Lead pipe in residential plumbing

Lead's atmospheric corrosion resistance and ease of forming made it the dominant water-pipe material from antiquity through 1920s–1930s. Tom's own 1938 house had a lead pipe. Forty-seven percent of Medford homes still have lead service piping.

Concrete aqueducts. The Romans used concrete. Then they started using a metal that has excellent corrosion resistance — and it's been in the paper recently. It's in the paper yesterday in the Boston Globe. You don't read the Globe? Depending on your political persuasion — I don't particularly like the Globe's political persuasion. It's called lead. Lead has excellent atmospheric corrosion resistance, it's easy to form into a pipe, it's relatively abundant, and it wasn't too expensive. So in the 1920s to the 1930s, when they were doing plumbing in houses, they had lead pipe.

One-line reference to early London water-pipe history, supporting the lead-corrosion-resistance point. Not developed. ## Figures referenced (recurring numeric anchors, not cases)

In the early 2000s, California had requirements that were stiffer than the federal government requirements for the total hydrocarbon emissions from a gas tank on a vehicle. Back in the 1980s, people used to use ternplate for making gas tanks. This was low-carbon steel. Anybody know what ternplate is? It's lead-coated steel, just like galvanized steel is zinc-coated steel. If you lead-coat it, same type of thing — just pull it through a lead bath, and if you do it with the right flux you can get a lead coating. Lead has outstanding corrosion resistance in hydrocarbons, in water, and everything else. The roof at Kresge Auditorium has a lead membrane on it. The water pipes, when they first started piping water through London, were lead pipes.

Personal anecdote — Tom's 1930s-built house had one remaining lead pipe above the laundry sink when he moved in (1970s); he had it removed.

My house was built in the 1930s, so it's 85 years old now. When I first moved in, there was one lead pipe left in the house — it was above the laundry sink in the basement, and I had it taken out. They built the house in the 1930s and they had lead pipes in part of the house. They didn't always have it for the drinking water, but by the time I got there in the 1970s, most of it had been replaced with copper pipe. Copper pipe didn't really come into its own until after World War II as a building material. They still use galvanized pipe — zinc-coated pipe — in many parts of the Midwest, if they have the right water chemistry. You can put galvanized pipe in your home to convey water; it's a zinc-coated pipe inside and outside, and it will last for 40 or 50 years using New England soft water, where you have a pH of rainwater of 5.5 — the water that comes from the utility is probably pH 9, and it might last well.