Lead leads to above normal hostility and aggression. Lead paint, lead petrol, lead pipes - all must go. And maybe some kind of protection at shooting ranges?
The biggest source of lead exposure in indoor ranges isn't from the chunks of lead shot into targets. It's from the primers. Lead styphnate is still a common ingredient, and the primer is one of those parts of the bullet that ends up mostly in the atmosphere.
Solid copper projectiles are the primary leadless solution on the market but they're much more expensive than the traditional copper jacket over lead core construction.
There's also solutions like Federal Syntech (https://www.federalpremium.com/handgun/syntech/) that doesn't get rid of the lead but fully encapsulates it to avoid the airborne lead problem.
It’s pretty interesting how the deformity and thermal properties of the metal would affect ballistics. I guess silicon is too brittle even though it’s cheap and plentiful and aluminum is probably too light.
That poly is also interesting. the R&D they would’ve had to do to discover a polymer that would contain an exploding bullet as much as possible
Thermal and deformation properties of the metal have no impact on ballistics at all?
Density sure does though.
Which is why 99% of the stuff you’re mentioning doesn’t really work.
Copper is quite dense, but still not as dense as lead, which is why it kinda works. Steel is terrible (but not completely useless). Tungsten works awesome (as does silver and gold), but is cost prohibitive except for specialized applications.
Exterior ballistics: what happens when the projectile is in the air
Terminal ballistics: what happens when the projectile pokes a hole in the paper.
We use jacketed ammo (lead bullet coated in copper) because, with gas-operated guns, that lead dust that gets ground off of the bullet can foul up the mechanisms. Some ranges only let you use jacketed ammo because of the lead dust.
I've had copper pellets get stuck in airguns because they didn't swage to the barrel properly.
Edit: and suppressors for air guns are often called "lead dust collectors" because the drag-stabilizing skirt on a pellet is definitely going to leave some of itself behind. A bullet in a firearm makes a lot more contact with the barrel, so there's a lot more lead to lose.
Yes! They all behave differently inside the gun, so they all affect the ballistics. Specifically, the deformation properties affect the interior ballistics.
haha, no - not to any meaningful degree. Are you getting this from ChatGPT or something?
Jacketing is convenient for encapsulating lead, but you can run gas checked hard cast at generally the same velocities without any real issues. In that case the gas check is due to coppers higher melting/vaporization point. They are more expensive to make however, and finicky, which is why you don’t see it in production bullets.
The ‘copper’ pellet you mention was almost certainly not actually fully copper, but rather copper washed lead. But you can have lead harder than normal copper (heat treated hard cast is extremely hard and ductile), and copper softer than normal lead (annealed copper is extremely soft). Most copper people are used to working with is work hardened, but it’s trivial to make it ‘dead soft’.
That also has nothing to do with aluminum or other rounds you mentioned.
If anyone even uses them, which they don’t outside of very niche cases or experiments where it shows exactly what I am referring to.
density, however, is 99% of it. including for terminal, interior, and every other kind of ballistics. BC is king. And that is something that is impossible to fake, heat treat, work harden, etc. out of.
For example, initial engraving pressure can be changed or negated by minor changes in throat, regardless of anything else. Or a coating. Or any number of other things.
Woah hey, take that back. But I concede both that I kinda went off on what I am interested in, and you might know more about this than I do. And that I was half replying to you, and half explaining why lead is used (neither very well).
I don't actually remember what was at the center of the copper pellets, but I remember concluding that whatever it was, it was harder and lighter than lead and the copper wasn't enough to make it grab the rifling properly. I've also tried zinc tipped pellets with a plastic base. The main concern with air rifles internally is grabbing the rifling, which is what lead excels at. A secondary concern is the resulting lead dust eventually fouling up any mechanisms is uses for repeating. A third, I guess, would be the pellet deforming, which is a case against lead.
I assumed (incorrectly) that the same would apply to most firearms
Ah, Airguns. That makes sense. If you have any more of those pellets, it might be worth taking a pair of cutters to one and seeing what is inside. Maybe copper washed zinc, which would be funny?
Airguns have such a wide range of wildly different criteria, it’s hard to generalize. Ballistic performance (by any definition or subdivision) is pretty much never a primary concern however though?
At least compared to regulations/compliance, cost, entertainment value, safety (aka anti ballistic effectiveness haha), etc.
Airsoft being a prime example. But even the ‘diving cyclinder powered’ Airguns, which can be quite effective by some measures, are still ~ an order of magnitude less pressure than a 45ACP, which is about as low pressure as a firearm cartridge can get? (And one of the first smokeless cartridges still in wide use - well over 100 years old now)
Most airguns are going to struggle to be usefully accurate or powerful at 100 yards (or even make it at all that far), and that’s kind of the minimum range for any rifle. Most rifles with practice can reliably hit targets at 800 yards, and can be lethal out to 2000-3000 yards.
Most handgun users will struggle past 15 yards, but it is rarely the gun. With practice and a competent shooter, almost any handgun can reliably hit ‘gongs’ at 100 yards, and are quite lethal out to at least 800 yards.
In addition to Federal Syntech there is Speer Lawman, which is a bullet type called TMJ or Total Metal Jacket. Lawman has lead free primers. There is a green box variant called RHT that does not use lead in the bullets.
Except primers have lead, dusting your hands and face with lead, which I wouldn't be surprised if worse than ingesting some lead shot. And it's far more difficult to find ammunition with lead-free primer than lead free bullets.
In addition to the other replies. Wax bullets can be used in revolvers or any manually cycled firearms but not self loading because they use a lower volume of propellant.
>Chicago has the highest number of lead water service lines in the nation, with an estimated 412,000 of about 491,000 lines at least partly made of lead or contaminated with the dangerous metal.
Sounds like a crisis, but it's the third largest city and much older than LA. Isn't a per-capita, above a certain city size, the more relevant number?
> A plumber estimated it would cost about $26,000 to replace the private side of the home’s service line. Swapping out his internal lead plumbing would cost thousands more. At this point, having just purchased the home, the couple doesn’t have the money to replace their service line. For now, they’ll keep testing and filtering their water.
Reverse osmosis systems for the main drinking water sources are around $200 each now, 100X less than the cost of fixing if it's just the kitchen sink that they drink out of. They do require maintenance that many won't do, but it seems like there could be an app for that or some kind of automatic timed shutoff with a reminder to buy at least one extra filter at a time.
Annual filter costs are 10X-15X less than interest earnings on $26,000. I think you can usually install easily with no plumber with a couple shark bite press fittings and a pipe cutter.
It sounds like that may be what they are already doing, but isn't it basically a good enough solution?
Seems like continuous edge testing would be a critical first step.
End users seeing water content in real time would absolutely motivate fixes.
Via ChatGPT, some groups of Chicago children are average 6-8 µg/dL blood lead levels, guaranteeing they’ll face challenges related cognitive disability. 100+ years of this—and all they need is good water filters.
This should be a class action to get fixed. No way the government can fix this alone in a reasonable time frame without focusing on end-users first.
Primary source of exposure in Chicago is from household dust contaminated by old paint. Water is secondary or tertiary issue, but can be bad. The article is a bit off the mark as they did not interview the Chicago DPH inspectors who respond to high serum reports.
Also, the average lead level of urban or suburban toddlers in the 1970s was 10-15 µg/dL, due mostly to vapors from leaded gasoline. Gen X had eye-popping lead exposures as kids.
So 6-8 µg/dL doesn't guarantee cognitive disability, but it is still bad.
