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  2. Ground Water and Drinking Water

Protect Your Tap: A Quick Check for Lead

View this guide in Spanish or Portuguese.

Lead is very dangerous to human health. For children, lead exposure can cause irreversible and life-long health effects, including affecting IQ, focus, and academic achievement. Drinking water is a potential source of lead in homes.

This guide will help you determine if you have a lead service line bringing water into your home. It uses pictures, step-by-step directions to identify lead service lines, provides tips to reduce lead exposure, information on testing your water, and resources to learn more.

Have your water tested to find out for certain if you have lead in your drinking water. Some states or utilities offer programs to pay for water testing and/or lead service line replacement for residents. Contact your state or local water company for more information.

Lead in homes can also come from paint, dust, soil, air and food. More information can be found in the resource section at the end of this guide.

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Protect Your Tap: A Quick Lead Check Logo

Use this guide to identify lead pipes.
All you need is a penny (or key) and a magnet.

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find out how to test my drinking water.

Testing Your Drinking Water

Even if you know your service line is not lead, lead can be found in other plumbing materials and faucets. Testing your drinking water is the only way to confirm if lead is present. Since each home has different plumbing, pipes, and materials, test results are likely to be different for each home.

Some states or utilities offer programs to pay for water testing and/or lead service line replacement for residents. Contact your state or local water company for more information.

U.S. EPA recommends sending samples to a certified laboratory for analysis. Testing costs between $15.00 and $100.00. Certified laboratories for testing are available by contacting your state or your local drinking water company. Carefully follow the directions of the certified laboratory for collecting the water sample and collect the sample from faucets where you drink.

Find Certified Labs to Test Your Drinking Water for Lead.

Additional Resources

  • Learn more about Protect Your Tap
  • Learn About Lead, U.S. EPA
  • Basic Information about Lead in Drinking Water, US EPA
  • Lead in Water, Center for Disease Control (CDC)
  • Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative
  • 3 Ts for Reducing Lead in Drinking Water Toolkit

How to Navigate

Protect Your Tap uses multiple choice navigation buttons. Select an option to go to the next section. You can change your decision by scrolling up and selecting another option. Do not use the browser's back button.

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Last updated on June 18, 2024
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