Tracking Lead from Ludington's Water System to Your Baby's Digestive System

[XLFD]

"City officials have assured us that their is no lead in the city's water system and it's safe and tasty to drink; why should we not believe them, and instead believe you when you say otherwise?" 

Variations on this question have filtered my way over the last year or so, since I took up the topic of lead in our water and why our city/county has won the gold or silver medal in the amount of very young kids with excessive amounts of lead in their system for the last three years in Michigan, birthplace of the Flint lead water crisis during those same years.   

For credibility's sake, you can believe City Manager John Shay and Water Plant Supervisor Curt Malzahn who outright lied to the area's media last year about lead testing.  Or Councilor Kathy Winczewski who fresh after a mea culpa for wrongly saying that Lowe's still sells lead water fixtures, stated that "There's no lead in any pipes that we know of in the city" just minutes after the public heard Utility Maintenance Supervisor Darrell Plamondon admit they have "quite a few" lead goosenecks connecting water mains to service pipes, after Winczewski elicited that from him.  She concluded without any other official objecting that they could put the issue aside.

I have yet to be refuted in the concerns I have brought forth, my position buoyed by the state reports of the last three years, the city's own water testings, the school's water testing that showed two Ludington elementary school water fountains should have been replaced long ago, and the admissions of Shay and Plamondon that lead goosenecks are found throughout the Ludington water system.  I will utilize that fact alone, along with some math and physics, to show you how a Ludington baby (or anybody else for that matter) could be getting a megadose of lead water in the morning. 

Scientific research shows that even the most minute amounts of lead, under five ppb, can cause significant neurobehavioral damage, especially in children. There is no threshold where lead does not cause injury to the brain and other biological systems, including the immune, cardiovascular and reproductive systems. Much of this damage is considered irreversible and untreatable. 

With that in mind let's consider you are the proud parent of a baby and moved into a Ludington house alongside a street that has one of these lead goosenecks leading from the water main to a pipe that connects to the city shut-off valve and then into your house, such as the diagram below shows, the yellow pipe indicating the 3 foot long lead gooseneck

Maybe you feel safe because your house has been erected many years after the city stopped using lead goosenecks, but consider, if your house was on an improved lot that used to have a different building being serviced by the city water system, it is highly likely you still the old pipes leading from the water main to the city-owned curb stop.  Demolishing the old building would not affect the city service lines, particularly if they expected eventual re-building on the lot.

But after you put your baby to sleep, you wind down yourself, take a shower, brush your teeth, use the toilet, and head to bed.  You've just given your water system a workout, but now you'll give it a rest for nine hours or so.  In the pressurized system between the water main and all the water hook-ups in your house, the water will be basically remaining static.  

At the molecular level during those nine hours there may be some action going on in that lead gooseneck, particularly if there are some corrosive agents in the water that may release free oxygen, chlorine, and hydrogen ions.  The diagram below shows what may happen when some vinegar may be present in the water, and free hydrogen ions react with the lead in the pipes, effectively releasing lead into the water.

Like Flint, Ludington adds chlorine to water.  Chlorine has a two-fold purpose at the Water Treatment Plant, it helps disinfect the water and helps keep zebra mussels from inhabiting the pipe.  But it does have a corrosive effect when it goes through lead conduits, even at low levels. 

So for nine hours, inside the lead gooseneck out under the street in front of your house, lead may be leaching into your water supply and holding steady, waiting patiently for the morning when you wake up.  Let's consider some physics and calculations to illustrate how this water will migrate in the morning.

A typical one family house is supplied by a 1″ water service line (as per this plumbing website).   Other interesting numbers can be found through mathematics and by more research:

1)  The volume of water in a one foot section of one inch wide pipe is 9.4248 cubic inches.

2)  One gallon contains 231 cubic inches. 

3)  To find how many feet of 1" pipe you need to contain a gallon, divide 231 by 9.4248 to find that 24.5 feet of pipe contains one gallon of water presuming no deposits are inside the pipe.

4)  Flushing a toilet with newer models will use 1.3 to 1.6 gallons, older toilets use 3.5 gallons or more. 

5)  Running a sink water tap continuously (with smaller supply pipes) will result in approximately 2 gallons of flow every minute. 

Let's presume, your house has the above configuration for its water supply, further presuming that the gooseneck is about forty feet away from where the water pipe first enters your house, and that the pipe runs twenty feet along the basement, goes ten feet up, then runs twenty feet before terminating at your shower, as in the above diagram.