[Edit: also want to add that quality monitoring doesn't necessarily fully solve the water situation either. For example, it is known that a chunk of leaded detritus or solder can drop into rice or pasta water from stream or aerator and raise serum precipitously, but won't be seen in a test as it is intermittent. The problem of lead is ubiquitous and not entirely tractable, but a lot of progress is possible over time.]
it also had open sewers, child prostitution, destitution, some of the worst living conditions in the first world. Just because the owners bump up the per-capita average doesnt mean shit, just like you see in USA. How many people cant even afford a brick building to live in?
> Reverse osmosis systems for the main drinking water sources are around $200 each now
A whole house RO system is several thousand up to ten thousand dollars. A whole house heavy metal filter would be around $200. For this particular case they can likely do without full RO.
I'm not talking about whole house but just for your kitchen sink, but ic a heavy metal one for the whole house is just $200 that's even better though, especially if they have kids who might drink from everywhere.
But most water for drinking/cooking is going to come from the kitchen sink and refrigerator, which if it is too expensive to plumb into the one for the sink you can disconnect and use ice trays.
Even if whole-home RO is feasible from a money perspective, it's horrible from a water conservation standpoint.
The very best units with high pressure achieve something like 1:2 ratios. Meaning for every 1 gallon of clean water you get 2 of waste.
Clean water is previous and should not be wasted so casually.
RO is OK if it's for something very small scale, like a sink for filling up water bottles - but it should never be used for things like showers/tubs, appliances, etc.
Residential water consumption is less than a non-issue for the ~2/3 of the US population that lives east of approximately the Missouri river (also where most of the lead pipes are).
Municipalities might have to adjust their forecasting and step up the numbers on their next planned purchase of water equipment but that's about it.
Fresh water usage should never be so casually dismissed. Extracting more has significant consequences - both environmental and human-oriented, regardless of where it comes from.
While residential is small compared to commercial, it's still important. Multiply anything by a couple hundred million citizens and it does add up.
The fact that it "adds up" is basically irrelevant considering the size of the water sources these municipalities typically have access to.
They can use 5x the water if they want and only the water treatment plant employees will care. They take from the river, and they put back into the river after treatment.
Water is not readily fungible. No matter what Chicago or any other more-than-enough water location does, it makes zero difference to someone in Phoenix or Las Vegas.
If someone’s in a location with more than enough water, there is really no point in trying to get them to care, because this really really doesn’t matter to them. Typically whatever they don’t use just runs off anyway.
My town in Wisconsin had a big program to replace all of the lead service lines. As I understand it, the alternatives they considered included installing some sort of filter in each home, and they decided on total replacement of the pipes.
My home was outside of the zone where lead pipes were present.
> My home was outside of the zone where lead pipes were present.
That doesn't really matter, sadly, if it's connected to the same network. Lead has very bad effects on children in trace amounts, and in a network the water comes from everywhere (it takes all paths, not the shortest path, when you open the tap)
Trace amounts inhibit brain development in children, and there is no treatment possible once it happens. Damage is permanent, even if you remove the lead (which is expensive and has serious side effects). In adults removing lead "works", if you don't mind the price and side effects. Normal concentrations of lead are toxic, as in they will cause your body to lose energy and die if the concentration goes up. Additionally, lead leads to kidney failure and cancer, years and even decades after exposure, in adults and children (though doubtless the Trump administration will shout "the cancer effects have only been proven in mammals".
So you really need to hunt and replace the last lead pipe in the entire network. Because of how the water system works, that includes forcing landlords to remove old lead pipes inside houses.
Oh and don't ask the forbidden question: "isn't the basis of our legal system that if an entity causes damage, intentional or not, it is financially responsible for the consequences. This includes government, and would seem to include both the medical damage done to people and replacing whatever is doing the damage"
There is a lot of debate. There is lead everywhere in the world so zero lead exposure is impossible. The real question is how low you can practically get, and nobody agrees here. Many want as low as possible and then lower yet; others have defined some really timy anount as good enough.
Good question - I can't remember. I've just looked up the UK guidance[0] on this, and it seems to talk more about reduction than removal. What do you think?
Go to Home Depot, and check out the plumbing section.
The stuff marked “hot water line” “lead safe” is all leaded.
Now, try to find equivalent lines (same threads, diameters, etc) that are not marked for hot water heater use. They don’t stock them, but they stock fixtures that require them.
One thing that puzzles me: ICE has been targeting Home Depot parking lots out here in California, but Home Depot is a big supporter of Trump.
I’d expect them to go after bluer Lowes lots. Maybe Home Depot has agreed not to sue for trespassing or something?
If so, that sounds like a breach of fiduciary duties to me.
Are you talking about low-lead brass? Yes, it still has some lead. I don't think the "hot water" labeling is relevant? Unless some states allow non-low-lead-brass in hot water lines?
Alternatives are skipping the brass fittings/nipples and using copper, stainless, or the various plastics. I'm guessing you're seeing the stuff about water heaters because you shouldn't connect copper directly to water heaters (they have steel tanks which with copper creates a battery and corrodes the connection quickly).
And HD doesn't really stock stainless as far as I've seen, though you can certainly get it online. Not sure how it fits into plumbing code for potable water though.
re: the parking lots, in my experience HD is more popular with tradespeople. the goal of the raids isn't really immigration reform, but rather general fear - including for legal immigrants just trying to go about their business.
What you're saying about leaded fixtures doesn't make sense to me. You say that lead safe fixtures are leaded, but this seems to mean that lead isn't present. Also, what does this have to do with water heater use or fixtures?
> Also, what does this have to do with water heater use or fixtures?
It doesn’t particularly matter if small amounts of lead are used in hot water lines since you don’t (or shouldn’t) drink water from the hot water heater. Ideally your drinking water comes from a faucet that has separate hot/cold taps, if it doesn’t, then you should turn the faucet all the way to ‘cold’ when you’re filling a glass with water to drink.
Articles like these are frustrating because the mineralization of lead pipes (which prevents contact between water in the service line and the lead in the pipes) is actively managed by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which is one of the most sophisticated water management agencies in (I think?) the world, and lead in pipes is not a major source of lead exposure in Chicago --- by far the biggest real culprit is paint.
If you want to map lead exposure, map home ages and renovations (and, unfortunately, the soil around the houses, which gets contaminated by the paint over time).
Ironically, for at least a short term after lead service lines are replaced, you're actually at higher risk of exposure --- the process disrupts the mineralization layer in the lines.
That is I assume the inside of said pipes gets covered in a rock hard layer of calcium and other minerals and there ceases to be any contact with lead in the pipes. He'll maybe plastic pipes are worse in that case.
> Consequently, the practice of putting the old multi-story, intact and furnished wooden buildings—sometimes entire rows of them en bloc—on rollers and moving them to the outskirts of town or to the suburbs was so common as to be considered nothing more than routine traffic.
Im used to seeing wooden sheds on main st, but how were they able to lift a brick building off the ground, did they not have foundations built a few metres into the ground?
Using common old 19th century Victorian Britain tools; the jack screw, masonry chisel, greased boards, et al .. all that's required is to cut and separate the course above the foundations.
What does Reaganomics have to do with Chicago failing to replace its water pipes? It’s a deeply Democratic city in a very Democratic state, and all three levels of government have been consistently increasing their spending in almost every area.
Chicago unions forced the installation of lead pipes for so long because of the higher labor cost of installation that the federal government had to step in and force them to stop installing lead pipes.
If you live in Illinois and Chicago it’s not reaganomics or Trump or W or anything else. It’s plain and simple union corruption with democratic AND republican leadership.
Chicago has been consistently Democratic for as long as I can remember. The state government has moved from republican to democratic but except for Rauner even the republicans in the past have patronized the unions.
