As far as state and federal regulators are concerned, there is no reason to worry about brain-damaging lead in tap water throughout Chicago and the city’s older suburbs.
But samples drawn independently in Berwyn and Cicero during the past year provide the latest evidence of hidden hazards lurking in homes and small apartment buildings built before 1986, when Congress outlawed the use of lead pipes to convey drinking water from municipal street mains.
Suspicious of public officials telling them their water was safe, community activists sought assistance from the same group of Virginia Tech researchers who helped expose lead contamination and other hazards in Flint, Mich., drinking water in 2015. They have distributed more than 100 testing kits in the two suburbs, and in 11 of the 17 homes where samples have been analyzed so far, lead concentrations in the first liter drawn from household taps exceeded 5 parts per billion — the maximum allowed in bottled water by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Four of the homes tested and analyzed — two each in Berwyn and Cicero — had at least one sample with lead levels exceeding 40 ppb, a threshold the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency once said posed an “imminent and substantial threat to the health of children and pregnant women.”
Lead levels spiked as high as 140 ppb in one of the Cicero homes, according to a summary shared with the Tribune. In that same home, alarming concentrations were detected even after the water had been running for more than 10 minutes, a sign that flushing taps for a few seconds or minutes doesn’t necessarily reduce the risk of exposure to the highly toxic metal.
Like dozens of other suburbs, Berwyn and Cicero rely on treated Lake Michigan water from Chicago that generally is lead-free when it leaves city treatment plants. The water can become contaminated as it passes through aging service lines made of lead, a hazard that is of particular concern in Illinois and other states with tens of thousands of older homes.
“These results should be concerning to anyone, not just in the city but in the suburbs,” said Siddhartha Roy, one of the Virginia Tech researchers overseeing the Berwyn and Cicero testing. “They could have problems, too.”
Testing kits developed by the researchers are similar to those offered for free by the Chicago Department of Water Management. A recent Tribune analysis of the Chicago results shows lead was found in water drawn from nearly 70 percent of the 2,797 homes tested during the past two years. Tap water in 3 of every 10 homes sampled had lead concentrations above the FDA’s bottled water standard, and high levels turned up in every neighborhood.
Most treatment plants add chemicals to the water supply that form a protective coating inside pipes. Flint officials stopped adding the treatment in an ill-fated attempt to cut costs. But researchers increasingly are finding that in any city with lead service lines, levels of the toxic metal in tap water can vary widely among homes and during different times of day, depending on water usage, the length of the service line and other factors that can limit the effectiveness of the corrosion-inhibiting chemicals.
Miguel Del Toral, an EPA water expert who played a key role in exposing what went wrong in Flint, tells audiences that if their city still has lead service lines, the most effective way to immediately protect themselves is to filter their drinking water. NSF International, a nonprofit standards organization, publishes a consumer guide listing a variety of devices certified to remove lead, some of which cost less than $30.
The EPA has said the long-term solution is replacing lead service lines with safer materials. But officials have been deterred so far by the high cost of a replacement program and legal questions about who should pay. Depending on local laws, the pipes may be considered private property or jointly owned by the water system and homeowners.
One of the Cicero homes where high levels of lead have been found is the parsonage of Gethsemane Lutheran Church, 1937 S. 50th Ave. Lead levels in the first liter of water drawn were 8.7 ppb, spiked to 24.5 ppb when another sample was collected 45 seconds later and were 10.2 ppb in a sample drawn after leaving the water running for another two minutes.
“So now we drink filtered water out of a pitcher at home,” said the Rev. Diane Johnson, who on Thursday was in the church basement logging testing kits dropped off by other residents enlisted by the Virginia Tech team and Ixchel, a nonprofit community group formed two years ago to build awareness about environmental hazards in the Cicero area.
“If you are led to believe everything is fine,” Johnson said, “you aren’t going to take extra steps to protect yourself and your family.”
There is no federal standard for the amount of lead found in tap water at individual homes. Studies have reported harmful effects when concentrations exceed the FDA’s standard for bottled water.
Cities are considered to be in compliance with federal water quality regulations as long as 90 percent of the homes tested have lead levels below 15 ppb, a standard the EPA established nearly three decades ago because the agency thought it could be met with corrosion-inhibiting chemicals.
The official testing relies on only 1 liter of water drawn from a small number of homes every few years. Chicago, for instance, conducts this type of testing in just 50 homes every three years — the minimum required — and city officials say the results show residents have no cause for concern.
Berwyn and Cicero officials couldn’t be reached for comment. State regulators occasionally have ordered Berwyn to warn residents about potential lead problems in their tap water, but since 2014 only seven of the 161 samples collected by the city using the EPA’s testing protocol exceeded 15 ppb, according to state records.
Only one of the 60 Cicero homes tested by town officials had lead levels that high. But based on what they’ve been learning about other cities, some residents don’t believe the assurances of safety from government officials.
“I want to make sure that something like Flint doesn’t happen here,” said Bianca Baker, who asked for a kit last weekend after hearing about the Virginia Tech/Ixchel project at her church in Cicero. Other women at Baker’s Oak Park hair salon nodded in agreement Thursday as Chivonne Battle, another member of the Virginia Tech team, explained what they were doing and why it matters.
“Anytime you are talking about water,” Baker said, “you are talking about life.”
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