Is Canada’s tap water safe? Thousands of test results show high lead levels across the country
2019-11-04 from globalnews.ca
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians could be consuming tap water laced with high levels of lead leaching from aging infrastructure and plumbing, a large collection of newly released data and documents reveals.
It’s a key conclusion of a year-long investigation by more than 120 journalists from nine universities and 10 media organizations, including Global News and Concordia University’s Institute for Investigative Journalism.
While the water generally contains no lead when it leaves municipal treatment plants, the main sources of the contamination are lead service lines — the pipes that connect homes and apartment buildings with eight dwellings or less to water mains — as well as plumbing fixtures that contain lead and lead solder.
Many cities said that some of the hundreds of thousands of lead pipes underground would likely not be replaced for decades. In addition, the cities also said it was difficult to co-ordinate replacements since they would require property owners to pay for changing lead pipes on the private side of the property line.
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