"Fine" might be overstating things, but yes we need to move the conversation toward water ph, which is probably at least as important as heavy metal pipes. Municipal water supplies need to be from clean alkaline sources.
The smart money is on our finding, long-term, that PVC and PEX and all the rest of the final-mile water delivery materials are also dangerous in the presence of acidic water.
And yet, when you try to do a basic web search for alkaline water, overwhelmingly the results are crazy overpriced bottled water and/or con artists selling "water ionizer" or other such nonsense.
Needs to be a few minutes depending on where the lead is. I have lead service line and the city does testing and the sample collected after 3 minutes had the highest lead level by over 3x because that was the water that sat overnight in the lead service line.
I wonder what the accuracy of the data is like. And what do you do about damaged pipes? I read that cities lose a lot of water to leaks. Doesn’t that also mean pollutants can get in? And it won’t matter if your pipe is lead or whatever else.
An aside: lead exposure is thought to lead to increase violence. I wonder if Chicago having the most lead pipes is also a contributing cause of their (reputed) crime problem.
The reports I linked include everything the police department does, including picking up the phone, number of times the officers are sent out, number of times guns are pulled, discharged, number of times a suspect is pursued, subdued, handcuffed, etc.
Rather than believe and re-repeat lies from propaganda outlets (we have really good propaganda in the US and it uses social media to spread), check primary sources.
Are there any robust alternate crime tracking methods? Drug metabolites in sewage? Shotspotter data? Insurance claims? Replacement car windows per capita? GPS data? There must be enough alternative metrics to make it possible to compare crime and enforcement.
This is why the gold standard violent crime metric is homicides, which are consistently reported everywhere. Homicides in Chicago are sharply down (bears repeating that Chicago is nowhere near the top of the violent crime leaderboard in America --- it's just a lot bigger than people think it is).
For things like shoplifting, that's plausible. But I have a hard time believing that murder rates are down because people are just ignoring dead bodies.
Not parent, and I don’t know about Chicago (I’ve never even visited Illinois), but if the police response is unsatisfying, people just don’t bother to report many crimes to the police. It is common for many ordinary people not to report property crimes unless required by an insurer, and many violent crimes against minorities or troubled people also go unreported due to lack of trust in the police.
Those stats actually indicate to me that many crimes are being under-reported, at least by certain groups. Compare the race & gender distribution of murder and aggravated assaults to other crimes; murders are obviously well-reported, but I highly suspect that the same people who are likely to be murdered are also likely to be robbed, battered, and assaulted, yet certain minorities make up much smaller proportions of reported victims in the 'less-heinous crimes'.
Additionally, while you think that the ordering of the report is in order of police’s priorities, I (more cynically) think it reflects them ‘burying’ the numbers.
Crime is down just based on the actual numbers (also anecdotally from someone who has spent the majority of their life in/around the city) and for most people the city is pretty safe right now. While there is violence this sort of pearl clutching historically hurts those exact communities you're talking about (and also is not how the people I've met from those communities described their experiences anyway).
Crime is only down because you're comparing against the pandemic highs. If you look at the long term trends, it's still up and to the right compared to 10 years ago and previous to that. The fact you are okay with this disgusting level of violence in minority communities is really something else.
This just isn't true... none of the available data backs up these claims. Go back 10, 20, even 30 years and the trend has only lowered. Crime peaked in the early nineties and even the COVID spike didn't come close to that peak. If you're going to make such outlandish claims, then you'd better have something other than feels backing you.
"disgusting level of violence in minority communities" -> this is so clearly an insulting way to refer to these communities it boggles the mind that someone would say it while accusing someone else of not being concerned enough. These communities have people I like and care about so I do care about these communities, which is exactly why I am careful about what I say and don't compare them to warzones or tell them about what violence is like in their communities (it reeks of the same condescension towards these communities that I grew up with in the suburbs).
If you're in these communities in Chicago then I'm sorry but judging from your general ignorance of Chicago it seems pretty clear that you are not.
It is pure racism to not stop the violence in the Black and Brown communities in Chicago. They are suffering a debilitated life living under the threat of constant violence and you are perpetuating it for some reason that I don't understand.
That's a typical weekend in the US for a population the size of Chicago, nothing out of the ordinary for US fun culture.
The abhorrent level of crime is spread across the country, largely perpetuated by those who refuse to consider gun control. There were 16,576 gun deaths in the US in 2024, excluding suicides. 45 every day. About a third of those are children.
Chicago is close to 1% of the population of the US. Looking at three days, seeing a cluster of shootings, and not having the stats or basic business experience to understand the basic Possion distribution of events, is malpractice.
Whoever told you to be upset at Chicago, but not about the mass gun violence every day, tricked you. You got fooled.
Yet it isn't even in the top 20 cities for murder, nor the top 50 for overall crime. The only reason so many are focusing specifically on Chicago is because their cult leader told them to.
I made no such claim, merely pointed out the absurdity of focusing so much on Chicago while completely ignoring other places like Dayton. How come you're flat out ignoring the TWENTY other cities with a higher murder rate? It's completely disingenuous of you to focus on total murders when one surely understands that total population ultimately drives that value.
You replace them by running new service lines using directional boring, falling back to trenching when directional boring is not an option. In the case of waste and sewer lines, you can run an epoxy coating internally (“relining”) versus replacement, which has cost savings ($100-$250/foot of pipe).
Broadly speaking, maintaining this infrastructure is expensive because the need for labor is unavoidable and it is labor intensive.
Directional what? When Chicago replaces pipes, they dig the street up, put in pipes, and lay down a new street. I’ve literally seen them do this, then one month later tear up the same street for a natural gas pipe project .
These Chicago pipes are end of life and need replaced. They have been working on it for at least 20 years.
*in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies.
> Replacing a lead service line with a new copper service means running the new line from the water main in the street all the way into the house. There are two ways that can be done. With open trench replacements, a trench is dug from the home through the parkway to install the new service and access the water main. Trenchless construction runs the new service to the main underground, causing less disturbance to the surrounding area. The type of procedure performed will depend on several factors specific to each replacement.
Meanwhile everyone else has moved to plastic pipes which will last longer, are cheaper, and leach no metals (microplastics don't seem to come from water lines frome what I can tell, but I'm looking for confirmation)
Copper lasts ~20 years longer than plastic, making copper a superior choice for the longevity needed for the use case. Also, copper has anti microbial properties and rarely leaches in material quantities unless the water has a low pH.
plastic is often rated at less but that is because they don't bother to test any longer, when properly installed and used plastic should last longer than copper.
> In 1986, Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), prohibiting the use of lead in pipes, and solder and flux on products used in public water systems that provide water for human consumption. Lead-free was defined as solder and flux with no more than 0.2% lead and pipes with no more than 8%.
> In 2011, Congress passed the RLDWA, which revised the definition of lead free and took effect in 2013. Lead free was now defined as the lead content of the wetted surfaces of plumbing products as a weighted average of no greater than 0.25% for products that contact water intended for consumption, and 0.2% for solder and flux.
A lot of municipal water systems have done more recent (but by no means required) improvements to the water itself to “coat” the lead in supply lines. Beyond just pH control, like orthophosphate. Most just in the last decade or so.
For Chicago, it’s an active project
> Polyphosphate is being removed because recent studies have shown that it may
negatively impact lead corrosion control.
> Polyphosphate was initially added with the orthophosphate to mask discoloration of the water from metals such as iron or manganese.
A lot of brass fittings and fixtures with lead in them. Makes it easier to machine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of no-name Amazon and aliexpress plumbing fixtures still have a lot of lead in them. Keeps your cutting tool/machining costs down.
Even big box stores that are careful sell a lot of high lead plumbing parts - they are just marked not for potable water and sold for use with gas pipes.
