How you can protect home from health dangers of lead

By Ed Runyan | February 7, 2016 at 12:08a.m.

WARREN

Now that we know that public water supplies such as those in Warren, Sebring and Flint, Mich., can contain dangerous levels of lead, there are things people can do to protect themselves.

One involves the purchase of a home because an unsuspecting buyer would not want to find out after moving in that the house has plumbing and pipes that could contribute to elevated lead levels.

Most home sales in Trumbull County involve the use of a purchase agreement that contains a provision allowing the buyer to have a professional inspection done to uncover any defects in the home. As part of the inspection, the buyer could have a water test done to determine whether the water has a high lead level.

If that type of problem is found, the buyer could back out of the purchase, renegotiate the price or have the seller fix the problem, said Thomas Schubert, a Warren title attorney.

But in the decades he’s been a title attorney, Schubert, owner of Schubert Title, said he’s not aware of anyone exercising that right.

“I’ve never seen it for a lead reading,” he said. “I’ve seen it in termite damage, roof defects, structural defects,” he said. He’s seen it used to chlorinate a home’s well water for bacteria.

Similarly, Howland real-estate agent Theresa Liguori Thompson, president of the Warren-Area Board of Realtors, said she’s never been asked by a buyer during her 15 years as a Realtor for a test of the lead in public water in the county.

But after The Vindicator revealed a week ago that a reading four times the allowable level was found at a house on Perkinswood Boulevard Southeast last summer, and people learned in January that seven homes out of 40 tested in Sebring had readings above the acceptable level of 15 parts per billion last summer, people are likely to start asking, Schubert said.

“A wise buyer would want it tested if they have a concern,” Schubert said.

“If I had small children, I might ask for one,” Liguori Thompson said.

Ohio has a residential property disclosure form used by most real-estate professionals during a sale. It requires the seller to disclose information he or she knows about the quality of water in a home.

“An owner may or may not have lived at the property,” the form warns, so the owner may have “no more information about the property than could be obtained by a careful inspection of the property by a potential purchaser.”

The form warns that it is not a warranty or a “substitute for any inspections,” and buyers are urged to obtain their own professional inspection.

The form asks if there are “any material problems with the water-supply system or the quality of the water.” If so, it asks the seller to list them and indicate any repairs made in the past five years.

The 1996 Safe Water Act that mandates triennial testing for lead and copper in every U.S. community does not require the state Environmental Protection Agency or an individual homeowner to inform potential home buyers of a finding of more than 15 ppb of lead in a test.

Craig Butler, director of the Ohio EPA, in an interview last week with The Vindicator, said he and his staff are looking at whether legislative action might be necessary to require home sellers to inform buyers of lead pipes or service lines in a home.

Lead is a potent neurotoxin linked to learning disabilities, lower IQ and behavioral problems, the Associated Press has reported. Higher levels can damage the kidneys and nervous system in both children and adults, the Mayo Clinic says.

Lead is especially dangerous for pregnant women, infants and children. As a reulst, lead-based paint was banned in 1977, and leaded gas was phased out in 1986.

After The Vindicator asked Franco Lucarelli, Warren utilities director, multiple times over a couple of days for specific data on the city’s routine water testing, he revealed that lab tests showed lead readings of 64 ppb in one home and 18 ppb in another. The Vindicator learned from an Ohio EPA document that the homes were within two blocks of each other on Perkinswood. The 28 other readings were under the 15 ppb level considered safe.

At a news conference last week, city officials said the quality of water leaving the treatment plant is good, but the plumbing and service lines for Warren-area homes are likely why some homes test high for lead.

Homes built in the 1920s and 1930s that have lead service lines are especially vulnerable, Lucarelli said.

Lucarelli encouraged water customers to call the water department to receive information over the phone or from a visit by a department employee to determine whether the customer has a lead service line.

Service lines, also known as laterals, run from the city’s water main under the road to the home or business of a water customer, said Larry Carbone, president of Lou Carbone Plumbing, Heating and Cooling of Niles.

But they are made up of two parts – one running from the water main to the “curb box” near the edge of the road and another running from the curb box into the structure.

Lucarelli has not been willing to estimate how many such service lines are made of lead.

Carbone, however, breaks it down like this: In older neighborhoods, a high percentage of lines running from the water main to the “curb box” are made of lead in Warren and Niles, but perhaps only 1 out of 50 of lines running from the curb box to the structure are made of lead.

Both types are the responsibility of the homeowner in Warren, Carbone said, adding that the cost to replace the part of the line close to the water main is high because it is under the street.

Under most circumstances, both types develop a white, protective layer of calcium and magnesium inside, preventing water from coming in contact with the lead in the pipes, Carbone said.

Carbone said he believes lead lines were installed later than 1940. His father, Lou Carbone, remembers installing lead service lines into homes as late as the mid-1950s, Larry Carbone said.

Lucarelli did not reply Thursday or Friday to requests to discuss service lines.

Another longtime Warren-area plumber, Jeff Moody of Moody Plumbing, says he always recommends replacement of lead service lines when hefinds them at homes where he works, but it can be a tough sell to persuade a customer to spend the $3,000 or more.

“Most people look at you like you’re trying to sell a job,” Moody said. “It’s hard to get people to do something.” He usually replaces one to two per year, most often when a customer has low water pressure and Moody finds a lead line while looking for the cause.

Moody agrees with Carbone that the part of the service line from the curb box to the water main are made of lead much more often than the service line into the house.

One good thing the city does, however, is replace the part of the line from the curb box to the service main for free if the customer replaces the other part of the service line, Moody said.

A lead-service line can be “perfectly safe as long as it is not disturbed or modified,” Moody said. Repairs to a line are an example of something that disturbs it.

If it becomes a higher priority in Warren to replace lead lines, Moody says it could require an inspection and replacement at the point of the home sale.

When asked whether he thought people should be concerned about lead levels in their drinking water in Warren, Moody said, “If it was an issue in paint, why wouldn’t it be a big deal in water?”

Carbone said it’s less expensive for people with a lead-service line to add a reverse-osmosis or carbon-filter water-treatment system costing several hundred dollars than pay thousands for a new service line.

Sean Price, owner of A-Plus Home Inspections of Warren, said he inspects many more homes in suburban areas than in Warren because so many home sales in Warren are to landlords instead of families.

Price said he determines whether a house has a lead- service line by placing a magnet on it. If it’s lead, the magnet will not stick. If you scrape a lead pipe, it will become shiny in that spot. They are gray in color.

Scott Jones, president of Gordon Brothers, a water-treatment company in Salem that works mostly with people using well water, said reverse-osmosis systems remove solids from water, and lead is one of those solids.

Sometimes people using city water add a water-treatment system because they don’t like the hardness, taste or quality of city water. Jones said his company’s philosophy is that they “finish the job the city started.”