METAIRIE, La. — If you live in Jefferson Parish, you may have just gotten a letter from the water department that caused concern.
So, what does it mean, and how can you protect your family if you have lead exposure coming from the underground pipe to your home?
From the tip of Grand Isle to Kenner at the lakefront, every home and business in Jefferson Parish that has a waterline got a notice that the water pipe from the street to your property may be made of lead.
The letter doesn’t automatically mean you have a lead service line.
Jefferson Parish is working on a three-and-half-year project, as mandated by the EPA, that all water systems let customers know what the service line is made of.
“Jefferson Parish, the water department, will take those proactive steps if lead is found at anyone's home or identified. We will take the necessary steps to have that replaced up to the customer's home,” said Sidney Bazley, Director of the Jefferson Parish Water Department.
There are 160,000 service lines. Taking inventory of each line will coincide with the smart meter swap out.
“We plan on touching every single meter to replace it for the new automated meters that everybody's going to have,” explained Bazley.
Experts say the health dangers of chronic lead exposure are serious.
“We still see higher effects in children in terms of their cognitive development, and also behavioral problems. One of the things, one of the parts of the brain that lead affects is responsible for impulse control, another thing is attention deficit disorder, problems learning, and even problems hearing. With elderly people, you see high blood pressure,” explained Dr. Adrienne Katner, LSUHSC Program Director and Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences in the School of Public Health.
Dr. Katner says lead is a big concern for pregnant women and their unborn babies.
“What we know is that even the lowest levels are of concern, because it's a chronic exposure, especially if you're a pregnant woman, and you're using the tap water to reconstitute any kind of powdered milk formula. That is a particular concern,” she said.”
To see if you have a lead service line you're going to get a magnet and a penny and then scratch the pipe that hooks to your meter from the street. If it scratches easily and the magnet does not stick, it's probably lead. Construction after September 1988 was not allowed to use lead.
So, in the meantime, get a filter on the water you drink or cook with. It has to have a third-party seal confirming it specifically filters out lead. You don't need one for the water you bathe or shower with. And remember not all bottled water is lead-free either.
If your pipes are galvanized steel, they can also have some lead in them.