Contaminants can migrate from soil through plastic, which is a problem in the rust belt, but can be dealt with an aluminum barrier layer. What is harder to avoid is endocrine-disrupting plasticizers, because of regulatory capture.
> in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies.
This is true. For the private sector, it works pretty well. Road digging permits are posted on their webpage 6+ months in advance. If you see one on a section of street you planned to do work on, you are allowed to piggyback on the project and share the cost. If you don’t, you pay the entire cost. So there is huge incentive to coordinate. But city agencies? Not quite so incentivized.
There’s lots of exceptions. The lead pipe hysteria and low pressure gas replacement is exempt from all of that.
Some states are more schizophrenic than others. New York is simultaneously mandating replacement with high pressure gas mains that require biannual inspection and banning gas lines.
Lead pipes are an engineering and chemistry issue. Pipes that are functioning properly don’t need replacement.
They aren’t trenching through yards from the street to the house to replace water service lines, they’re digging a pit where the water main is and directional boring from the street to the house and installing a new service line in the borehole.
‘Horizontal directional drilling’ is the more technical term, directional boring is more of a trade name.
I don't know that epoxy coating is used at the municipal level. Pipe bursting with high-density polyethylene is the typical solution to avoid re-trenching municipal sewer pipes. Epoxy liners, epoxy coatings and polyurethane coatings are typical for a single property.
I would argue pipe bursting is the best trench-less solution for any place, but it is more destructive than those other three options.
I had my residential waste pipe lined with a fibreglass/resin sheath about a year ago. Inserting it was a process involving a lot of work on endoscopes and then the liner itself was adhered to the old pipe using a bladder filled with hot water. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe
It was over CA$10k to get it done, but the cost of trenching that line could have been 3-4x the amount + an unacceptable risk to the foundation of the house from destabilizing the dirt around it.
> An aside: lead exposure is thought to lead to increase violence. I wonder if Chicago having the most lead pipes is also a contributing cause of their (reputed) crime problem.
It would be a drop in the bucket, if it's even a measurable contributing factor at all.
The primary cause is relatively boring: a century of racist housing policy, policing, under-investment, which results in a self-sustaining vicious cycle of poverty and crime. Couple that with broader national issues like the gutting of local manufacturing industry, the crack epidemic, the "war on drugs" and more and crime is what you get.
Chicago was (and still is) a segregated city, achieved indirectly through redlining and other thinly-veiled policies. Like many things, it's probably going to take much longer to fix the problem than it took to create it.
Median, normal lead exposure for toddlers in the 1960s and 1970s in any urban or suburban area would be 99th percentile by today's standards due to leaded gasoline vapors (and lack of awareness about paint dust).
So the crime hypothesis is more about baseline level of criminality being higher throughout the entire leaded gasoline era and for a few decades thereafter. It's generally framed as social science based on aggregate trends rather than individual dose-dependent epidemiological hypothesis.
They are always pressurised during normal use. When they are depressurised because of a water main break or for maintenance (and they try to do this as little as possible), orders are given to flush the lines before drinking any of the water.
Lead leads to above normal hostility and aggression. Lead paint, lead petrol, lead pipes - all must go. And maybe some kind of protection at shooting ranges?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6068756/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10393136/
Adequate ventilation will reduce the lead exposure. There are alternatives to using lead for bullets which would eliminate the exposure.
The biggest source of lead exposure in indoor ranges isn't from the chunks of lead shot into targets. It's from the primers. Lead styphnate is still a common ingredient, and the primer is one of those parts of the bullet that ends up mostly in the atmosphere.
Nice. What are the bullet alternatives?
Solid copper projectiles are the primary leadless solution on the market but they're much more expensive than the traditional copper jacket over lead core construction.
There's also solutions like Federal Syntech (https://www.federalpremium.com/handgun/syntech/) that doesn't get rid of the lead but fully encapsulates it to avoid the airborne lead problem.
It’s pretty interesting how the deformity and thermal properties of the metal would affect ballistics. I guess silicon is too brittle even though it’s cheap and plentiful and aluminum is probably too light.
That poly is also interesting. the R&D they would’ve had to do to discover a polymer that would contain an exploding bullet as much as possible
Thermal and deformation properties of the metal have no impact on ballistics at all?
Density sure does though.
Which is why 99% of the stuff you’re mentioning doesn’t really work.
Copper is quite dense, but still not as dense as lead, which is why it kinda works. Steel is terrible (but not completely useless). Tungsten works awesome (as does silver and gold), but is cost prohibitive except for specialized applications.
There's
Interior ballistics: what happens inside the gun
Exterior ballistics: what happens when the projectile is in the air
Terminal ballistics: what happens when the projectile pokes a hole in the paper.
We use jacketed ammo (lead bullet coated in copper) because, with gas-operated guns, that lead dust that gets ground off of the bullet can foul up the mechanisms. Some ranges only let you use jacketed ammo because of the lead dust.
I've had copper pellets get stuck in airguns because they didn't swage to the barrel properly.
Edit: and suppressors for air guns are often called "lead dust collectors" because the drag-stabilizing skirt on a pellet is definitely going to leave some of itself behind. A bullet in a firearm makes a lot more contact with the barrel, so there's a lot more lead to lose.
Yes. And that is relevant to the aluminum projectiles, etc. mentioned before?
None of what you are talking about is relevant in this context.
Yes! They all behave differently inside the gun, so they all affect the ballistics. Specifically, the deformation properties affect the interior ballistics.
haha, no - not to any meaningful degree. Are you getting this from ChatGPT or something?
Jacketing is convenient for encapsulating lead, but you can run gas checked hard cast at generally the same velocities without any real issues. In that case the gas check is due to coppers higher melting/vaporization point. They are more expensive to make however, and finicky, which is why you don’t see it in production bullets.
The ‘copper’ pellet you mention was almost certainly not actually fully copper, but rather copper washed lead. But you can have lead harder than normal copper (heat treated hard cast is extremely hard and ductile), and copper softer than normal lead (annealed copper is extremely soft). Most copper people are used to working with is work hardened, but it’s trivial to make it ‘dead soft’.
That also has nothing to do with aluminum or other rounds you mentioned.
If anyone even uses them, which they don’t outside of very niche cases or experiments where it shows exactly what I am referring to.
density, however, is 99% of it. including for terminal, interior, and every other kind of ballistics. BC is king. And that is something that is impossible to fake, heat treat, work harden, etc. out of.
For example, initial engraving pressure can be changed or negated by minor changes in throat, regardless of anything else. Or a coating. Or any number of other things.
there is no replacement for dense mass.
>Are you getting this from ChatGPT or something?
Woah hey, take that back. But I concede both that I kinda went off on what I am interested in, and you might know more about this than I do. And that I was half replying to you, and half explaining why lead is used (neither very well).
I don't actually remember what was at the center of the copper pellets, but I remember concluding that whatever it was, it was harder and lighter than lead and the copper wasn't enough to make it grab the rifling properly. I've also tried zinc tipped pellets with a plastic base. The main concern with air rifles internally is grabbing the rifling, which is what lead excels at. A secondary concern is the resulting lead dust eventually fouling up any mechanisms is uses for repeating. A third, I guess, would be the pellet deforming, which is a case against lead.
I assumed (incorrectly) that the same would apply to most firearms
Ah, Airguns. That makes sense. If you have any more of those pellets, it might be worth taking a pair of cutters to one and seeing what is inside. Maybe copper washed zinc, which would be funny?
Airguns have such a wide range of wildly different criteria, it’s hard to generalize. Ballistic performance (by any definition or subdivision) is pretty much never a primary concern however though?
