The recent SBS news article on lead in our water exposed a potentially serious problem for all Australians.
It comes in a wave of exposes worldwide that focus on high lead levels in drinking water.
So here’s the ‘lowdown’ on getting rid of lead in your drinking water.
(And please note: we’re not trying to panic you. It’s a simple fact that if you have a faucet you installed before 1990, there’s a good chance it’s leaking lead.)
Here’s the actual study results.
We are actually talking about lead and copper.
“My results show that there is quite a significant concentration of lead and copper in the drinking water that is coming out of people’s kitchen taps into their morning cup of tea, or baby formula,” says lead author of the study, PhD researcher Paul Harvey.
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 that that.
“The highest concentration sample that I collected in this study was 89 micrograms [of lead] per litre,” says Harvey. “The results of this study demonstrate that along with other potential sources of contamination in households, plumbing products that contain up to 2.84 per cent of detectable lead are contributing to contamination of household drinking water.”
There isn’t a simple test and you’d need to send a sample to a water test lab, but let’s assume for the moment that you do have a problem.
The problem can emanate from your faucet or from your plumbing, particularly if it is the old style copper pipe installation. The heavy metals are coming from the brazed joints in the piping.
You can relatively easily replace your faucet.. but replacing copper piping that may even be embedded in your slab is a much bigger problem.
So what can you do?
A good water filter is already worth its salt in any home, but if it will remove heavy metals – and the vendor can show you the test results over the life of the filter – it’s worth its weight in gold.
When we invented the UltraStream we went to America, the home of the best water filtration technologies in the world. We asked our engineers there to give us the best, and the safest, most long lasting media possible. When they produced the prototype some people thought it was ‘overkill’ – too much filtration – but today his – and our – choice has been vindicated.
The expensive filtration media, all of it certified and some of it patented, now offers people with lead and copper and life-of-filter solution.
Now.. I must stress. You won’t get this with an off-the-shelf carbon filter. They may say ‘up to 98%’ lead removal, but that only means that on the day they tested a brand new filter, it got UP TO 98% removal. One health food store brand I checked recently claimed ‘up to’ 98% fluoride removal, but when I checked they were just quoting WikiPedia – word for word! They had never tested their filter!
And that’s exactly why we spent the money to have the UltraStream tested for it whole effective life, plus submitting it to the EU for its stringent safety certification.
You can install it on your benchtop or undersink. We have installation videos and because WE invented it, wrote the manuals. So we can say you can have it up and running in under ten minutes, savouring the best water you’ll ever drink.
We wanted to feel good about recommending it to our customers. Take a look yourself here.