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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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That's only true in America, where your Health and Safety Standards are shit.
Might be true in parts of Africa and China too, along with other places with a bad standard of human rights.
It's still legal for plumbing parts that contain lead to be used here in Australia.
It was supposed to be banned last year but they extended the dead line twice because the plumbers were crying.
It's now meant to be fully phased out in May 2026.
There may be more lead in your country than you think, even if lead pipes are banned.
Multiple schools here have had lead found in their water. It's crazy.
Well, it's not been legal in the UK since 1970 to sell or install lead plumbing.
And the official Department of Water Inspectors (https://dwi.gov.uk/) reported only 50 cases of lead pipes in last year's inspection
The use of lead solder and brass fittings has only been illegal in the uk since 1999, and these are still legal to use in central heating systems. This leads to people having access to these fittings and products, and them being used illegally.
"WaterSafe Warning after Kitchen Fitter Fined for Illegal Use of Lead Solder on Water Pipes" https://www.watersafe.org.uk/news/latest_news/watersafe_warning_af/
Unfortunately this problem is sort of universal and I imagine if I google other countries I will find similar.
To be fair, lead solder is far far far less risky than last piping
That is a straw man argument, but I'll indulge again.
No amount of lead is safe, and a random sampling of newly built houses testing water from the cold kitchen tap as well as hot and cold from the bathrooms found lead above the current regulatory limit, and 5 times higher than the proposed new regulatory limit.
https://leappalliance.org.uk/litw-blog-15/
https://www.ifeh.org/docs/scientificreports/scottish_new_homes_lead_survey_%20summary.pdf
One study has shown a clear response in infants where blood lead levels increased by 1µg/dL with drinking water that exceeded 5 µg/L. This is already worrying since it is now believed that blood lead levels as low as 1-2µg/dL result in negative health effects associated with fertility, neurological, cardiovascular, and renal disorders.
https://thewaterprofessor.com/blogs/articles/drinking-water-lead-and-iq
Growing up in the US I learned this exact thing was why there were two taps in the UK instead of a shared tap. That and Legionnaires growing in the hot tanks.
Yeah that's not been true for about 50 years.
We replaced all our lead, and it's a legal requirement to if you find a lead pipe in a system, replace it no matter what (even in listed buildings) or disable the outputs entirely (the latter is more common in VERY OLD buildings, with people then adding a new system somewhere else, sometimes with exposed pipework rather than having to potentially damage walls.)
We also just don't do hot water tanks any more usually, instead doing on-demand boilers.
Does mean that the hot runs cold for about a minute, but it balances out
The hot runs cold for a minute with a tank too. It takes awhile for it to reach the tap.