At least compared to regulations/compliance, cost, entertainment value, safety (aka anti ballistic effectiveness haha), etc.
Airsoft being a prime example. But even the ‘diving cyclinder powered’ Airguns, which can be quite effective by some measures, are still ~ an order of magnitude less pressure than a 45ACP, which is about as low pressure as a firearm cartridge can get? (And one of the first smokeless cartridges still in wide use - well over 100 years old now)
Most airguns are going to struggle to be usefully accurate or powerful at 100 yards (or even make it at all that far), and that’s kind of the minimum range for any rifle. Most rifles with practice can reliably hit targets at 800 yards, and can be lethal out to 2000-3000 yards.
Most handgun users will struggle past 15 yards, but it is rarely the gun. With practice and a competent shooter, almost any handgun can reliably hit ‘gongs’ at 100 yards, and are quite lethal out to at least 800 yards.
Here is the ChatGPT take: https://chatgpt.com/share/68b90b68-074c-8008-9afd-3f3817afac...
Thank you all for teaching me more. Lazide, what’s your background in this?
I’ve been custom loading ammunition (and shooting them) for over 20 years in pretty much every known type of man portable small arm.
From modern military machine guns to muzzle loading black powder cannon.
That's awesome, man. Thanks for answering. Black powder cannon I guess that's like something they had on wooden navy ships? Wow
This one was a small one, 20 lbs or so. A convenient ‘loophole’ in US firearms law.
It makes quite a noise!
In addition to Federal Syntech there is Speer Lawman, which is a bullet type called TMJ or Total Metal Jacket. Lawman has lead free primers. There is a green box variant called RHT that does not use lead in the bullets.
And shotguns are often required to use steel or some other non-toxic shot instead of lead shot, when they are used for hunting due to contamination.
That’s big. Absolute must for health
Except primers have lead, dusting your hands and face with lead, which I wouldn't be surprised if worse than ingesting some lead shot. And it's far more difficult to find ammunition with lead-free primer than lead free bullets.
There are lead free primers, they are slightly less reliable, but they are out there and a lot of the "eco" ammunition has them.
Railguns, lasers and lightsabers it is then.
In addition to the other replies. Wax bullets can be used in revolvers or any manually cycled firearms but not self loading because they use a lower volume of propellant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_bullet
Depleted uranium works well, and we all know gulf war syndrome was fake news, so it’s probably safe.
Lead pipes get coated with residue by the water in no time. So no the roman empire did not fall because of lead
Assuming there were never any points of corrosion in the pipes.
Also, actual data:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2019/11/29/ar...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971...
>Chicago has the highest number of lead water service lines in the nation, with an estimated 412,000 of about 491,000 lines at least partly made of lead or contaminated with the dangerous metal.
Sounds like a crisis, but it's the third largest city and much older than LA. Isn't a per-capita, above a certain city size, the more relevant number?
> A plumber estimated it would cost about $26,000 to replace the private side of the home’s service line. Swapping out his internal lead plumbing would cost thousands more. At this point, having just purchased the home, the couple doesn’t have the money to replace their service line. For now, they’ll keep testing and filtering their water.
Reverse osmosis systems for the main drinking water sources are around $200 each now, 100X less than the cost of fixing if it's just the kitchen sink that they drink out of. They do require maintenance that many won't do, but it seems like there could be an app for that or some kind of automatic timed shutoff with a reminder to buy at least one extra filter at a time.
Annual filter costs are 10X-15X less than interest earnings on $26,000. I think you can usually install easily with no plumber with a couple shark bite press fittings and a pipe cutter.
It sounds like that may be what they are already doing, but isn't it basically a good enough solution?
Seems like continuous edge testing would be a critical first step.
End users seeing water content in real time would absolutely motivate fixes.
Via ChatGPT, some groups of Chicago children are average 6-8 µg/dL blood lead levels, guaranteeing they’ll face challenges related cognitive disability. 100+ years of this—and all they need is good water filters.
This should be a class action to get fixed. No way the government can fix this alone in a reasonable time frame without focusing on end-users first.
Primary source of exposure in Chicago is from household dust contaminated by old paint. Water is secondary or tertiary issue, but can be bad. The article is a bit off the mark as they did not interview the Chicago DPH inspectors who respond to high serum reports.
Also, the average lead level of urban or suburban toddlers in the 1970s was 10-15 µg/dL, due mostly to vapors from leaded gasoline. Gen X had eye-popping lead exposures as kids.
So 6-8 µg/dL doesn't guarantee cognitive disability, but it is still bad.
[Edit: also want to add that quality monitoring doesn't necessarily fully solve the water situation either. For example, it is known that a chunk of leaded detritus or solder can drop into rice or pasta water from stream or aerator and raise serum precipitously, but won't be seen in a test as it is intermittent. The problem of lead is ubiquitous and not entirely tractable, but a lot of progress is possible over time.]
id like to remind you all that this is the richest country on the planet, and they live like its 19th century victorian britain
19th century victorian britain was the richest country on the planet
it also had open sewers, child prostitution, destitution, some of the worst living conditions in the first world. Just because the owners bump up the per-capita average doesnt mean shit, just like you see in USA. How many people cant even afford a brick building to live in?
Could you link a real source instead of ChatGPT, please?
> Reverse osmosis systems for the main drinking water sources are around $200 each now
A whole house RO system is several thousand up to ten thousand dollars. A whole house heavy metal filter would be around $200. For this particular case they can likely do without full RO.
With RO, could* focus on kitchen and bathroom sinks; amortized cost should be $5-10 per-month per-sink.
Toilet, shower, and laundry could all be low-risk with unfiltered service tap water.
honestly just doing kitchen should be enough to get 90% of the benefit
I'm not talking about whole house but just for your kitchen sink, but ic a heavy metal one for the whole house is just $200 that's even better though, especially if they have kids who might drink from everywhere.
But most water for drinking/cooking is going to come from the kitchen sink and refrigerator, which if it is too expensive to plumb into the one for the sink you can disconnect and use ice trays.
Even if whole-home RO is feasible from a money perspective, it's horrible from a water conservation standpoint.
The very best units with high pressure achieve something like 1:2 ratios. Meaning for every 1 gallon of clean water you get 2 of waste.
Clean water is previous and should not be wasted so casually.
RO is OK if it's for something very small scale, like a sink for filling up water bottles - but it should never be used for things like showers/tubs, appliances, etc.
Residential water consumption is less than a non-issue for the ~2/3 of the US population that lives east of approximately the Missouri river (also where most of the lead pipes are).
Municipalities might have to adjust their forecasting and step up the numbers on their next planned purchase of water equipment but that's about it.
Fresh water usage should never be so casually dismissed. Extracting more has significant consequences - both environmental and human-oriented, regardless of where it comes from.
While residential is small compared to commercial, it's still important. Multiply anything by a couple hundred million citizens and it does add up.
The fact that it "adds up" is basically irrelevant considering the size of the water sources these municipalities typically have access to.
They can use 5x the water if they want and only the water treatment plant employees will care. They take from the river, and they put back into the river after treatment.
Water is not readily fungible. No matter what Chicago or any other more-than-enough water location does, it makes zero difference to someone in Phoenix or Las Vegas.
If someone’s in a location with more than enough water, there is really no point in trying to get them to care, because this really really doesn’t matter to them. Typically whatever they don’t use just runs off anyway.
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GP said RO for home drinking water sources, not whole-home RO.
You're right, I misread.
My town in Wisconsin had a big program to replace all of the lead service lines. As I understand it, the alternatives they considered included installing some sort of filter in each home, and they decided on total replacement of the pipes.
My home was outside of the zone where lead pipes were present.
> My home was outside of the zone where lead pipes were present.
