School water fountain found to have unsafe amount of lead but a few weeks later, lead is at a safe level. How?

Question

How is this possible?

btw.. this is a little question i got for homework but the thing is i don't know what water fountains work and where the water comes from and stuff like that so help me out! :)

i meant *how* water fountains work

sorry i forgot to say that
the pipes weren't replaced and no one was at the school (this was during the summer)

Answer 1

maybe they changed the pipes leading to the water fountain. maybe a filter was added. maybe the water tower was changed. maybe it switched from city to well water. maybe the other way around. maybe the paint chips it was running over have dissolved by then. maybe someone scraped paint in the water tower that had lead.

Answer 2

Assuming that the pipes haven't been replaced and the city water wasn't the culprit there is a good explanation. It all depends on how long the water has sat in the pipes. Much of the solder in older plumbing used trace amounts of lead in it. If the water sits in the pipes, the lead concentration will increase. Running watter that has not sat in the pipes will have a lower lead content. So, for the first test, the water had not been used and had a higher lead content while in the second test fresh water was in the pipes and the lead content was lower.

Answer 3

There are only three things that come to mind.

1. Somebody is lying to you and It's really still an Issue.

2. The water source is contaminated...once that happens I doubt it's going to magically get clean. It's not like e-coli where the water can flush it away...in this case something is contaminating the water supply with heavy metals.

3. The water main or the school building, either has lead piping or joints soldered with lead. The only way to make that problem go away is to replace the pipes...and you said that wasn't done...

So...I think it's option 1...I would suggest taking your own water to school...until someone can give a verifyable explanation.

Answer 4

There could be a few reasons, I'm not sure if there is a specific one you're expect to find. It could be that the water coming into your school from the watermain had high levels of lead due to a problem at one of the water companies pump/filter stations. If there has been construction, all the shaking and banging around could agitate the pipes and loose some led particles into the water.

Answer 5

The lead wasn't in the water, it was the fountain itself. Either they changed an old filter or replaced the fountain.

Answer 6

The only way I know of that this could happen would be for old, lead-soldered pipes to have been replaced with new pipes that either don't need soldering (plastic), or use some other means of keeping them leak-proof. It wouldn't be a big deal, though; just a couple of hours work.

Answer 7

Water in schools and large blds.have a large filter system that the water is check on a rergular basis.
If t here's to much wrong chemicals,the chemist
makes ajust on the water boiler,to filter it out.the water is pumped to a water tower and cirulated
back down filters where it is ready to drink

Answer 8

The water sat interior the pipe during warm months, and disolved lead into the water. as quickly as the water grow to be run via, the lead content textile could be very low because it takes diverse time for an significant quantity of deliver approximately dissolve into the water. that's risk-free as quickly as the water is administered via.

Answer 9

Old piping replaced with new lead free piping.

Answer 10

The second test was faked to save the school district the cost of replacing the lines.