How Can I Find Out if I Have a Lead Service Line?

Lead service lines are the largest source of lead in drinking water. What’s the most reliable way to find out whether you have a lead service line delivering water to your home? Sometimes you can get all the answers in your own basement or crawl space, and sometimes the conclusive answer is more challenging to find. Check out this guest blog I wrote for NRDC to walk you through the process of confirming whether you have a lead service line in your own home.

Sometimes I hear people ask whether they can use water sampling to figure out if they have a lead service line. The answer is less conclusive than you would like. As this blog posts explains, it’s much easier to confirm that you have a lead service line than to confirm that you don’t have one.

Ideally you won’t have to do this on your own, and your water utility will develop their own service line inventory that identifies the materials of all the service lines. This white paper written by Blue Conduit and the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) describes some best practices for a water utility to develop a reliable service line inventory.