That doesn't really matter, sadly, if it's connected to the same network. Lead has very bad effects on children in trace amounts, and in a network the water comes from everywhere (it takes all paths, not the shortest path, when you open the tap)
Trace amounts inhibit brain development in children, and there is no treatment possible once it happens. Damage is permanent, even if you remove the lead (which is expensive and has serious side effects). In adults removing lead "works", if you don't mind the price and side effects. Normal concentrations of lead are toxic, as in they will cause your body to lose energy and die if the concentration goes up. Additionally, lead leads to kidney failure and cancer, years and even decades after exposure, in adults and children (though doubtless the Trump administration will shout "the cancer effects have only been proven in mammals".
So you really need to hunt and replace the last lead pipe in the entire network. Because of how the water system works, that includes forcing landlords to remove old lead pipes inside houses.
Oh and don't ask the forbidden question: "isn't the basis of our legal system that if an entity causes damage, intentional or not, it is financially responsible for the consequences. This includes government, and would seem to include both the medical damage done to people and replacing whatever is doing the damage"
Is this definitely true? The water company we have came and tested and they said the lead level was too low to worry about.
There is a lot of debate. There is lead everywhere in the world so zero lead exposure is impossible. The real question is how low you can practically get, and nobody agrees here. Many want as low as possible and then lower yet; others have defined some really timy anount as good enough.
Was it measurable and below a certain threshold, or was it undetectable, but they legally can't say there's zero lead content?
Good question - I can't remember. I've just looked up the UK guidance[0] on this, and it seems to talk more about reduction than removal. What do you think?
[0] https://www.dwi.gov.uk/lead-in-drinking-water
Zero lead is now the goal for health. The EPA keeps regulatory levels for the sake of conservatives who refuse yo address the problem
Go to Home Depot, and check out the plumbing section.
The stuff marked “hot water line” “lead safe” is all leaded.
Now, try to find equivalent lines (same threads, diameters, etc) that are not marked for hot water heater use. They don’t stock them, but they stock fixtures that require them.
One thing that puzzles me: ICE has been targeting Home Depot parking lots out here in California, but Home Depot is a big supporter of Trump.
I’d expect them to go after bluer Lowes lots. Maybe Home Depot has agreed not to sue for trespassing or something?
If so, that sounds like a breach of fiduciary duties to me.
Are you talking about low-lead brass? Yes, it still has some lead. I don't think the "hot water" labeling is relevant? Unless some states allow non-low-lead-brass in hot water lines?
Alternatives are skipping the brass fittings/nipples and using copper, stainless, or the various plastics. I'm guessing you're seeing the stuff about water heaters because you shouldn't connect copper directly to water heaters (they have steel tanks which with copper creates a battery and corrodes the connection quickly).
And HD doesn't really stock stainless as far as I've seen, though you can certainly get it online. Not sure how it fits into plumbing code for potable water though.
re: the parking lots, in my experience HD is more popular with tradespeople. the goal of the raids isn't really immigration reform, but rather general fear - including for legal immigrants just trying to go about their business.
What you're saying about leaded fixtures doesn't make sense to me. You say that lead safe fixtures are leaded, but this seems to mean that lead isn't present. Also, what does this have to do with water heater use or fixtures?
> Also, what does this have to do with water heater use or fixtures?
It doesn’t particularly matter if small amounts of lead are used in hot water lines since you don’t (or shouldn’t) drink water from the hot water heater. Ideally your drinking water comes from a faucet that has separate hot/cold taps, if it doesn’t, then you should turn the faucet all the way to ‘cold’ when you’re filling a glass with water to drink.
Never been to Asia? Plenty of people prefer their water warm.
‘Lead free’ brass still has lead in it. [https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/metals/are-you-manufacturi...]
Just less lead.
yo, what did you think I meant by conservatives who dont want to change anything.
Articles like these are frustrating because the mineralization of lead pipes (which prevents contact between water in the service line and the lead in the pipes) is actively managed by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which is one of the most sophisticated water management agencies in (I think?) the world, and lead in pipes is not a major source of lead exposure in Chicago --- by far the biggest real culprit is paint.
If you want to map lead exposure, map home ages and renovations (and, unfortunately, the soil around the houses, which gets contaminated by the paint over time).
Ironically, for at least a short term after lead service lines are replaced, you're actually at higher risk of exposure --- the process disrupts the mineralization layer in the lines.
That is I assume the inside of said pipes gets covered in a rock hard layer of calcium and other minerals and there ceases to be any contact with lead in the pipes. He'll maybe plastic pipes are worse in that case.
Does the Texas National Guard have many plumbers?
Don't be silly, the purpose of the military is to fight the enemies of the head of state, not to help people.
Dont be silly, the purpose of the national guard is to protect the rich white men from minorities and women.
Potāto / Potǎto
How much does that deployment cost and what would it cost to replace all the pipes? Removing lead can actually reduce violent crime...
Time to raise it up again:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
> Consequently, the practice of putting the old multi-story, intact and furnished wooden buildings—sometimes entire rows of them en bloc—on rollers and moving them to the outskirts of town or to the suburbs was so common as to be considered nothing more than routine traffic.
Incredible!
Was that the inspiration for James Blish's Cities in Flight series?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_in_Flight
Im used to seeing wooden sheds on main st, but how were they able to lift a brick building off the ground, did they not have foundations built a few metres into the ground?
Using common old 19th century Victorian Britain tools; the jack screw, masonry chisel, greased boards, et al .. all that's required is to cut and separate the course above the foundations.
Similar thing was done in Seattle.
Not to minimize the situation, but Chicago is the 3rd biggest city in the USA. It probably has the most of a lot of things.
Who has the most Colonel Mustards and conservatories?
For those of you who like well researched analysis: the Lead Crime Hypothesis.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
Pre-atomic-age lead is almost priceless to certain scientific endeavors.
> … and that the city isn’t planning to finish replacing them until 2076, three decades past a federal deadline.
Wow, that’s awful for the _third_ largest city in the USA. Federal, state, local governments have failed in providing basic services.
Thanks, trickle down economics! Reaganomics has been a massive mistake.
What does Reaganomics have to do with Chicago failing to replace its water pipes? It’s a deeply Democratic city in a very Democratic state, and all three levels of government have been consistently increasing their spending in almost every area.
Lack of regulations forcing the city to act and cutting federal spending on infrastructure to help them do it?
Chicago unions forced the installation of lead pipes for so long because of the higher labor cost of installation that the federal government had to step in and force them to stop installing lead pipes.
richest country on the planet but looks like a charles dickens novel
You do realize that Dickens' famous tales took place in the richest country in the world at the time, right?
youve obviously not read it then
Oh my friend, it wasn’t a mistake. It worked out great.
If you live in Illinois and Chicago it’s not reaganomics or Trump or W or anything else. It’s plain and simple union corruption with democratic AND republican leadership.
Chicago has been consistently Democratic for as long as I can remember. The state government has moved from republican to democratic but except for Rauner even the republicans in the past have patronized the unions.
Lead pipes are actually fine. They don't leach lead into the water unless you send something corrosive through them like what happened in Flint.
"Fine" might be overstating things, but yes we need to move the conversation toward water ph, which is probably at least as important as heavy metal pipes. Municipal water supplies need to be from clean alkaline sources.
The smart money is on our finding, long-term, that PVC and PEX and all the rest of the final-mile water delivery materials are also dangerous in the presence of acidic water.
And yet, when you try to do a basic web search for alkaline water, overwhelmingly the results are crazy overpriced bottled water and/or con artists selling "water ionizer" or other such nonsense.
ah the romans had em and they were fine cos the water never sat in the pipes for too long. just leave a tap running on drip and youll be safe
Fine, aside from the elevated lead levels in their bones.
