Is Portland's Tap Water Toxic?

If your kids still grow up to be dumb, shortsighted jerks, at least we’ll know it’s just due to lousy parenting.

In more than one city, the tap water is toxic. How about our water?

—Thirsty

Your question is a little vague, Thirsty, but I'm just going to assume you're asking about lead, the headline-grabbing Donald Trump of water-supply adulterants.

Childhood exposure to lead is believed to result in reduced intelligence, shorter attention spans, difficulty deferring gratification and lack of empathy toward one's fellow human beings. If you want to look around at the current state of American culture and say "hmm," I'm not gonna call you paranoid.

In Flint, Mich. (let's be real, that's what you're thinking about), lead found its way into drinking water through the use of lead pipes, which are great for clobbering Colonel Mustard in the dining room, but lousy for not poisoning people. Portland's municipal water system, lucky for us, has no lead pipes. (The last lead components were removed in 1998.)

However, the Water Bureau doesn't own the plumbing in your house—you could have anything in there. Actual lead pipe is pretty rare, but plenty of houses plumbed between 1970 and 1985 used lead solder to connect copper pipes.

With the belt-and-suspenders caution of an agency that gets blamed every time someone drops their cellphone in the toilet, the Water Bureau actually tries to help out with our slipshod plumbing, adjusting the water's pH to reduce the amount of lead it picks up by 70 percent. (Flint skipped this step, with less-than-optimal results.)

The pH adjustment helps keep 90 percent of those at-risk M*A*S*H-era homes from having elevated lead levels in their water. If you're worried about your own pipes, you can get a free lead test kit from Multnomah County's leadline.org.

If you do have lead in your plumbing, you can greatly reduce exposure just by letting water run for 30 seconds before using it and buying lead-rated filters for drinking water. Be lead smart! If your kids still grow up to be dumb, shortsighted jerks, at least we'll know it's just due to lousy parenting.

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