A couple years ago we had a pipe in our courtyard, buried at about 1.5m depth, burst in the middle of a cold spell. Suddenly an icy river appeared in the middle of our yard. Fixing it took a crew of four guys several hours to manually dig a grave-sized pit and splice out the bad section (my hat is still off to them -- it was well below freezing when it happened).
I still have the 7" (18cm) section of pipe they removed -- it's an impressively heavy, several pounds at least. There is an absolutely seriously huge amount of lead in just about everyone's yards here in Chicago, in the form of pipes.
What's less clear is how much of that lead winds up in bodies, to what resulting health impact. People need help making judgements about relative risk -- sadly, the article is not helpful in that regard.
I still have the 7" (18cm) section of pipe they removed -- it's an impressively heavy, several pounds at least. There is an absolutely seriously huge amount of lead in just about everyone's yards here in Chicago, in the form of pipes.
What's less clear is how much of that lead winds up in bodies, to what resulting health impact. People need help making judgements about relative risk -- sadly, the article is not helpful in that regard.