Lead Contamination NSW Australia

I have keenly been following the Flint Michigan lead contamination of domestic water crisis over the past years and watched more recently as the problem has been discovered to varying degrees and many other areas of the United States.

I thought I wonder if this is something we should be looking into in Australia. After some searching I found a few alarming articles from 2016.

This Article was published by the SBS Network in August 2016 (Click photo to be taken to the page) found that indeed NSW pipes from a similar era contained led inside the brass fitting and a number of homes where found to have led concentrations height than the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.

“The team tested 212 such ‘first draw’ samples, and found copper in nearly all of them, while lead was present in 56 per cent of the households tested. According to guidelines, drinking water should contain no more than 10 micrograms of lead per litre - but 8% of the lead samples contained higher levels than that.”

The article goes onto say that;

“Eight per cent may not sound like a big number, but if it is eight per cent of the Australian population, we're talking about a lot of people,” says Harvey.

“While at one level collecting about 200 samples and finding 8% above Australian guidelines would appear to be a stretch in identifying a problem as widespread, in this case it merely confirms the obvious - Australian plumbing systems are subject to the exact same problems found elsewhere in the world,” he adds.

And this alarming! because it seems it is not until years of exposure and people getting sick that we seem to find out about these problems and at this time many people have already had their health compromised.

I am aware that sharing articles such as this can be seen as scaremongering by a water filter supplier but I think it is just something we should all be alerted to what people choose to do about it is up to the individual.