It’s not just Flint
How industry lobbying put lead in Americans’ drinking water
The residents of Flint, Michigan are still drinking bottled water and their city remains a federal disaster area more than a year after residents complained of foul-smelling water — and months after government authorities knew the water supply was tainted with lead.
But they’re not the only Americans drinking lead-poisoned water. Millions of American homes get their water from lead-coated pipes, and in cities around the country testing regularly shows dangerously elevated levels of the toxic metal.
They have the lead industry to thank for that.
In the late 1800s, as the US population boomed, lead pipes were laid in cities around the country. By 1900, roughly 70% of larger American cities got their water through lead pipes.
By then, though, the public had already taken notice. Residents of Boston and New York complained as early as the 1850s, and soon after, public health officials became suspicious that lead was linked to health problems, from learning disabilities in children to a range of symptoms in adults, including headaches and abdominal pain. By the 1920s some cities began banning lead pipes altogether.
In response to what they saw as an existential threat, influential US lead companies banded together as the Lead Industries Association in 1928, swiftly launching a full-scale lobbying effort to push lead onto plumbers’ associations, cities and government officials.
The association’s primary aim was to make sure that city building codes didn’t explicitly prohibit lead.
“They would convince them to keep lead as an acceptable material for water pipes, as an option, or even require that only lead be used,” said Richard Rabin, a longtime lead-prevention advocate and author of a 2007 paper published in the American Journal of Public Health documenting the industry’s lobbying efforts.
The industry courted engineers and plumbing unions because lead — easy to use and long-lasting as it is — appealed to them more than the alternatives, iron and steel, and because union members were uniquely skilled and trained to work with lead.The association hired an agent whose job was to head to cities around the country and persuade officials that lead was a superior, non-toxic material and to tweak building codes accordingly. After his first year, the association’s secretary reported his good work in a letter presented at the group’s annual meeting.
“We have rekindled an interest on the part of master and journeymen plumbers in the use of lead,” it read. “We have pointed out to municipalities the risks that they run in advocating substitutes for lead and have received the endorsement of numerous important State master plumbers and journeymen plumbers associations with whom the subject has been discussed.”
So, even as public health officials became increasingly concerned about lead’s health impacts, the powerful unions prevailed. (As late as the early 1980s, plumbers unions and public health advocates battled it out, notably in Chicago, where the city continued using lead pipes. As a result, it has more lead pipes than any major American city.)
For decades, the association continued to persuade cities to maintain lead as an acceptable, or even preferred, material in their code books. But with the rise of the environmental movement in the 1970s and the creation of a national watchdog — the Environmental Protection Agency — that changed. In 1986, the EPA banned lead pipes at the federal level.
But that still leaves countless miles of lead pipe in the ground — pipes that can still leach lead into water supplies if not treated properly. The only true solution, engineers say, is to replace lead pipes entirely, but that’s often financially and logistically impossible, leaving anti-corrosion treatment the only feasible option. (Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said this week the city needs $55 million to replace its lead pipes — and is asking the state for help.)
In Flint’s case, that treatment didn’t happen, and in other cases, it doesn’t work effectively enough — which means the lead industry’s toxic legacy will linger for a long time.
“Given that Flint, as well as many poor communities, haven’t been able to take care of their public health infrastructure, if you look at what happened there it’s not surprising,” Rabin said. “Something like that was waiting to happen somewhere.”
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