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A comment on Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint. Parent comment

Re:Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint by sdk77 on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @02:25AM (#11071233)
>It's hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them.

I always supposed that that's where the word 'plumber' came from, or 'loodgieter' (lead caster, Dutch). Both words strongly refer to lead. Growing up in Holland in the early 80's our house had lead pipes. When I bought my first house in 2003 it too still had a lead water main. I drank a lot of that water, tap water over here has the same purity (basically actually is the same) as mineral water, with no side effects.

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Re:Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint by tarsinge on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @03:24AM (#11071389)
Just noticed that in french lead is "plomb" and plumber is "plombier"
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Re:Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint by rangibaby on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @05:40AM (#11071791)
That's from Latin, which is why the periodic table symbol for lead is Pb.
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Re:Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint by crottypeter on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @05:55AM (#11071846)
Whether or not the lead gets dissolved in the water depends on the water itself. If you have hard water lead pipes are low risk.
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Re:Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint by gozur88 on Thursday February 11, 2016 @12:09AM (#11078350)
Yes. Lead pipes in Flint weren't a problem until the city switched from Detroit municipal water to the corrosive Flint river water.
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