According to minutes of a meeting of City Council’s Safety, Utilities and Environment Committee last fall, the City of Montreal requested that Westmount obtain four

volunteer households with water service

constructed with portions of lead piping to partake in a six-month survey.

The survey involved obtaining samples of drinking water on a weekly basis. “We’re

having meetings on that over the next two weeks because, from what I gather, this is an issue that all cities on the island will have to be addressing over the course of this year,� Director General Bruce St. Louis told the Examiner.

“We’re in the fact-finding process,� he said. “This is certainly not a new issue by any means. It’s common knowledge that, especially in the war-time houses, many of the service entries have a certain lead content.

“However, the literature shows that this has not been a health problem in the past and we want to approach this with science and not hearsay … Right now I have no new information. But I think it’s an issue that will be coming forward in the very near future.�

St. Louis said the City is in the process of examining provincial legislation and ministerial norms that could provide guidance.

“All the demerged cities in Montreal are working collectively on this issue,� he said, adding that Westmount is “catching up� because the City only recently became involved in managing its own water supply.

According to a list of frequently asked questions about the use of lead in wartime and post-war housing posted on the Montreal Public Health Department’s web site, drinking water produced for consumption across the island contains practically no lead and conforms with provincial

regulations.

“Rather, lead can dissolve into tap water when water flows through lead service connections that link some homes to municipal water mains or if there is lead solder in the pipe joints in indoor plumbing,� the agency states. In these cases, hot water and water from taps that have not been turned on for hours tend to contain higher concentrations of lead.

Although lead solder in indoor home plumbing can cause lead to dissolve in tap water, the agency maintains that, in more recently-built homes, this does not result in lead levels that exceed a provincial standard of 0.01 milligrams per litre after the water has been left running for at least five minutes.

Recently, however, lead concentrations measured in tap water in post-war or wartime housing built between 1940 and 1950 and linked to the municipal water main through lead service connections, have been found to exceed the new 0.01 standard, while staying within the old 0.05 standard.

Although the Montreal Public Health Department considers the risk to be low and limited to the fetuses of pregnant women and children under six years of age, the agency said it felt compelled to ensure that citizens affected by this situation be informed and in some cases “adopt certain preventive

measures that can reduce their exposure to lead to a minimum.