This is relevant. Always use cold water from your pipes to cook with and drink especially if you live in an older home. Also let the water run for a minute to flush out the pipes if it hasn't been used in a while.
The EPA states:
>Flush your pipes before drinking, and only use cold water for consumption. The more time water has been sitting in your home's pipes, the more lead it may contain. Anytime the water in a particular faucet has not been used for six hours or longer, "flush" your cold-water pipes by running the water until it becomes as cold as it will get. This could take as little as five to thirty seconds if there has been recent heavy water use such as showering or toilet flushing. Otherwise, it could take two minutes or longer. Your water utility will inform you if longer flushing times are needed to respond to local conditions.
>Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead. The two actions recommended above are very important to the health of your family. They will probably be effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not from the local water supply.
It's significant that there is this advice, and it supports the point of the article, but this is really insufficient. If you can't be sure of the water quality at the tap (as parent notes, different from the quality at the plant where the utility measures contaminant levels), then it's best to use a filter that removes metals (as well as biological contaminants).
Also people should be aware: the government somehow allows pipes and fittings to be sold as "lead free" when in reality they contain up to a few percent of lead.
Be careful with filters-the main issue with lead is that it leaches from pipes and/or solder. Most of the cases I am aware of in modern (post 1970s) US homes were related to whole house reverse osmosis systems, because the ion-free water had so much more capacity for free metal ions.
If you have hard water, it is almost impossible to persuade lead out of the pipe into solution. If you do want to use a filter, make sure you have an at the tap point filter as well.
The EPA states:
>Flush your pipes before drinking, and only use cold water for consumption. The more time water has been sitting in your home's pipes, the more lead it may contain. Anytime the water in a particular faucet has not been used for six hours or longer, "flush" your cold-water pipes by running the water until it becomes as cold as it will get. This could take as little as five to thirty seconds if there has been recent heavy water use such as showering or toilet flushing. Otherwise, it could take two minutes or longer. Your water utility will inform you if longer flushing times are needed to respond to local conditions.
>Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead. The two actions recommended above are very important to the health of your family. They will probably be effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not from the local water supply.
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8615/is-there-an...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html?_r=0