Re: Reply#20
Rich you make a good point about the lead in older galvanized steel plumbing. When I first went to work for the County of Sonoma Human Services Dept in 1985 I used to make my own coffee in the mornings using a single cup Melitta pour over brewer.
I used a large orange plastic tumbler to heat the water in the microwave in the break room. After several months I began to notice that the tumbler was getting hotter and hotter after the water came to a boil, I couldn’t even hold it without several layers of paper towel. Then I noticed that a dark gray film had built up on the inside of the tumbler up to the level that I filled it with water every morning.
I’m pretty certain that the film was a build up of lead that was in the water that had been sitting in those old galvanized steel pipes overnight. I started work at 7am, but arrived at 6:40 am and was usually one of the first to arrive, so I was also the first person of the day to run the water. After that I stopped using that tumbler and got a little instant hot pot to heat the water for my coffee, and I let the water run for a while before I filled the pot.
Still, in the 20 years that I worked in that circa 1964 building I forever after noticed that the water from the fountain had a distinct metallic flavor and odor, which was probably lead from those old pipes leaching into the water.
Eddie