Lead found in Chicago homes’ tap water
CHICAGO — Amid renewed national attention to the dangers of lead poisoning, hundreds of Chicagoans have taken the city up on its offer of free testing kits to determine if they are drinking tap water contaminated with the brain-damaging metal.
A Chicago Tribune analysis of the results shows lead was found in water drawn from nearly 70 percent of the 2,797 homes tested during the past two years. Tap water in 3 of every 10 homes sampled had lead concentrations above 5 parts per billion, the maximum allowed in bottled water by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Alarming amounts of the toxic metal turned up in water samples collected throughout the city, the newspaper’s analysis found, largely because Chicago required the use of lead service lines between street mains and homes until Congress banned the practice in 1986.
The testing kit results provide the most conclusive evidence yet of widespread hazards that have remained hidden for decades. Yet as Mayor Rahm Emanuel borrows hundreds of millions of dollars to overhaul the city’s public water system, Chicago is keeping lead service lines in the ground.
Under the city’s plumbing code — the same ordinance that for nearly a century mandated the use of lead pipes to convey water to single-family homes and small apartment buildings — individual property owners are responsible for maintaining service lines. The mayor’s office has said it is up to homeowners, not the city, to decide if it is worth replacing the lead pipes at their own expense.
As a result, critics say, the city is leaving scores of Chicagoans at risk and failing to seize an opportunity to fix more than one problem when crews dig up streets to replace aging water mains.
“Chicago could be a leader on nationwide solutions to this problem, but instead they appear to be sticking their heads in the sand,” said Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and former assistant commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Adam Collins, Emanuel’s chief spokesman, referred questions to the Department of Water Management, where a spokeswoman earlier had said she would need to consult with the mayor’s office before responding to the Tribune’s analysis. Asked why the city hasn’t removed lead service lines it once required by law, the department emailed a three-sentence statement:
“Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, he has made it a priority to improve Chicago’s overall water quality and infrastructure,” the statement reads. “Today, the city’s water exceeds the standards set by the (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) for clean, safe drinking water. And the Department of Water Management continues to take a proactive approach to mitigating lead in our water system and is continually evaluating additional methods of lead mitigation.”
City and EPA officials advise that residents can protect themselves by flushing household plumbing for three to five minutes when water hasn’t been used for several hours. But in one of five Chicago homes tested since January 2016, the Tribune analysis found, samples contained high levels of lead after water had been running for three minutes.
Even after water had been running for five minutes, 9 percent of the homes tested had lead levels above the FDA’s bottled water standard.
Prompted by concerns raised by the water crisis in Flint, Mich., and an EPA study of Chicago homes published in 2013, the city water department began distributing lead-testing kits to residents on request. The kits included three sample bottles: one for water drawn after household taps have not been used for at least six hours, another for a sample collected after three minutes and the third after five minutes.
Block-level results are posted on a city-sponsored website that hadn’t been updated in more than six months before the Tribune began asking questions about the testing kits.
One of the homes with the highest levels found so far is Jenny Abrahamian’s bungalow on the city’s Northwest Side.
Abrahamian was so alarmed by the results — the first sample she collected contained 250 ppb of lead — she invested in a $1,100 system that filters every drop of water coming into her home, as well as an additional reverse-osmosis filter at her kitchen sink for drinking water.
“I’m really happy I did,” she said. “But this definitely isn’t something that everyone could afford.”