How to Safely Treat Water with Lead | Ask This Old House

Ask This Old House plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey gives a tutorial on why lead can be found in home drinking water and the best methods to combat it.

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Homeowners have a virtual truckload of questions for us on smaller projects, and we're ready to answer. Ask This Old House solves the steady stream of home improvement problems faced by our viewers—and we make house calls! Ask This Old House features some familiar faces from This Old House, including Kevin O'Connor, general contractor Tom Silva, plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey, and landscape contractor Roger Cook.

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How to Safely Treat Water with Lead | Ask This Old House

[scottcomella]

It's not just Flint.  Many public schools in Portland OR have this problem, too.

[slimchiplee]

thanks for posting this. I live in the college cultural district of flint and ive thought about purchasing a filter to treat the lead but in the mean time have just been getting cases of water from one of the few remaining distribution centers. it sucks that i have so much plastic waste from used up water bottles. im still waiting for the day the city will come out and say the problem has been fixed once and for all. btw love the show!

[Major_Mason]

I really REALLY hate lead... im glad metropolitan areas are taking notice and actually doing something about it.

[todddunn]

An ion exchange based water treatment system will also remove lead.

[darkwaters]

Even if you have an under sink filter to remove lead with an extra faucet, what about filling up a pot of water to cook with? Nobody uses the special filter faucet for that. Youre still ingesting lead. And people typically use regular faucet water and not the faucet filter attachment to fill cooking pots with, or rinse off vegetables.
Thats why you always want a whole house filter to remove toxins. There are others besides reverse osmosis to remove lead. I just cant remember which ones they are.

[Topher_Knows]

When I first saw the title, I thought this would be a video about treating water by using lead.

[RSinton]

You didn't touch on the fact that drinking RO or distilled water regularly has its own health concerns, namely, it can pull minerals and nutrients out of your body because of its negative osmotic pressure in your body. The FDA doesn't currently recognize any artificial remineralization process as being sufficient for getting calcium, magnesium, and other minerals back into the water after RO or distillation. Water is quite a complex issue currently.

[Kateydid]

What about for people that live in apartments?

[oscarmuffin]

Single point of use filtration is totally un-acceptable. ALL outlets must be filtered.

[Well_possibly]

It needs to be specifically certified by NSF to remove LEAD.

Cook with lead free water, too!

I don't trust labels.  I also check with NSF to see if the brand & model are on their list.

[Jemalacane]

Or replace the lead pipes with copper and or plastic.

[carmelinakatzman]

I made it. I used inplix scripts for that. It was pretty easy to make it

[SupraRy]

This dude has been a salesman for bullshit new plumbing replacements for years, He is definitely on someones payroll. "We could solve the problem like this very easily, but let me show you something that has just started production and is amazing". GTFO

[derickeckenberg]

I'm glad this old house is doing their part, Obama didn't do anything for Flint.