Is your shift key broken?
> Is your shift key broken?
i dont think etiquette matters when youre in the comments section of some website mate
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Run your tap a few seconds before you use any of the water, you’ll be fine.
Needs to be a few minutes depending on where the lead is. I have lead service line and the city does testing and the sample collected after 3 minutes had the highest lead level by over 3x because that was the water that sat overnight in the lead service line.
Sounds like whatever the location is is probably a non-issue if your first use of water for the day is toilet or shower.
I wonder what the accuracy of the data is like. And what do you do about damaged pipes? I read that cities lose a lot of water to leaks. Doesn’t that also mean pollutants can get in? And it won’t matter if your pipe is lead or whatever else.
An aside: lead exposure is thought to lead to increase violence. I wonder if Chicago having the most lead pipes is also a contributing cause of their (reputed) crime problem.
Crime’s down in Chicago. 2024 saw a ~6-7% drop:
https://www.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024-CPD-An...
There are pages of tables comparing 2023 and 2024 on page 108. Sadly, they don’t go back multiple years.
Page 112 says there were 9112 aggravated assaults in 2024.
Page 10 of the 2004 report says there were 18,731 that year.
I’m sure you can find someone that’s graphed the trends online. Maybe an LLM can do it. Anyway, there isn’t a violent crime crisis in Chicago.
Reports going back to the 1990’s: https://www.chicagopolice.org/statistics-data/statistical-re...
Crime statistics are virtually all based on arrest and police reports.
When crimes aren't prosecuted the police don't make arrests and the public don't make reports.
Crime stats are basically useless if the prosecutors aren't bringing charges, which is exactly what's happening all over the country.
The reports I linked include everything the police department does, including picking up the phone, number of times the officers are sent out, number of times guns are pulled, discharged, number of times a suspect is pursued, subdued, handcuffed, etc.
Rather than believe and re-repeat lies from propaganda outlets (we have really good propaganda in the US and it uses social media to spread), check primary sources.
It takes less time than writing this comment did.
It's quite the claim to say that the police are hiding violent crime reports. It would be a massive indictment of local police departments.
What evidence do you have of this dereliction of duty?
> It would be a massive indictment of local police departments
And be against their self interests. When crime is up, police get more money.
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Are there any robust alternate crime tracking methods? Drug metabolites in sewage? Shotspotter data? Insurance claims? Replacement car windows per capita? GPS data? There must be enough alternative metrics to make it possible to compare crime and enforcement.
Arrest stats are also at historic lows.
Criminal complaints are at historic lows.
Murder, which is kinda hard to “juke the stats”, is at historic lows.
Where is your evidence?
CPD has not stopped prosecuting anyone.
Crime is up like crazy. Crime reporting within departments is down
This is why the gold standard violent crime metric is homicides, which are consistently reported everywhere. Homicides in Chicago are sharply down (bears repeating that Chicago is nowhere near the top of the violent crime leaderboard in America --- it's just a lot bigger than people think it is).
Based on what?
For things like shoplifting, that's plausible. But I have a hard time believing that murder rates are down because people are just ignoring dead bodies.
Why would cops not report on crime?
Seems counter to the incentive structures of police departments.
Not parent, and I don’t know about Chicago (I’ve never even visited Illinois), but if the police response is unsatisfying, people just don’t bother to report many crimes to the police. It is common for many ordinary people not to report property crimes unless required by an insurer, and many violent crimes against minorities or troubled people also go unreported due to lack of trust in the police.
Almost all of the 2024 report talks about community trust in police. There’s a reason the crime stats start on page 108.
They also have stats on number of times people call or report crimes vs. number of arrests, gun pulls, etc.
Those stats overwhelmingly disprove the theory that trust in the police department has eroded and people are no longer reporting crime.
Those stats actually indicate to me that many crimes are being under-reported, at least by certain groups. Compare the race & gender distribution of murder and aggravated assaults to other crimes; murders are obviously well-reported, but I highly suspect that the same people who are likely to be murdered are also likely to be robbed, battered, and assaulted, yet certain minorities make up much smaller proportions of reported victims in the 'less-heinous crimes'.
Additionally, while you think that the ordering of the report is in order of police’s priorities, I (more cynically) think it reflects them ‘burying’ the numbers.
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Crime is down just based on the actual numbers (also anecdotally from someone who has spent the majority of their life in/around the city) and for most people the city is pretty safe right now. While there is violence this sort of pearl clutching historically hurts those exact communities you're talking about (and also is not how the people I've met from those communities described their experiences anyway).
Crime is only down because you're comparing against the pandemic highs. If you look at the long term trends, it's still up and to the right compared to 10 years ago and previous to that. The fact you are okay with this disgusting level of violence in minority communities is really something else.
This just isn't true... none of the available data backs up these claims. Go back 10, 20, even 30 years and the trend has only lowered. Crime peaked in the early nineties and even the COVID spike didn't come close to that peak. If you're going to make such outlandish claims, then you'd better have something other than feels backing you.
"disgusting level of violence in minority communities" -> this is so clearly an insulting way to refer to these communities it boggles the mind that someone would say it while accusing someone else of not being concerned enough. These communities have people I like and care about so I do care about these communities, which is exactly why I am careful about what I say and don't compare them to warzones or tell them about what violence is like in their communities (it reeks of the same condescension towards these communities that I grew up with in the suburbs).
If you're in these communities in Chicago then I'm sorry but judging from your general ignorance of Chicago it seems pretty clear that you are not.
It is pure racism to not stop the violence in the Black and Brown communities in Chicago. They are suffering a debilitated life living under the threat of constant violence and you are perpetuating it for some reason that I don't understand.
Cut the crap, 'cause you don't actually care. It's blatantly obvious that you're either pulling off a weak troll or are willfully ignorant.
You're either grossly misinformed or deliberately lying. Crime peaked in the 90s and has not returned to those levels at any point.
Even during the pandemic peaks i never felt unsafe in the city.
That's a typical weekend in the US for a population the size of Chicago, nothing out of the ordinary for US fun culture.
The abhorrent level of crime is spread across the country, largely perpetuated by those who refuse to consider gun control. There were 16,576 gun deaths in the US in 2024, excluding suicides. 45 every day. About a third of those are children.
Chicago is close to 1% of the population of the US. Looking at three days, seeing a cluster of shootings, and not having the stats or basic business experience to understand the basic Possion distribution of events, is malpractice.
Whoever told you to be upset at Chicago, but not about the mass gun violence every day, tricked you. You got fooled.
Chicago has nearly 4x the murder rate and 2x the violent crime rate compared to the US at large.
Yet it isn't even in the top 20 cities for murder, nor the top 50 for overall crime. The only reason so many are focusing specifically on Chicago is because their cult leader told them to.
Chicago is the 3rd largest city in the US and has the highest total number of murders in the US. Why does this not matter to you?
Total numbers are meaningless. Per capita is what counts. I'm certain you know this.
600 people were murdered in Chicago. Absolute numbers matter. How can you say that it doesn’t matter?
How many were murdered in the US? Certainly far more
I also didn't say it didn't matter.
Also what year were 600 people murdered? Not last year and certainly not this year either.
22,830 people were like in the US as a whole. Terrifying! Why don't you care?
I made no such claim, merely pointed out the absurdity of focusing so much on Chicago while completely ignoring other places like Dayton. How come you're flat out ignoring the TWENTY other cities with a higher murder rate? It's completely disingenuous of you to focus on total murders when one surely understands that total population ultimately drives that value.
> That's a typical weekend in the US for a population the size of Chicago, nothing out of the ordinary for US fun culture.
