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Shocking: Undrinkable tap water in Budapest, hundreds of thousands in danger
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In a representative exploratory monitoring programme of 60 sampling sites, 14 percent of the water samples taken at tap opening and 6 percent of the samples taken after 1 minute of run-off exceeded the lead limit. Here is why this is dangerous and how this problem could be solved.
Tap water in Budapest
G7 writes that they have tested the lead content of tap water. The samples were taken from the kitchen of a house built in the late 1970s and one built in the 1920s in Budapest. Unfortunately, the results have backed up the research team’s horrible suspicions. In the older house, lead concentrations were almost 40 micrograms per litre, four times the limit of 10 micrograms per litre, in the water that was taken right after opening the tap. Meanwhile, in the late-1970s house, the concentration was only 0.29 micrograms.
The results revealed that the lead risk is significant in houses built before 1970, but mostly before 1945. Back then, lead pipes were still used for plumbing. Based on the age of the building stock, some 50,000 buildings in Budapest, affecting 620,000 people, and 32,000 buildings in the countryside, affecting 130,000 people, are in danger due to the lead levels, according to the National Water Utility Strategy of 2021.
Lead in the human body and its dangers
The main sources of lead entering the human body are food, dust and air. Drinking water contributes 10–15% to the total lead intake. According to calculations from 1997, Hungarians’ daily lead intake is about 130 micrograms, which is 52 percent of the temporarily tolerable weekly intake. If we project the amounts for over a week, we can see that Hungarians are putting 3.5 times more lead into their bodies through food alone than we could tolerate temporarily, not in the long run.
Scary.
We had (2) two much loved family dogs in the past, that licked the walls in our kitchen area of the house that was lead based paint applied muchly pre the early 1960’s.
They both became extremely ill needing hospitalization.
Fortunately, they recovered and lived to the age of 14 years,
Lead in-take for humans, like this shared animal lead experience does have a history of un-pleasant outcome for humans.
According to the last sentence, everyone is in danger, not only those living in Budapest in a house built before 1945.
How about those blue “city” taps?
Better not use tap water at all?