You wake up and feel the need to go bathroom before waking your baby.  After you finish you flush, and 1.6 gallons of water starts moving up your system to replenish the reservoir in back of your toilet.  The water from the gooseneck moves up about forty feet (1.6 gallons * 24.5 pipe length/gallon), or right to the entry point of your basement.  Due to the pressurization, most of that water with lead ions accumulating in the lead gooseneck travel along as a group; a three foot water column of concentrated lead ions lurking at the threshold. 

You then wash your hands and splash your face to wake yourself up in the bathroom sink, letting the tap run for about 15 seconds, using another half gallon of water, sending the water 12 more feet into the middle of your basement's water pipe. 

You go into the kitchen and decide to make some coffee for yourself and your spouse.  You pour in a gallon of water from the kitchen sink into the coffee maker and get that started.  The lead-tainted water moves 24 feet further up your pipes, it now resides in a roughly three feet column underneath your spigot. 

You reach for two of your baby's bottles, throw some formula in and fill both with a cup of water from your tap.  Those two cups will force water up 3 more feet, the poisonous three feet, giving your baby a lead-filled beverage. 

Let's say you are a cautious parent who has read articles like this which says it's okay to use tap water for your formula bottles if you let the water run for one to two minutes.  Now if you had gotten up and didn't need to go bathroom, running the tap water for nearly two minutes would have gotten the gooseneck cocktail nearly 80' up to your spigot.  Those articles often fail to realize that many city water systems have lead pipes/goosenecks one to two minutes away as water flow goes. 

Disregarding lead goosenecks in your city water system is irresponsible for a parent who wants their kid to be healthy.  City officials disregarding their water system's lead components is far less responsible for they potentially negatively affect the health of thousands of children and their forebears.   When they don't care enough to even make a concession to remove those connections when they find them, transferring the responsibility to those who cannot change the lead pipes out is gross negligence and deplorable.

It should be repeated:  Scientific research shows that even the most minute amounts of lead, under five ppb, can cause significant neurobehavioral damage, especially in children.  There is no threshold where lead does not cause injury to the brain and other biological systems, including the immune, cardiovascular and reproductive systems. Much of this damage is considered irreversible and untreatable.

[Willy]

Excellent article X. The first thing any  local authority must do is recognize that there may be a potential problem with lead piping and possible contamination of drinking water. Ludington's officials have failed to do that. If goosenecks are present  in water supply piping, as admitted to by Ludington officials, then there is a high probability that there also exists supply lines that are made entirely out of lead. This must be investigated to determine if any water services in Ludington do indeed have lead material in them. This is extremely important and the fact that the COL is hum hawing about this is very disturbing to say the least.

Secondly it's important that every property owner check to see if there is lead in the water that comes into their building. People must take responsibility for this if the COL continues to bury their heads in the sand. Don't wait for the City to do the right thing.

[XLFD]

Thanks for your reviews of the data, Margie, I only wish your curiosity and concern was shared by those who can better effectuate a solution.  To answer your three questions you asked a couple of posts above:  1) Yes (see this link to the 2017 Budget and Capital Improvement Plan) due to improvements on both the 40+ year old WTP and WWTP (long overdue) there is a lot slated.  A big consumer of water also necessitated most of the street pipe work that is being done.  2)  The city leaders have shown no impetus in getting lead goosenecks replaced, suggesting it is the homeowner's responsibility even though it's part of the city utility which the homeowner cannot touch without digging under the street.  3)  Your right, I should have used a half gallon figure for the coffee, with perhaps another half gallon used for rinsing out yesterday's pot.  That's what I originally had planned. 

[XLFD]

Many of us here in Ludington were swindled into thinking that the "Readiness to Serve" charge found on our water/sewer bills were meant to cover maintenance costs, but every year our industrious leaders used that money to pad salaries, benefits, and crazy contracts like the painting of two water towers at a cost of over $1.2 million in 2009 dollars. 

Our neighbor Scottville had their comparable water tower painted that same year for $50,000 of local tax dollars, plus nearly $150,000 of grants, while Ludington had painted both towers in 2000 for almost $1 million less than the 2009 painting contract which was surely not needed then. 

Speaking of benefits, it's a yearly struggle each fall when the city pads its salaries and especially its benefits.  Many of our city employees have benefits equaling over 70% of their salary, while people in their factory and tourism jobs in Ludington are very lucky to crest the 30% mark.  Read this, if you haven't already, it shows the indifference of our leaders to their overspending.