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Re:Lead drinking-water pipes must be replaced nationwide, EP... by camgunz on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @03:57PM (#41781213)
Yeah I'm too lazy to look up a source now, but I did look it up and both types of PEX will leech microplastics into your water.

It sounds like a big facepalm, and it kind of is, but it's not a crazy idea to filter your water at the taps: you probably only have 2-6 of them anyway. I'm a fan of the whole-home water filter, but yeah then you've gotta be confident about your pipes.

Re:Lead drinking-water pipes must be replaced nationwide, EP... by rpnx on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @04:06PM (#41781299)
I'll take microplastics over lead any day.
Re:Lead drinking-water pipes must be replaced nationwide, EP... by msandford on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @04:49PM (#41781689)
The dose makes the poison.

I'd choose micro plastics vs an equivalent mass dose of lead.

If it was 1000x the amount of micro plastics vs lead it's maybe less obvious which is the less bad poison. I'd have to do some research at that point.

I think framing it this way it's obvious that lead is worse than micro plastics. But when you go from lead soldered copper pipes to PEX I don't know what the doses you get from each are.

Re:Lead drinking-water pipes must be replaced nationwide, EP... by bawolff on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @05:15PM (#41781899)
I think its very obvious 1000x microplastics is much better than the lead.

Maybe if you said a billion times.

Re:Lead drinking-water pipes must be replaced nationwide, EP... by msandford on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @10:23PM (#41783863)
Okay what's the safe dose of micro plastics? What's the evidence for that dose being safe? Do we have 100 years of data?

The reason we know there isn't a safe dose of lead is a lot of study.

Every month there's a new study about some crazy micro plastics things where they got found in some new place. We're in the early days of figuring out how bad it is. We don't really know yet.

Re:Lead drinking-water pipes must be replaced nationwide, EP... by camgunz on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @08:05AM (#41786963)
Sure, but (maybe someone can jump in here) isn't copper pipe + water soluble lead-free flux + lead-free solder better? Copper piping is more expensive--dunno when you'd make your money back over tap filters, but broadly I don't think you have to choose between lead and microplastics in your water from your piping.