Quick Check on Lead Poison Risk Homes
August 1999
In just 3 minutes, the Scanning Analyzer will tell whether a family's drinking water, paint work or household dust contains dangerous levels of lead.
Following recent claims that 1 in 10 British children under the age of 6 are suffering from lead poisoning from old paint or drinking water pipes [1], a British company says that it now has a quick and simple way to test a family’s water and home for toxic lead levels.
Until now, testing for lead in the home has required sending samples away for laboratory analysis, with a delay of days or weeks before the results were known. The new equipment gives water company staff or Environmental Health Officers on-the-spot results. They can tell householders there and then whether their water or home poses a lead health risk.
According to John Lever, MD of water test equipment manufacturer Palintest Ltd, his company has developed a fast way of finding out whether families are at risk from being slowly poisoned by the lead in their own homes. The new instrument can measure the amount of lead in water, paint and household dust very accurately. Every year, water companies visit tens of thousands of customers and take water samples from their taps, but only a small proportion get tested for lead.
Palintest’s lead testing instrument is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Called a Scanning Analyzer, it can measure the amount of metals, such as lead and copper, dissolved in tap water, or contained in dust and in airborne particles.
Pocket-sized and battery powered, this unique instrument takes just 3 minutes to tell whether a family is at risk from lead poisoning from their drinking water. The ingenious technology behind the analyser is a miniaturised version of the electroplating process, but in reverse.
The readout immediately shows the degree of lead contamination. Each test for lead with the analyser costs about £5 for a disposable electrode. By comparison, sending a sample to a laboratory for analysis can cost £30 and the results often take several days.
As well as Water Companies, intended users of the analyser are Environmental Health Officers, whose job includes checking drinking water quality, and industrial safety engineers for hygiene monitoring in workplaces where lead compounds are used.
Concern about the impact of lead in drinking water on the nation’s health is rising. The damaging health effects of low level lead poisoning, especially on young children and babies, is attracting international attention. In 1992, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended a level for lead in water of 10 microgrammes per litre. At present, Britain’s drinking water lead levels are governed by European legislation which still allows the 50 microgrammes per litre level, five times higher than the WHO guideline.
The Government has given the water companies until 2010 to reduce Britain’s level to the WHO figure. However, it is estimated that 9 million homes (about 1 in 3 people in Britain) [2] receive their water through old lead water pipes and that millions of people drink water with lead levels above the WHO's recommended limit every day.
Lead is a very potent toxin and is believed to cause lowering of intelligence and deterioration in the performance of children at very low concentrations. Bottle-fed babies can consume up to 60 percent of their total lead intake in tap water [3].
Water companies are only responsible for the quality of drinking water up to the point it enters a home. Many companies have a programme to replace old underground lead service pipes with modern non-toxic materials. Unfortunately, it is old lead plumbing inside homes which is most to blame for excessive lead levels. One remedy is to rip out old lead plumbing and replace it with new copper or plastic pipework, but this is a costly option few can afford. If the Government took national action to deal with this problem, it could cost billions of pounds to remove all lead plumbing from 9 - 10 million homes.
References
- Dr Erik Millstone, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, Tel: 01273 877 380, Fax: 01273 685 865
- Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Media Release, "Campaign To Reduce Domestic Lead Pollution"
- US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, "Actions You Can Take To Reduce Lead in Drinking Water"