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The Line Is 4 January 2014

This is the one fact about faucets that changes a decision, and almost nobody who owns a fifteen-year-old one has ever been told it.

Briefly

Until 4 January 2014 a faucet could lawfully contain up to 8 percent lead in its wetted surfaces. On that date the Safe Drinking Water Act’s lead-free definition changed to a weighted average of 0.25 percent. It is a date about fixtures, and it says nothing about any water supply.

Source: US EPA, Use of Lead Free Pipes, Fittings, Fixtures, Solder and Flux for Drinking Water; US EPA, How the Safe Drinking Water Act limits lead in pipes, fittings, fixtures, faucets, solder and flux.

FaucetMend is a referral service, not a contractor. We connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands. We carry out no work, we sell no fixtures, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call. Nothing here is a statement about the water at any address; only a test of that water can tell you about it.

Drawn to scale, the change is a factor of thirty-two. It is a fact about when a fixture was made — not about the water at any address.

What the rule used to be

The Safe Drinking Water Act has prohibited the use of pipe, fittings, fixtures, solder and flux that are not lead free in drinking water plumbing since June 1986. But lead free was a defined term, and the definition was not what most people would guess: pipes and fittings were permitted up to 8.0 percent lead, with solder and flux held to 0.2 percent.

So a faucet made in 2005 could be entirely lawful, correctly certified, and contain a great deal more lead in the brass its water sat in than a faucet made today is allowed to.

What it became

The Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act amended that definition. Lead free now means a weighted average of 0.25 percent calculated across the wetted surfaces of a pipe, pipe fitting, plumbing fitting and fixture, with solder and flux unchanged at 0.2 percent. The amended definition took effect on 4 January 2014.

Note the phrasing, because it is doing work: weighted average and wetted surfaces. The limit is not on the mass of the whole casting. It is on the surfaces the water is actually in contact with, averaged by area.

8.0% → 0.25%The lead-free limit for the wetted surfaces of a fixture, before and after 4 January 2014.

Source: US EPA, Use of Lead Free Pipes, Fittings, Fixtures, Solder and Flux for Drinking Water.

What that does and does not tell you

It tells you which rule your fixture was manufactured under. That is a fact about the fixture and you can often establish it from the date the kitchen was fitted.

It tells you nothing about your water. A pre-2014 faucet is not a finding about what comes out of it, and this site is not going to imply otherwise to sell a call. What would actually tell you is a test, and it is not something we can do or interpret.

Where it belongs in a decision

It belongs on the replace side of a decision you were going to make anyway. If a pre-2014 kitchen faucet needs a cartridge and a set of seats, the question is no longer purely what the parts cost, because replacement buys something a repair cannot.

On a faucet nobody drinks from, that consideration largely goes away, which is why the kitchen tap and the outside tap are not the same decision.

A note on what is exempt

The requirement does not reach everything. EPA lists exclusions including toilets, bidets, urinals, fill valves, flushometer valves, fire hydrants, tub fillers, shower valves and service saddles, along with products used exclusively for non-potable services.

The reasoning is that these are not fixtures people draw drinking water from. It is worth knowing because it explains why the kitchen faucet is the one this page is about.

Know the maker? Say so on the call.Cartridges are specific to a manufacturer, and the name on the handle is frequently the difference between one visit and two. We route you to a contractor covering your area, chosen on the ZIP code you give, free of charge to you. Faucets are simply our subject; the number itself handles any plumbing request.

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