This is an outright lie. Why don't you care about the lives being lost in Chicago?
Chicago has double the rate of homicide relative to LA, double the amount of rapes and 50% more robberies.
Why are you okay with just letting Chicago live in such high levels of violence by trying to pooh pooh away the facts?
You replace them by running new service lines using directional boring, falling back to trenching when directional boring is not an option. In the case of waste and sewer lines, you can run an epoxy coating internally (“relining”) versus replacement, which has cost savings ($100-$250/foot of pipe).
Broadly speaking, maintaining this infrastructure is expensive because the need for labor is unavoidable and it is labor intensive.
Directional what? When Chicago replaces pipes, they dig the street up, put in pipes, and lay down a new street. I’ve literally seen them do this, then one month later tear up the same street for a natural gas pipe project .
These Chicago pipes are end of life and need replaced. They have been working on it for at least 20 years.
*in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies.
https://youtu.be/jFTzwGv1sUg
https://youtu.be/t3hTQDfZrfk
https://youtu.be/BKGizzPJIqE
https://www.leadsafechicago.org/lead-service-line-replacemen...
> Replacing a lead service line with a new copper service means running the new line from the water main in the street all the way into the house. There are two ways that can be done. With open trench replacements, a trench is dug from the home through the parkway to install the new service and access the water main. Trenchless construction runs the new service to the main underground, causing less disturbance to the surrounding area. The type of procedure performed will depend on several factors specific to each replacement.
https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/water/general...
Meanwhile everyone else has moved to plastic pipes which will last longer, are cheaper, and leach no metals (microplastics don't seem to come from water lines frome what I can tell, but I'm looking for confirmation)
Copper lasts ~20 years longer than plastic, making copper a superior choice for the longevity needed for the use case. Also, copper has anti microbial properties and rarely leaches in material quantities unless the water has a low pH.
Copper is also susceptible to pinhole corrosion if iron gets into the pipes.
There are no similarly catastrophic failure scenarios for HDPE. HDPE also doesn't need plasticizers, so it should be safer than PVC.
https://www.teppfa.eu/media/industry-studies/meta-study-100-...
plastic is often rated at less but that is because they don't bother to test any longer, when properly installed and used plastic should last longer than copper.
But has the tradeoff of using lead solder at every joint
Lead solder hasn't been used in the US since 1986, when it was banned by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
“Lead free” isn’t zero lead.
> In 1986, Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), prohibiting the use of lead in pipes, and solder and flux on products used in public water systems that provide water for human consumption. Lead-free was defined as solder and flux with no more than 0.2% lead and pipes with no more than 8%.
> In 2011, Congress passed the RLDWA, which revised the definition of lead free and took effect in 2013. Lead free was now defined as the lead content of the wetted surfaces of plumbing products as a weighted average of no greater than 0.25% for products that contact water intended for consumption, and 0.2% for solder and flux.
https://www.workingpressuremag.com/epa-final-lead-free-rulin...
A lot of municipal water systems have done more recent (but by no means required) improvements to the water itself to “coat” the lead in supply lines. Beyond just pH control, like orthophosphate. Most just in the last decade or so.
For Chicago, it’s an active project
> Polyphosphate is being removed because recent studies have shown that it may negatively impact lead corrosion control.
> Polyphosphate was initially added with the orthophosphate to mask discoloration of the water from metals such as iron or manganese.
https://villageofalsip.org/Chicago%20Department%20of%20Water...
> Lead-free was defined as ... pipes with no more than 8%.
This thread has had a lot of twists and turns, but I wasn't expecting this one. Yikes.
A lot of brass fittings and fixtures with lead in them. Makes it easier to machine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of no-name Amazon and aliexpress plumbing fixtures still have a lot of lead in them. Keeps your cutting tool/machining costs down.
Even big box stores that are careful sell a lot of high lead plumbing parts - they are just marked not for potable water and sold for use with gas pipes.
Can still get full lead solder for similar reasons if you’re a cranky old plumber.
Probably can’t get away with using it in new builds but anything else, I’m sure it got used regularly well after the 1986 “ban” and still today.
Contaminants can migrate from soil through plastic, which is a problem in the rust belt, but can be dealt with an aluminum barrier layer. What is harder to avoid is endocrine-disrupting plasticizers, because of regulatory capture.
https://www.pe100plus.com/PE-Pipes/Technical-guidance/model/...
> in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies.
This is true. For the private sector, it works pretty well. Road digging permits are posted on their webpage 6+ months in advance. If you see one on a section of street you planned to do work on, you are allowed to piggyback on the project and share the cost. If you don’t, you pay the entire cost. So there is huge incentive to coordinate. But city agencies? Not quite so incentivized.
There’s lots of exceptions. The lead pipe hysteria and low pressure gas replacement is exempt from all of that.
Some states are more schizophrenic than others. New York is simultaneously mandating replacement with high pressure gas mains that require biannual inspection and banning gas lines.
Lead pipes are an engineering and chemistry issue. Pipes that are functioning properly don’t need replacement.
They aren’t trenching through yards from the street to the house to replace water service lines, they’re digging a pit where the water main is and directional boring from the street to the house and installing a new service line in the borehole.
‘Horizontal directional drilling’ is the more technical term, directional boring is more of a trade name.
The Chicagoland area is constantly rebuilding the roads regardless of what the pipes are doing... when it's warm enough anyways.
I don't know that epoxy coating is used at the municipal level. Pipe bursting with high-density polyethylene is the typical solution to avoid re-trenching municipal sewer pipes. Epoxy liners, epoxy coatings and polyurethane coatings are typical for a single property.
I would argue pipe bursting is the best trench-less solution for any place, but it is more destructive than those other three options.
I had my residential waste pipe lined with a fibreglass/resin sheath about a year ago. Inserting it was a process involving a lot of work on endoscopes and then the liner itself was adhered to the old pipe using a bladder filled with hot water. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe
It was over CA$10k to get it done, but the cost of trenching that line could have been 3-4x the amount + an unacceptable risk to the foundation of the house from destabilizing the dirt around it.
I know epoxy coating is used in large hydro power dams, so I have to assume it's used for municipal sewer lines as well.
It's somewhat funny because most epoxy is just straight BPA. Yes, that BPA.
> An aside: lead exposure is thought to lead to increase violence. I wonder if Chicago having the most lead pipes is also a contributing cause of their (reputed) crime problem.
It would be a drop in the bucket, if it's even a measurable contributing factor at all.
The primary cause is relatively boring: a century of racist housing policy, policing, under-investment, which results in a self-sustaining vicious cycle of poverty and crime. Couple that with broader national issues like the gutting of local manufacturing industry, the crack epidemic, the "war on drugs" and more and crime is what you get.
Chicago was (and still is) a segregated city, achieved indirectly through redlining and other thinly-veiled policies. Like many things, it's probably going to take much longer to fix the problem than it took to create it.
Median, normal lead exposure for toddlers in the 1960s and 1970s in any urban or suburban area would be 99th percentile by today's standards due to leaded gasoline vapors (and lack of awareness about paint dust).
So the crime hypothesis is more about baseline level of criminality being higher throughout the entire leaded gasoline era and for a few decades thereafter. It's generally framed as social science based on aggregate trends rather than individual dose-dependent epidemiological hypothesis.
Pollutants don't get in because water pipes are pressurized
Absolutely not true. Pollutants don’t get into the lines because there are decades of mineral deposits built up inside these pipes.
isn't this only true if they are always pressurized?
They are always pressurised during normal use. When they are depressurised because of a water main break or for maintenance (and they try to do this as little as possible), orders are given to flush the lines before drinking any of the water.