Question from Samantha
I have recently bought a 37-year old house and I am slowly renovating it. One of the jobs involves redoing some plumbing. A plumber friend of mine was extolling the virtues of the new plastic pipes that are currently used by plumbers. He didn’t know what sort of plastic it was but that it was “much safer than metal” because of the chemicals in the solder used to attach metal pipes. I called Home Depot and the woman told me the plastic pipes were PVC. Surely not!? Which way do I jump on this issue?
Debra’s Answer
My husband says, “It’s time to get another plumber!”
The solder used to attach copper pipes USED to contain lead. Now you can easily buy lead-free solder, and it may be that lead solder is no longer sold at all (I don’t know the regulation on this offhand.
PVC pipe is toxic to manufacture, toxic to use, and the solvent glue used to attach them is MUCH MORE TOXIC that solder for copper pipe.
I’d go with the copper.
I have known that lead pipes were bad, but PVC being bad too? We have a lot of that in our home. I don’t think any of that piping goes to water that we actually drink out of, but it would be smart to double check. Our home is fairly new and so far, we haven’t experienced any issues with the water or have gotten sick. Would you recommend having a plumber come and check the pipes?
PVC pipes are not typically used for incoming water, but you should know what type of pipe your incoming water is flowing through and filter your water if necessary.
I’m doing a bathroom renovation and the plumber wants to use PVC for the outgoing waste water. Is it worth the extra cost to do big copper piping here for pipes that won’t contact the water before I use it? Or should I refuse the PVC on priciple or because of the offgassing and glues??
COMMENT FROM DEBRA:
That’s up to you. You won’t have contact with the waste water so that’s not an issue. There will likely be some toxic glues in the installation (which will outgass quickly, and PVC is very toxic to manufacture. So the benefit is in the “bigger picture.” I don’t have a lifecycle analysis though of copper vs PVC in manufacture, so I can’t give a definitive answer to this.
While it’s always good to minimize toxic releases into the environment, at this point in time, I’m focusing on starting with eliminating toxics that we are directly exposed to, because they have the greatest effect on us. But ultimately we do need to eliminate all exposures to have a healthy world.
I find myelf thinking 2 things – 1 is the waterles urinals, which failed because straight urine eats right through copper pipes – meaning the drain between urinal and main line would have to be pvc –
And, of recent copper thefts – I woman called a plumber as she had no water – the plumber said “you know you have no pipes under your house?” – someone had stolen all of the copper. Found myself thinking “now we need security systems under our house, and cameras?” – I assume PVC is better on that regards. If I live in an area with lots of copper thefts, I would think about this – perhaps using pvc on easily stolen pipes. The store I worked at moved from 1 old building, and built a new one. The alarm went off 1 night – someone had stolen all copper out of the building – pipes, wires, etc –