Do You Have a Lead Service Line? One in Five Is Still Unknown

Why one in five lines is a question mark

Federal rules required every community water system to inventory its service lines and sort each one as lead, non-lead, galvanized requiring replacement, or unknown. That inventory was due October 16, 2024, and must be publicly accessible. A fuller baseline inventory is due November 1, 2027.2

Building that list is harder than it sounds. Records from the era when lead was standard are often lost or illegible, and about 3,500 systems report that they do not know what their lines are made of. The EPA estimates roughly 4 million homes and businesses are still connected by lead pipe.1

The stakes rise in 2027, when systems must start replacing 10 percent of their lead and galvanized-requiring-replacement lines a year, with full replacement due within ten years. Unknown lines count toward that target, so every question mark becomes a pipe that has to come out of the ground. Replacements run $8,000 to $15,000 each.12

The five-minute check at your own house

You do not have to wait for the paperwork. The EPA publishes a free, picture-led guide called Protect Your Tap for exactly this, and the equipment list is short: a penny, and a magnet.4

Look where the line enters the building, usually in a basement or crawlspace on the street side of the meter. Lead is soft and dull grey: it scratches to bright silver with a coin, and a magnet will not stick. Galvanized steel also looks grey but is hard, will not scratch bright, and holds a magnet. Copper scratches to the color of a penny.

Age is the other clue. Lead service lines went in from the late 1800s into the 1950s, and lead pipe was banned in 1986. Chicago tells residents with unknown lines to assume lead if the building predates that ban, a reasonable default anywhere with older housing.1

Open EPA’s Protect Your Tap guide ↗

Ask your utility for the inventory

Systems serving more than 50,000 people must post the inventory online; smaller systems can post it or make it available another way, such as at the utility office. From the baseline inventory onward, the public version must include a location identifier for each lead and galvanized-requiring-replacement line.2

Your utility’s annual Consumer Confidence Report is the other free document worth reading: source water, what was detected, and who to call.5 See also our guide to what a water test can and cannot tell you.

Find your water quality report ↗

For area-level background, Epic’s What’s in Your Water lookup is a starting point. Like a utility report, it describes an area, not the pipe under your front yard.

What to do while the answer is pending

EPA and the CDC agree there is no known safe level of lead in a child’s blood, and service lines remain the largest single source of lead in drinking water. How much reaches the tap depends on water chemistry and pipe condition, which is why an unknown line deserves caution.13

EPA’s steps are unglamorous and free: run the cold tap after water has sat, use cold water only for drinking, cooking, and formula, clean the aerator, and use a filter certified for lead as instructed. Bathing and showering are not the concern; skin does not absorb lead from water.3 We covered the hot-tap rule in our piece on lead in school drinking water, and the same logic applies to older apartment and dorm plumbing.

Testing is the only way to confirm whether lead is present at your tap, since faucets and interior plumbing can contribute even when the line is not lead. EPA recommends a certified laboratory, sampling from the faucets you drink from. It puts the typical cost at $15 to $100, and some states and utilities cover it.46 Skip the home score kits and strips here.

Find a certified drinking-water lab ↗

Replacing a line also disturbs old corrosion scale and can raise lead at the tap afterward. The rules require the system to warn you, explain flushing, and supply a device certified to reduce lead plus six months of cartridges before the line returns to service.2 Discolored water after nearby pipe work is usually a separate issue, covered in why tap water turns brown.

What a pitcher filter can and cannot do here

A filter treats water where you drink it. It does not change what is buried in your yard, and it is not a substitute for testing. What it can do is reduce specific contaminants, to the extent documented for that exact filter.

Read certification and reduction testing as two separate things. Pure XP’s NSF listings cover Standard 42 material safety and NSF/ANSI/CAN 372 lead content: the components are lead-free and safe as materials.78 Reduction is documented separately: Pure XP is independently tested for 99.9 percent lead reduction under the NSF/ANSI 53 protocol.9 Different claims, and anyone selling you a filter should keep them apart.

Read Epic’s testing documents ↗

If a pitcher or dispenser suits your household, explore Epic’s pitchers, dispensers, and bundles. Replace cartridges on schedule: a filter past its rated capacity is not doing that job.