Lead in Drinking Water

GerardKeating

First it was Cyptro, now lead...


Story on RTE news



Note on Council Website..

Robbo

This really is the end days of the Roman Empire all over again.

Better watch out for the Goths.

BrokenArrows

well the article is really about peoples homes contaminating their own water. its not about the council supplying led contaminated water.

the council supplys the water in perfect condition (most of the time ) its old houses whose pipes are made of lead which care causing the scare.

ronnie3585

Just when you thought it was safe.....

Residents have been warned that water in some houses in Galway city has been found to contain high levels of lead.

Galway City Council and the Health Service Executive West said the lead was found during recent tests of houses in Old Mervue, Shantalla, Bohermore and the Claddagh areas of the city, where lead piping is still installed in many properties built before 1970.

They warned people living and working in the Old Mervue area not to drink the tap water, which was worst affected by the lead contamination. It said arrangements were being made to provide a supply of drinking water for people in the area.

The council insisted that water leaving its treatment works “does not contain lead and is of a very high quality”.

However, it said part or all of the service pipes connecting the water main in the street to the kitchen tap in older buildings may be made of lead, which can build up in the body and serious harm to young children and unborn babies in particular.

Over-exposure to lead can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and kidneys, and can cause high blood pressure and anaemia. At very high levels, lead poisoning can cause convulsions, coma and death.

Boiling water does not remove lead.

Further sampling of the drinking water in Galway City is being conducted to investigate the extent of the problem, the council said.

It is the second incidence of serious water contamination in Galway City in the past 18 months.

Last year, over 90,000 people in Galway city and county were forced to boil water due to contamination caused by the cryptosporidium parasite.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0923/breaking67.htm

sgthighway

Another thread on it already:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055384208

ronnie3585

Ah I see. Mods please lock, I can't seem to delete the thread,

Tar.Aldarion

so how the feck do you know if you can drink the water or not. Hmm.

JIZZLORD

get diggin' boy!

Bass Cadet

This is great news :rolleyes: I drank near of litre of water after comin back from a jog last night. My gaff was built in the 90's so hopefully BrokenArrows is right and it only affects houses with old lead pipes. If ye don't hear from me again...fear the worst! :pac:

Webbs

Listening to the hysterical reporting on the likes of RTE and Newstalk this morning you would swear the world was about to end in Galway.

They were desperate for this to be more of a story than it is, constantly trying to put a spin on it that it was Galway water again that was contaminated not the fact that it is at the moment a handful of old houses with lead pipes.
I hate the standard of news reporting in this country it is pathetic compared to the likes of the BBC etc!
Sorry rant over - will go for a lie down now!

s_carnage

Think it is houses in Claddagh, Bohermore, parts of Mervue and Shantalla that are affected. Suppose that's the real old parts of Galway covered.

galah

one question though - would those pipes not be the responsibility of the home owner? And that lead in pipes causes problems has been known for a good while (at least in the rest of the world...) - so why do they test it only now? Why didn't they check 30 years ago, or 20, or 10? Or least year, when we had the crypto problem?

Or does this affect the pipes TO the houses (which would be the council's problem - but again, why do they check only now?)

Must be slow news week...

And they said in the news that so far, no lead poisoning cases have been reported - but then again, with the state of the health system, I wouldn't be so sure that they would diagnose and recognise it correctly...

toiletduck

Wait a minute, doctors have been telling us to drink eight glasses of lead a day for years and now they tell us it's bad? Madness.

muppetkiller

Well my home in Henry Street was built around 1900 and has had lead pipes since it was built. If my family or me are not dead yet then I don't think anyone needs to work. In fact my Great Gran Aunt lived in the house too and Died at 101.. Maybe the government have found lead actually keeps you living longer and don't want the burden on the health system lol.

dilallio

s_carnage wrote: »

Think it is houses in Claddagh, Bohermore, parts of Mervue and Shantalla that are affected. Suppose that's the real old parts of Galway covered.

It will possibly affect houses in other areas whose plumbing was installed using lead piping. The reason why the emphasis is with these areas, is because these houses were originally built by Galway City Council (Galway Corporation) and they may have some liability because these old pipes were not replaced with copper or flexible piping.
Does anyone know who with or how I can get my water tested, and if the City Council will offer this service.
Thanks

Bass Cadet

dilallio wrote: »

It will possibly affect houses in other areas whose plumbing was installed using lead piping. The reason why the emphasis is with these areas, is because these houses were originally built by Galway City Council (Galway Corporation) and they may have some liability because these old pipes were not replaced with copper or flexible piping.
Does anyone know who with or how I can get my water tested, and if the City Council will offer this service.
Thanks

Best bet is to call the city council themselves www.galwaycity.ie

Did anyone hear the report on RTE during lunch? A good example of the pathetic level of journalism in this country. Went around asking people what they thought of another water scare from the council, inferring that it was actually the treated water coming from the treatment plant that was contaminated...

In fairness though, the council have done themselves no favours at all by not issuing a news statement quicker with the full facts...ie it is not water coming from the treatment plant that is affected, its certain area's house pipes that is the problem

cL0h

muppetkiller wrote: »

Well my home in Henry Street was built around 1900 and has had lead pipes since it was built. If my family or me are not dead yet then I don't think anyone needs to work. In fact my Great Gran Aunt lived in the house too and Died at 101.. Maybe the government have found lead actually keeps you living longer and don't want the burden on the health system lol.

