Lead in the drinking water is still a problem in the U.S. — especially in Chicago
In Chicago, about 400,000 homes still get their tap water through lead service lines — pipes that connect individual homes to the main water line.
And nearly 70 percent of young children are getting exposed to lead from their home tap water, according to recent estimates published in https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2815850. The study also finds that Black and Hispanic neighborhoods are more likely to have lead exposure, but less likely to be tested for lead.
“The concerning thing here is that [lead exposure] is happening at such a population level, and we don’t know which houses have small levels of exposure and which ones have large levels,” says study co-author Benjamin Huỳnh, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, though he notes that even low levels of lead can cause health problems.
Lead in the drinking water is still a problem in many parts of the U.S. This toxic metal has been banned from water pipes since 1986, but many homes were built before that. Lead exposure is especially high in Chicago, which has the most lead pipes out of any U.S. city, largely because the city code required the use of lead service lines until the year they were banned.
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