Heavy metals are naturally occurring elements of our environment. The CDC has concluded that there is no known safe level of lead in a child’s blood. It is better overall for us to reduce as much lead exposure as possible for the safety of everyone’s drinking water.
But this begs the question of why we built our water pipes out of lead in the first place. Lead has been used as early as the Roman Empire because it is a soft and malleable metal. It can easily be bent, joined, and doesn’t easily crack. For most of history, lead poisoning was not well understood.
When water flows through lead pipes, minerals get deposited in the pipe and form a protective layer over time. This slow corrosion and the amount of lead being dissolved in our waterways.
The reason they exist today is that replacing water lines is difficult and expensive. Many lead pipes have lasted over a hundred years. New lead pipes have been banned in the US since 1986
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/basic-information-about-lead-drinking-water
Writing About the Environment 
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