California’s Regulatory Fantasyland: Brass and Lead Edition

Last night was one of those nights when I was mad as hell at the California State government and their foolish, micro-managing, Big-Nanny ways.  (Caution, dear reader, such rage at the machine has been known to cause the temporary insanity of running for public office.)

The cause of my extended rant?  AB 1953, a law passed in 2006 that goes into effect on January 1, 2010, the purpose of which was to define lead-free plumbing from 4% in fixtures down to the European Union standard of 0.25%.  Not that the science supported this change.  Once lead was removed as a gasoline additive, taken out of paints, and removed from plumbing (the Latin word for plumbing is where we get the chemical symbol for lead: Pb), human lead exposure dropped significantly.  Having a small percentage of lead bound up in a brass alloy plumbing fixture isn’t going to add a statistically meaningful amount of lead exposure to anyone.

Today’s story began when my family bought a 4-bedroom house in Irvine in 1998.  The house, built in 1979, had the original chrome-plated sink fixtures when we moved in.  As soon as I could afford it, I installed solid brass bathroom fixtures.

Well, our master bathroom faucet sprung a very slow leak on the cold water handle a few months back.  Having a few spare hours, I found the leak on the valve, took it apart, and trekked down to Lowe’s.

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