Contamination of tap water by lead pipe and solder.

Abstract

We report here potential sources of lead contamination from a tap water distributing system using lead service pipes and soldering alloy to join copper pil~s. In this note, we present data of lead levels in tap water of the City of Victoria, B.C., Canada and our findings on the dissolution of lead from the distributing syste[n. Lead service pipes were used in the city of Victoria about 40 years ago to convey water from the city main to about 8,000 to i0,000 older bouses. MATERIALS AND METHODS Water sanples were collected from the city reservoir and from the taps of households in areas with and without lead pipe delivery system. The lead concentrations in water were analyzed by a flameless atomic absorption technique in a lead-free clean room. AIl water samples were collected and stored in acid cleaned polyethylene bottles, acidified inm~diately to a pli of about one with quartz-distilled nitric acid and analyzed within eight hours of collection. The lead concentrations were determined by pipetting 50~i aliquots of sample onto the tantalum ribbon atomizer MTA-2 of a double-beam Jarrell-Ash 82-810 atomic absorption spectrophotc~eter and measuring the absorption at 2833 ~ using a specially-built fast response peak reader. A nonabsorbing lead-line at 2820 ~ was used for background correction.