I recently discovered that lead pipes are still present in some rented properties. Lead is toxic, and exposure can be harmful to health.
I’ve started a UK Parliament petition asking for landlords to check for lead pipes and test drinking water.
If you support this, please sign and share:
I think you’re approaching this from
The wrong angle
You don’t need to test for lead you can ask the water board to replace them
This is already established as a practice
The water account is in your name so …
I don’t think all water companies will do this, as replacing lead pipes would often involve digging a 1 meter deep trench from the point of water access to your garden to the point of the mains incoming to the house.
My local water company, will connect ‘free of charge’ to the mains a new plastic pipe dug & laid to their spec by the home owner… not a small job.
You have to get the new pipe from your stop valve to just outside your boundary 900mm deep and they will do a free connection
I’m 67 years old and lived in many properties with lead piping and I dare say there are many older people that have. It’s never bothered me and as far as I know it hasn’t had any ill affect on me despite the fuss some people make about it.
If you were to cut thru a lead pipe and see what it is lined with, after many years use ,you would wonder how you have survived for so long !!
While you may not have experienced any obvious ill effects, that doesn’t establish that there has been no exposure or potential health impact. Personal experience therefore isn’t really a reliable basis for concluding that lead pipework is harmless.
People eat bacon. It’s as carcinogenic as asbestos but they eat it . No one complains to Tesco about stopping bacon but they’re not a landlord.
Most homes in the U.K. have lead .
People need to look at their shopping basket and stop eating refined sugar etc
Lead is the least of their problems
do they eat fish and chips ? They’ll cause vascular disease but doesn’t stop them going to the chippy …
This is about what can we blame the landlord for ..
I have one property with a lead pipe. Yorkshire water’s advice was that a short length of lead pipe from the street to the house has no discernable health effect when the water is run regularly.
It’s at the homeowner’s cost to replace their own lead pipes from the street through their property. The water companies are required to replace lead pipe water mains.
Based on Yorkshire Water’s advice, I left it.