After a few years, the interior of pipes develop a sort of callus deposit of minerals that help protect lead from leaching into the water.

However, many cities have recently switched from Cl2 to chloramine for treating their water supplies. Chloramine is highly corrosive to the lead plaques, and causes the lead level to spike much, much higher. This is a public disaster in the making, and very few people realize this.

My guess is they moved to the new type of chlorine after the crypto cos they were told it was better but they didn't consider old houses with lead piping.

Chlorine stabilizes the lead film but with the chloramines, the lead film almost completely dissolves according to corrosion expert Marc Edwards at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the States.

Bass Cadet

cL0h wrote: »

After a few years, the interior of pipes develop a sort of callus deposit of minerals that help protect lead from leaching into the water.

However, many cities have recently switched from Cl2 to chloramine for treating their water supplies. Chloramine is highly corrosive to the lead plaques, and causes the lead level to spike much, much higher. This is a public disaster in the making, and very few people realize this.

My guess is they moved to the new type of chlorine after the crypto cos they were told it was better but they didn't consider old houses with lead piping.

Chlorine stabilizes the lead film but with the chloramines, the lead film almost completely dissolves according to corrosion expert Marc Edwards at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the States.

Imagine RTE or any media outlet actually explaining that?! "Ah feck lads, nevermind that, we'll just get a few sound bites from the locals and make it sensational, nevermind the facts!"

interesting bit of info that...

hada

i'm in shantalla. have been drinking the water for well, the last 4 years.

so far - no lead poisioning..... In fact, I feel great.

Maybe I'm turning into some super hero with lead based powers

Lead Man the power to weigh anything down - anytime, anywhere.

I can see the graphic novels now!...

toiletduck

hada wrote: »

i'm in shantalla. have been drinking the water for well, the last 4 years.

so far - no lead poisioning..... In fact, I feel great.

Maybe I'm turning into some super hero with lead based powers

Lead Man the power to weigh anything down - anytime, anywhere.

I can see the graphic novels now!...

And you'd be immune to radiation*!


*except for possible death

ValerieR

The worst is ... RTE's title this morning : "Residents in Galway on boiling notice". Lead cannot be boiled out of the water !!!!
Sensational, crap and misleading journalism ... very sad.

ValerieR

DeadSkin

Just lazy journalism in fairness alright.
Sure if there's somethin' wrong with the water, we just boil the sh!t outta it and we'll be grand :pac:

Anima

Because boiling a metal makes it go away

Robbo

toiletduck wrote: »

And you'd be immune to radiation*!


*except for possible death

Come back Chernobyl kids! We can rebuild you, we have the technology.

_Whimsical_

Will this problems not affect houses all over the country that were built pre-1970 if it's the piping that's responsible?
Is this issue really Galway specific or is just a case that after the cryto disaster that we are the only ones testing the water?

Mrs OBumble

chilly wrote: »

Will this problems not affect houses all over the country that were built pre-1970 if it's the piping that's responsible?
Is this issue really Galway specific or is just a case that after the cryto disaster that we are the only ones testing the water?

Well the rest of the world stopped using lead water pipes some time ago: Wikipedia says "It was generally eclipsed toward the end of the 1800s by galvanized iron". I know that Ireland was a poor country with poor infrastructure, but really ...

Seems to me that there are two possible things going on. One what cLOh has said about a change in the chlorine. That would explain why the HSE are testing. (It's odd that they'd be testing the water in individual houses, unless they were looking for something - perhaps a cluster of illness that have started to show up in some suburbs in recent months.)

The other is the building industry downtown. Let's face it, plumbers have been working in these houses for a long time. They must have known that the pipes were made of lead, and that this was A Bad Thing. But while construction was booming, they didn't want to spend time fixing 'em. Now the boom is over, they're looking for work, so it would be an excellent time to raise the issue, and keep them in work for a while.

As people have said .. if only we had some journalists in this country, the questions the media could be asking about this would be fascinating!

sheepeyes

Well, I'm not sure what the story is here but I heard tonight on what I consider to be quite a good authority that lead in the pipes isn't the problem, its another bug in the water. This is by no means gospel, but don't be surprised if there is a warning put on all water in and around the city next week. The safest thing is not to drink the water at all, it may cost more but better fork out a few extra quid then fall ill from a bug.

galah

ah sure, first crypto, then e-coli - what could possibly be wrong now?
Never drank the tap water, always got bottles - just don't like the taste of chlorine...

Bass Cadet

chilly wrote: »

Will this problems not affect houses all over the country that were built pre-1970 if it's the piping that's responsible?

You'll probably be waiting a month or so for the work-shy jouno's to cop onto that one

Pgibson

Link here to cheer you up:

http://books.google.ie/books?id=gXwSu_MNqgsC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=lead+water+filters&source=web&ots=NcDrUbF1oO&sig=uCFJ-tSp5MQkTA2DQnzk0HSAAMY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

Alessandra

I'm in one of the affected areas.

Since the news broke I have been noticing a distinctly metallic taste off the water.