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Curious City

What We Do — And Don’t — Know About Chicago’s Lead Water Problem

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8642 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Mayor announced a plan to replace the city’s extensive network of lead service lines. So what does that mean for Chicago residents and the water they drink?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey, I'm curious city reporter Monica Eng.

0:03.2

Last week, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced something historic.

0:07.7

We are establishing a lead service line replacement program.

0:11.4

Today, our city's legacy-led service lines affect nearly 400,000, primarily single family, and two flat homes.

0:20.6

Yep, a plan to start removing the city's toxic lead service line. and primarily single family and two flat homes.

0:25.1

Yep, a plan to start removing the city's toxic lead service lines.

0:28.7

These are the pipes that connect our faucets to the water main in the street.

0:33.3

You may have heard me mention these figures once or twice before, but there's a good reason.

0:39.1

According to city officials, about 80% of Chicago homes are hooked up to these lead pipes,

0:45.0

which makes Chicago the city with the highest counted inventory of lead pipes in the country.

0:56.3

This is a huge problem because even at low doses, lead can hurt kids' brains, causing issues with attention, IQ, and violence.

0:59.0

It can also cause heart disease in adults.

1:03.7

And curious city listeners wanted to know how the heck this happened,

1:08.0

and why we still have more lead water lines than anyone else.

1:13.2

I answered this two years ago, and with recent news, I figured it was a good time to go back to it for some context, but also to tell you what the mayor's plan might mean for you.

1:20.1

To start, I had to go back to the mid-1800s. When Chicago was doing what most American cities were doing,

1:30.5

using a lot of this wonder material called lead.

1:33.4

When we built our cities, we put it into everything.

1:37.0

That's Columbia University Public Health Professor David Rosner.

1:40.5

We put it into our walls. We put it into our plumbing.

1:44.3

We put it into our fixtures. we put it into our sewage systems.

1:49.2

Rosner wrote a book called Lead Wars. He says plumbers loved lead pipes because they were durable and easy to bend. Plus, only licensed plumbers could install them. And at the time,

...

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