Testing Our Home's Water for Lead

We knew when we moved into our century-old brownstone that the water main was made of lead, a neurotoxin that can cause delays in children's physical and mental development, but I didn't give it much thought until the first time I filled a baby bottle with tap water and handed it to my son. The EPA estimates that drinking water is responsible for about 20 percent of human exposure to lead; the old paint in our house was probably a greater threat to a small child. Still, I wanted to know how much toxic heavy metal was in that baby bottle.

In New York City, we learned, the Department of Environmental Protection will send you a test kit—essentially two plastic sample bottles—and will test your water for free. Since lead leaches into the water as it stands in pipes overnight, the DEP advises that you collect your samples in the morning; this will give you the worst-case scenario. The first bottle is to be filled with the water that runs out when you first open the tap; the second is to be filled after you let the water run for a minute or two, until the water is cold. Next morning, I filled the first bottle with tap water. Next, knowing that, if problematic levels of lead were found, I would sooner filter than get in the habit of "flushing" lead from our pipes, I took my second sample from water that had run through a Brita filter. Then I mailed the bottles off.

A few weeks later, the results came back: The first sample was well below the EPA's limit of .015 milligrams of lead per liter of household water (.02 mg for schools). The second sample was lower still. My son has been drinking water from the tap since then, and his blood levels for lead are negligible. To test your water, get the name of a state-certified laboratory from www.epa.gov/safewater/privatewells/labs.html.