NEW ORLEANS — While in New Orleans, President Joe Biden promoted his plan to improve water infrastructure and replace lead service lines.
Lead in drinking water became a huge national issue after the 2015 water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Lead is a neurotoxin and no level of lead exposure is considered to be safe.
“We know that even the lowest amounts of lead exposure can threaten the development of the brain of a child,” Adrienne Katner, Assistant Professor at the LSU School of Public Health said.
Dating back to the early 1800s, the city used lead pipes to carry water from the water main in the street to homes and businesses.
Katner has studied the issue of lead in the New Orleans water system.
She said the city continued to install lead service lines up until the time they were banned in 1986.
“We’ve sort of created this problem,” Katner said. “We’ve known about lead for thousands of years and yet we continued to use it. We didn’t heed history’s call to beware of lead water pipes. Now we are sort of left with the quandary that we have not.”
President Biden’s infrastructure plan would provide billions of dollars to make drinking water safer.
That would include replacing lead service lines.
According to a statement from the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, “While lead service lines do exist, water is treated with a National Sanitation Foundation-certified additive that helps prevent lead from getting into the water. While we don’t have a record of all the lead service lines in the city, we do replace them when we encounter them.”
City Health Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno said lead is not just a problem in our pipes.
“While, I’m really excited that the infrastructure plan includes funding for the replacement of lead service lines and we welcome that because we don’t want to have problems with it,” Avegno said. “We really need to also address how to mitigate lead in soil.”
Avegno added the soil is likely contaminated by lead paint.
“If your house was painted prior to a certain year in the 1970s, it is very likely to have lead paint,” Avegno said. “When that house gets renovated as many, many of our houses have over the last several years, that lead paint can get into the soil.”
Avengo hopes there will be money in the president’s infrastructure plan for lead testing so doctors can identify lead exposure in a child as early as possible.