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Certification or Common Sense The United States of America has the safest water supply systems in the world. Water born illness, disease, or parasites are so uncommon, that a solitary death from an Ameba makes National News, even when the person was just swimming in a stagnant pond. Our population is healthier and living longer, even though most of us were raised in houses with copper plumbing using pure lead solder. Water to those pipes came from pumps and valves built with leaded brass, which was high quality and lasted a long time. Community water systems have always been regularly tested for lead and a host of other possible contaminates. Lead in a water system is very rare, and when detected, usually comes solely from water sitting in the household plumbing (copper pipe with lead solder) for long periods of time. Even the Romans had very little exposure to lead in their drinking water, even though they used pipes made of solid lead. If pipes made of solid lead don’t cause lead poisoning, then lead contamination from impellers and valves made with less than 3% lead is inconsequential. I can remember the day the lead scare hype began. A company who manufactures Stainless Steel pumps made national news by claiming “their pumps didn’t cause lead poisoning like those of their competitors”. The story almost backfired as it was reported incorrectly the first time. National news reported the Stainless Steel pumps had lead in them, and people should be aware they were being poisoned. This was entirely opposite of the facts. The Stainless Steel pumps were the ones made without lead. The next day, National News recanted and stressed that Stainless Steel was in fact “lead safe” material. I remember those two days well because at that time I was selling and installing about two thousand of those Stainless Steel pumps a year. The first day my phone rang off the wall with customers mad about being poisoned from the pumps I was selling. After the news made the correction, the next day my phones rang from customers of other brands of pumps, ready to jump ship to the “lead safe” Stainless Steel pumps. Even though, or maybe because it was reported incorrectly the first time, it was the best marketing stunt I have ever witnessed. Like other distributors of the first Stainless Steel pumps, I enjoyed many years of lucrative sales from this particular media blunder. During this time there were also a few stories of children being poisoned while eating lead based paint off toys made in China. The two stories were never linked together in the media. However, they were inexorably linked together in people’s minds. It only stands to reason if lead is poison, and your water pump, pipe, or valves has any amount of lead in them, you are poisoning your own children. Even though water systems are regularly tested and trace amounts of lead are extremely rare, the push was and is, “to get the lead out”. California politicians were the first to pass laws saving their residents from the “scourge of lead poisoning”. Regardless of the fact that this was a solution looking for a problem, many were elected offering to deliver the solution anyway. The truth is that a very small quantity of lead is an important ingredient in many metal recipes. Unless corrosion or abrasion physically eats the material away, the lead stays safely inside the metal, and does not leach into the water. Even if corrosion or abrasion is present, concentrations from the little pump impellers and water valves made with .5 to 3% lead is likely undetectable, because of the large volume of water passing through. Reducing the lead content weakens metals, causes pinholes, increases cost, and reduces the working life of equipment. Switching to Stainless Steel may make everyone feel better as it is made without lead. However, Stainless Steel is 15% Chromium. Chromium is just as toxic and maybe more so than lead. Chromium oxide is also invisible, making the observation of corrosion difficult. We could just as easily be rallying against the use of Stainless Steel if some kids had ingested Chromium instead of eating leaded paint off import toys. Incredible advancements have been made with testing equipment. Quickly and accurately detecting particles down to a single part per billion is now commonplace. However, that doesn’t mean the water we have been drinking safely all our life is suddenly poisoned because we can now detect ten or thirty parts per billion of a particular contaminate. This would be akin to the impact of a hundred grains of blue sand in an entire train carload of red sand. Removing such small quantities of contaminates doesn’t make our water any safer, and without the most sensitive detection equipment in the world, you would have no idea it was even there. Requiring third party certification is just adding insult to injury. As I said testing equipment has become incredibly accurate. If regular testing of the water shows no lead contamination, then there is no need to decrease the content of lead in any of the components. Yearly third party testing and certification to prove products are “low lead” is an even bigger waste. Government agencies have no need to certify that one particular material is not used in the production of water system components, because they can now easily detect a wide range of possible contaminants in a simple water sample. Decreasing the quality of components, eliminating equipment options, and greatly increasing the cost to the consumer has all been caused by the lead hype. This along with unnecessary product certification and third party testing has and will force businesses to close and eliminate numerous jobs in the private sector. Those of us who work in this industry have been watching the downward spiral caused by Proposition 65 in California. Many manufactures produce only one or two products to specifically comply with the new California regulations. California residents no longer have the option of a full range of products to choose from, and they pay many times what they should for the products that are available. The current condition of California’s economy should be a red flag to anyone who thinks unnecessary regulations and certifications are a good thing. Businesses and residents of California are suffering greatly from needless regulations. It is estimated that this one regulation alone is costing Californians in excess of a billion dollars a year. One clueless government official even went so far as to say, “Californians will easily recover this added cost with higher paying jobs, because of increased intelligence from reducing the lead content in their water”. In 1997 the EPA said the small percentage of lead exposure we get through drinking water comes mainly from older plumbing systems, not from pumps and valves. Therefore, certified lead free pumps and valves are not going to decrease the lead content in potable water. The intelligence and salaries of Californians is not going to increase, and the extra billion dollars a year is simply an additional drain on the economy. If the Federal Government makes the mistake of following California’s ludicrous regulations as planned in 2014, the burden to the rest of the United States will be immeasurable. Everyone is aware of the need to greatly reduce government waste. The first things that should be eliminated are regulations that are not justified by simple science. Anything that doesn’t show up in significant amounts in regular water tests is not a problem and therefore doesn’t need an expensive solution. Cycle Stop Valves have a few models that are NSF 61 certified and comply with California 1953 regulations. These valves cost several times as much as valves that do not comply. The valves that comply with the regulations are no safer than those that do not. The extra cost only goes to line the pockets of the politicians and certification companies. The United States has plenty of things to worry about, without fabricating solutions to problems that don’t exist. False accusations from companies claiming their Stainless Steel pumps are superior started the unnecessary regulations on lead content. If we can ever get past this sales hype, maybe we can start spending money wisely on real problems, such as how to eliminate leaks or keep our water supplies from being contaminated with prescription drugs. Thank You Cary Austin |
| Cycle Stop Valves® is a registered trademark. All right reserved unless prior authorization is obtained. Cycle Stop Valves are patented: Patent number 5,988,984 and other patents pending. |
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