Durham lead fear widens

More tests turn up tainted water

DURHAM -- Public health officials are concerned that Durham may have a citywide problem with its drinking water. Samples taken from 11 homes near where a child was poisoned show levels of lead higher than federal safety standards allow.

Tests are under way on water drawn from another 127 homes selected randomly throughout the city to help determine the potential extent of lead contamination. Lead, a soft metal, is especially toxic to young children, causing brain damage and other developmental problems.

As a precaution, Durham residents living in houses or apartments built before 1986, when a federal ban was instituted on the use of lead in the solder used to join copper pipes, are urged to run the tap five minutes before drinking to flush out water lines.

The Durham County Health Department began testing last month after a child who had been living in the Penrith Townhomes neighborhood in southern Durham was found to have dangerous levels of lead in the bloodstream. Subsequent tests found lead in the tap water of the child's former home at 837 parts per billion -- nearly 60 times the federal limit of 15 parts per billion. Eight other units in the apartment complex, about one-third of those tested, also had high levels of lead.

The latest test results were from a battery of samples collected by the county health department from 19 single-family homes within a half-mile radius of Penrith and sent to a state lab in Raleigh. The results, received Friday, found lead above the level considered safe in 11 of those homes.

Notification

The health department is notifying the affected residents and planning more tests at their homes. But officials cautioned Monday that the problem may not be limited to the area around Penrith.

"I don't have anything to suggest this problem is limited to a specific geographic area," said Robert Brown, the county's environmental health director.

City officials on Monday questioned the validity of the samples collected by the county health department. They are reserving judgment until the city can collect and test its own samples in its lab.

"The last thing we want to do is alarm people," said Mike Adcock, deputy director of water management.

Municipal officials have insisted that the problem was limited to the 332-unit townhouse complex. A May 19 media release said the city had "confirmed that elevated levels of lead detected in the water is an isolated incident and confined to the pipes/plumbing in the Penrith apartment complex where the child formerly lived."

Asked about that declaration of safety Monday, Adcock said further testing is now "prudent."

"Eleven out of 19 is concerning," he conceded. "If it were my house, yes, I would be concerned."

Suspicion has fallen on a process Durham has used since 2002 to disinfect its drinking water called "chloramination" for the combined use of ammonia and chlorine. If the levels of chemicals in the water become too corrosive, a protective film encapsulating the lead solder in older homes can be scoured away, allowing the toxic metal to leach into the water. The water systems serving Raleigh, Cary and Chapel Hill all use a similar treatment process.

State toxicology experts became concerned about chloramination after the treatment appears to have resulted in a corresponding increase in cases of lead poisoning in Washington, D.C., and Greenville, N.C. Testing was planned for this summer in Durham and other North Carolina communities even before the problems at Penrith were discovered.

State tests conducted in Greensboro and Monroe turned up no lead trouble in the water. The last time city water officials screened for lead contamination in Durham homes, in September, they found that the water complied with the safety standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Pre-1986 pipes

But county officials are specifically concerned about water that has been sitting in pre-1986 pipes more than six hours before the tap is turned on, potentially collecting lead from the solder.

"Say someone gets up at 2 a.m. and runs that first flush of water into a bottle to make formula for their baby," said Brown, the environmental health director. "We're not out to sample every house in the city. But we want to test enough houses to verify the water is safe."

(Staff writer Catherine Clabby contributed to this report.)