What are forever chemicals? Lead and similar harmful chemicals can stick around in drinking water and cause dangerous health disorders like cancer.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health held a presentation on the topic Thursday, telling participants what they can do to lower their risk of ingesting the chemicals.
“Even with adequate corrosion control and drinking water, when water sits in lead pipes, especially overnight, lead leeches into the water going undetected when the tap is turned on,” said Natalie Exum, an environmental scientist with the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
There are steps that you can take as a homeowner to protect you and your family, she said.
“A lot of utilities do not know where the lead lines lie,” she said.
If you think your home has lead pipes, Exum said to request a water report or reach out to plumbing professionals for an inspection. If it comes back saying your water contains lead, first run the water to flush the pipes.
“Flushing means running the cold water for about five minutes before drinking,” she said.
Then she said to clean the screens on your faucet, and, “only use cold water for cooking, drinking and especially for preparing baby formula.”
Why should you only use cold water? Exum said “hot tap water can dissolve lead into the pipes” and make higher lead levels more likely.
She said faucets and taps installed before 2014 can contain up to 8% of lead. New standards in place say that lead content needs to be below 0.25% for drinking water fixtures.
Carsten Prasse, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said an estimated 98% of the U.S. population have detectable concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAs, also known as “forever chemicals,” in their blood.
The Environmental Protection Agency last year proposed the first federal limits on harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water.
How do these chemicals get into the drinking water?
“We’re using them in our households and are potentially flushing them down the drain,” Prasse said.
And if they’re not removed in the wastewater treatment plants?
“They get into our rivers and our streams and also in our groundwater, which are all coming to us for our drinking water production,” he said.
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