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Leaching: Metal escaping into the water supply Having just received a letter from the city Health Department (because of the age of the house) suggesting the incoming water pipe should be inspected to see if it was made from lead reminds us that this is a good time to talk about toxic metals in your water supply.  This is particularly important if someone is pregnant or there are young children in the house. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tells us that if the levels of dissolved lead in our water exceed 15 parts per billion (ppb) then we need to...

Not what the doctor ordered You may find this astonishingly hard to believe, but the FDA (yes, the Food & Drug Administration, of these United States) recommends washing your old drugs down the sink, or flushing your old drugs down the toilet!  In the case of the latter, it includes things like transdermal fentanyl patches (Isn’t that just terrific for your plumbing). Why do they suggest this?  Apparently not everybody has access to proper disposal facilities, they tell us.  They are so concerned with getting OxyContin and Percocet out of your medicine cabinet to make sure that someone doesn’t take...

Yes, but not in our water supply! In English we use of the suffix “–cide” to denote something that kills or destroys something that we don’t want, such as germicide or bactericide.  In agriculture there are some invasive species of plants (“weeds”) that could compromise the quality of the crop, and so farmers carefully select herbicides which are deemed harmless to people, but target the undesirable plant.  Insecticides kill insect invaders, and fungicides handle the remainder.  All of these subclasses fall under the general heading of Pesticide, because they control “pests” of all types. Many farms are opting for non-chemical...