Davies, Simon H.; Haider, Syed; McPherson, Calley R.

doi:10.1002/awwa.1360

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This work provides information for the ongoing discussion of whether LSL replacement is an effective lead mitigation strategy in the short term, due to its high cost compared to other short-term strategies. 52 Our work indicates that short-term reductions in water lead levels following LSL replacement may not be observed in regions where extensive seeding of lead in in-home plumbing has occurred; however, the beneficial removal of lead sources in the long term is evident from this work as well as from other recent work. 20 These findings must be carefully weighed by utilities and regulators in determining what is best for a community to recover and provide a reliable, safe source of drinking water.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 47%

Impact of service line replacement on lead, cadmium, and other drinking water quality parameters in Flint, Michigan

Rockey

Shen

Haig

et al. 2021

Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 47%

Impact of service line replacement on lead, cadmium, and other drinking water quality parameters in Flint, Michigan

Rockey

Shen

Haig

et al. 2021

Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol.

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“…As illustrated in Figure 2 , more than 50% of the samples surpassed the 10 μg/l provisional guideline set for drinking water. The US EPA claimed that if the Pb concentration exceeded the action level in more than 10% of customer taps sampled, then the entire water system is considered to have exceeded the action level ( US EPA 2015c ; Masten et al., 2019 ). The present data, therefore, showed that the water supply system in Addis Ababa is a concern for its high Pb level.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure and health risk assessment from consumption of Pb contaminated water in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Endale¹,

Ambelu²,

Sahilu³

et al. 2021

Heliyon

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Exposure to lead (Pb) through drinking water has been linked to adverse health outcomes. Children are particularly susceptible. This study was designed to measure Pb contamination level in drinking water of the Ethiopian city Addis Ababa and assess the associated health risks. Eighty-eight fully-flushed drinking water samples were collected from all ten sub-cities of Addis Ababa. Pb concentration was measured using an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS). The chronic daily intake (CDI), the hazard quotient (HQ), and the cancer risk (CR) of Pb were determined to assess exposure levels and health effects. Blood lead level (B-Pb) for children was modelled using the integrated exposure uptake biokinetic model (IEUBK). The mean concentration of Pb in the drinking water was 17.8 μg/l, where >50% of the samples exceeded WHO's 10 μg/l guideline. Significant spatial variation of Pb was noticed among sub-cities. The mean CDI was 1.43 and 0.59 μg/kg/day for children and adults, respectively. The HQ showed that 8% of children and 2.3% of adults exceeded the safe limit. The predicted geometric mean of B-Pb ranged from 3.23 to 14.65 μg/dl. The risk of a child having a B-Pb level >5 μg/dl at the median water Pb concentration (10.5 μg/l) was estimated at 13.4%. Based on the 95 th percentile Pb concentration (75.1 μg/l), 89.6% of children would have B-Pb levels above the 5 μg/dl threshold. The estimated CR was found in the range of 1 Â 10 À7 to 9.9 Â 10 À5 ; hence cancer risks are not a concern. The study concluded that Addis Ababa's drinking water is likely to be a source of lead exposure where consumers at specific city locations are at risk of numerous non-cancer health effects. The impacts are expected to be severe in the Ethiopian context; hence further investigations and coordinated interventions are required.

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“…Data from the customer-requested sampling and LCR sampling were analyzed for statistically significant changes in lead concentrations after the introduction of orthophosphate in 2019, which was expected to improve corrosion control. It is important to note that the optimization of orthophosphate dosing can take years, and lead concentrations can continue to decrease after dose optimization. ,, LCR samples and customer-requested samples after the introduction of orthophosphate were expected to be lower, and the 90th percentile concentrations in the LCR data would be expected to be below the EPA action level once corrosion control was optimized. Table , far right column, describes how the available data from each data source were divided into pre- and post-orthophosphate introduction data sets.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LCR requires samples to be collected at a specific number of single-family homes with known lead service lines (LSL) or suspected indoor lead plumbing/solder (i.e., 100 sites for systems with greater than 100,000 connections). These sites are called Tier I and are expected to represent worst case conditions for the negative effects of corrosion on lead concentrations. , Homes that do not contain lead in plumbing or solder are expected to have lower concentrations even if corrosion control was ineffective and are not sampled to assess the efficacy of corrosion control. Thus, Tier I sites are not intended to represent lead concentrations throughout the system, since many homes may have no lead plumbing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of Lead in Drinking Water from Multiple Drinking Water Sampling Programs for a Midsize City

Vijayashanthar

Small

VanBriesen

2022

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Following an exceedance of the lead action level for drinking water in 2016, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) undertook two sampling programs: the required biannual Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) compliance testing and a home sampling program based on customer requests. The LCR sampling results, at locations expected to be elevated when corrosion is not well controlled, had higher concentrations than customerrequested homes, with 90th percentile values for the LCR sites exceeding the action level through 2019 (except for June 2018). Customer-requested concentrations showed greater variability, with the median lead concentration for customer-requested samples below detection for each year of sampling, suggesting only some homes show elevated lead when corrosion control is not fully effective. Corrosion control adjustments brought the utility back into compliance in 2020 (LCR 90th percentile of 5.1 ppb in June 2020); customer-requested sampling after the addition of orthophosphate indicated below detection levels for 59% of samples. Monte Carlo simulations indicate LCR samples do not all represent high lead risk sites, and the application of corrosion control more significantly affects higher lead concentration sites. Broader water quality sampling provides information about specific homes but is not well suited to assessing the efficacy of corrosion control efforts by utilities.

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Reflections on the Lead and Copper Rule and Lead Levels in Flint's Water

Cited by 7 publications

References 15 publications

Impact of service line replacement on lead, cadmium, and other drinking water quality parameters in Flint, Michigan

Impact of service line replacement on lead, cadmium, and other drinking water quality parameters in Flint, Michigan

Exposure and health risk assessment from consumption of Pb contaminated water in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Assessment of Lead in Drinking Water from Multiple Drinking Water Sampling Programs for a Midsize City

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