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We're starting off the week in the largest city of New Jersey, a place where 14,000 households are now being offered bottled water because what's coming out of their taps might have been contaminated with lead. This is a heavy metal. Exposure over time has been linked to heart and kidney problems, high blood pressure, and irreversible brain damage to children, which makes it particularly dangerous for them and pregnant mothers.
Doctors say lead is unsafe in drinking water at any level, though the U.S. government allows small amounts of it before requiring action to be taken.
Earlier this year in the tap water of part of Newark, New Jersey, lead levels were found to be more than five times the government's limit. An environmental advocacy group said the lead levels here are among the highest in the United States. City and state officials say they're taking steps to address the problem, but residents of Newark say for years, their leaders have denied there was one. The city has two water treatment plants. It says the water that leaves those plants is lead free and that the pipes that transport it are too.
But Newark says lead can get into the water when it goes through the service pipes that connect water mains to homes. The city says those are owned by individual property owners and the long term solution is to replace the service pipes. That would come at a cost of about $1,000 or less per homeowner. In the short term, the city's been giving tens of thousands of lead safe water filters to those who are affected but some tests have shown that the water still has higher lead levels than the government allows.
