Ways to protect your children

2. Avoid Water Pollution – Test Your Water for Lead and Other Contaminants.
Children’s developing bodies absorb many chemicals more rapidly than adults. While most water supplies are safe, it only takes a little bit of a foreign substance in the water to harm your child. If this substance remains undetected in the water supply, your family could be consuming it for years. As a result, it is important to ensure the water in your home is safe for children to drink.

Steps You Can Take:

• Test your water for lead. There are a variety of potential ways for lead to get into your water. Lead pipes were used in homes with indoor plumbing up until the 1920s. Even when copper pipes became standard, lead solder was used until 1980. Test your water. You can obtain a water testing kit at most hardware stores or home improvement centers.

• Test your water more extensively if you use well water. Municipal (city) water is routinely tested for a variety of potential dangers, but homeowners are responsible for testing their own well water. A thorough test should look for lead, nitrates, industrial pollutants, pesticides, and giardia, a parasite found in animal wastes. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has a list of certified drinking water laboratories, including three in Berks County, on its website www.dep.state.pa.us/labs.

• Install a filter if needed. Water filters can be affordable. There are a variety of designs from large filters to purify the water entering a home to smaller filters that connect to a kitchen or bathroom faucet. Read the filter label carefully to ensure it meets your needs. You may also want to consider installing an ultraviolet light to kill certain bacterias in water.