Chicago has the most lead pipes in the nation

>Chicago has the highest number of lead water service lines in the nation, with an estimated 412,000 of about 491,000 lines at least partly made of lead or contaminated with the dangerous metal.

Sounds like a crisis, but it's the third largest city and much older than LA. Isn't a per-capita, above a certain city size, the more relevant number?

> A plumber estimated it would cost about $26,000 to replace the private side of the home’s service line. Swapping out his internal lead plumbing would cost thousands more. At this point, having just purchased the home, the couple doesn’t have the money to replace their service line. For now, they’ll keep testing and filtering their water.

Reverse osmosis systems for the main drinking water sources are around $200 each now, 100X less than the cost of fixing if it's just the kitchen sink that they drink out of. They do require maintenance that many won't do, but it seems like there could be an app for that or some kind of automatic timed shutoff with a reminder to buy at least one extra filter at a time.

Annual filter costs are 10X-15X less than interest earnings on $26,000. I think you can usually install easily with no plumber with a couple shark bite press fittings and a pipe cutter.

It sounds like that may be what they are already doing, but isn't it basically a good enough solution?

> Reverse osmosis systems for the main drinking water sources are around $200 each now

A whole house RO system is several thousand up to ten thousand dollars. A whole house heavy metal filter would be around $200. For this particular case they can likely do without full RO.

Seems like continuous edge testing would be a critical first step.

End users seeing water content in real time would absolutely motivate fixes.

Via ChatGPT, some groups of Chicago children are average 6-8 µg/dL blood lead levels, guaranteeing they’ll face challenges related cognitive disability. 100+ years of this—and all they need is good water filters.

This should be a class action to get fixed. No way the government can fix this alone in a reasonable time frame without focusing on end-users first.

With RO, could* focus on kitchen and bathroom sinks; amortized cost should be $5-10 per-month per-sink.

Toilet, shower, and laundry could all be low-risk with unfiltered service tap water.

Primary source of exposure in Chicago is from household dust contaminated by old paint. Water is secondary or tertiary issue, but can be bad. The article is a bit off the mark as they did not interview the Chicago DPH inspectors who respond to high serum reports.

Also, the average lead level of urban or suburban toddlers in the 1970s was 10-15 µg/dL, due mostly to vapors from leaded gasoline. Gen X had eye-popping lead exposures as kids.

So 6-8 µg/dL doesn't guarantee cognitive disability, but it is still bad.

[Edit: also want to add that quality monitoring doesn't necessarily fully solve the water situation either. For example, it is known that a chunk of leaded detritus or solder can drop into rice or pasta water from stream or aerator and raise serum precipitously, but won't be seen in a test as it is intermittent. The problem of lead is ubiquitous and not entirely tractable, but a lot of progress is possible over time.]

honestly just doing kitchen should be enough to get 90% of the benefit

id like to remind you all that this is the richest country on the planet, and they live like its 19th century victorian britain

19th century victorian britain was the richest country on the planet

it also had open sewers, child prostitution, destitution, some of the worst living conditions in the first world. Just because the owners bump up the per-capita average doesnt mean shit, just like you see in USA. How many people cant even afford a brick building to live in?

Could you link a real source instead of ChatGPT, please?

Even if whole-home RO is feasible from a money perspective, it's horrible from a water conservation standpoint.

The very best units with high pressure achieve something like 1:2 ratios. Meaning for every 1 gallon of clean water you get 2 of waste.

Clean water is previous and should not be wasted so casually.

RO is OK if it's for something very small scale, like a sink for filling up water bottles - but it should never be used for things like showers/tubs, appliances, etc.

Residential water consumption is less than a non-issue for the ~2/3 of the US population that lives east of approximately the Missouri river (also where most of the lead pipes are).

Municipalities might have to adjust their forecasting and step up the numbers on their next planned purchase of water equipment but that's about it.

GP said RO for home drinking water sources, not whole-home RO.

Fresh water usage should never be so casually dismissed. Extracting more has significant consequences - both environmental and human-oriented, regardless of where it comes from.

While residential is small compared to commercial, it's still important. Multiply anything by a couple hundred million citizens and it does add up.

You're right, I misread.

The fact that it "adds up" is basically irrelevant considering the size of the water sources these municipalities typically have access to.

They can use 5x the water if they want and only the water treatment plant employees will care. They take from the river, and they put back into the river after treatment.

Water is not readily fungible. No matter what Chicago or any other more-than-enough water location does, it makes zero difference to someone in Phoenix or Las Vegas.

If someone’s in a location with more than enough water, there is really no point in trying to get them to care, because this really really doesn’t matter to them. Typically whatever they don’t use just runs off anyway.