Lead in water testing across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut

Lead enters drinking water through contact with plumbing materials that contain it. Water leaving a treatment plant is generally lead free. What arrives at a tap reflects everything it passed through on the way, and lead bearing components remain in widespread use in American plumbing today.

Olympian Water Testing provides professional lead in water testing for homeowners, families, cooperative and condominium boards, managing agents, schools and childcare programs, property buyers and building owners throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Lead cannot be seen, tasted or smelled in drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both state that no safe level of lead in a child's blood has been identified, which places the emphasis on identifying and reducing sources of exposure.

Newer homes warrant testing as readily as older ones. The lead free standard permits a weighted average of 0.25 percent lead across the wetted surfaces of pipes, fittings and fixtures, and several categories of component fall outside that rule altogether. Faucet bodies, angle stops and shutoff valves, tub and shower mixing valves, hose bibbs, brass fittings, ball and gate valves, backflow preventers, pressure reducing valves, water heater nipples and relief valves, faucet cartridge housings and pump wetted components can all contain lead in current installations.

In practice, fixtures manufactured to the lead free standard return measurable lead in drinking water testing with regularity. Build date is therefore a poor proxy for exposure, and the only way to establish the position at a given tap is to measure it.

Lead concentration at a tap depends heavily on how long the water has been standing in contact with the plumbing. Where a lead-testing protocol calls for a defined stagnation period, Olympian Water Testing provides the required preparation instructions before the sampling appointment.

Lead is collected as an ordered sequence of draws along the supply path rather than as a single bottle. The first draw reflects water resting in the fixture and its immediate connection, while successive draws reach progressively further upstream toward the branch, the riser and the service connection. Read as a series, the pattern indicates which part of the plumbing is contributing.

Outlet screens are left undisturbed during collection so that particulate lead accumulating there is captured in the sample. Samples are handled under documented chain of custody from collection through NELAP accredited laboratory analysis.

Our lead reporting states the sampling points, the analytical method, the reporting limit and the measured concentration for each draw. Reading the sequence together is what distinguishes a fixture contribution from one originating further along the supply path.

Results can also differ between samples for reasons that are entirely explicable. Lead reaches water both dissolved and as particulate matter, and the particulate fraction is released when something is disturbed, such as a repair, work in the street or a valve exercised after a long interval.

Olympian Water Testing assists clients in interpreting those findings against the applicable federal, state and local reference framework, identifying the category to which each reference belongs.

A properly designed lead assessment converts an open question into a defined one. Replacing a fixture, replacing a branch line or riser, and replacing the water service line are three very different undertakings, and the draw sequence indicates which is warranted.

Olympian Water Testing provides professional lead-in-water sampling designed around the property, the outlets people actually use and the question being investigated. When appropriate, first-draw, flushed or sequential samples can help distinguish fixture-related lead from contributions associated with interior plumbing or the incoming service.

Olympian Water Testing provides independent professional water testing throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut with NELAP accredited laboratory analysis. Water-testing support is available 24/7, and parameter selection is determined through consultation with one of our consultants.