Plumbers and Lead Pipes – The Origin of a Profession

In Latin, the word lead is “plombum”. It is one of the first metals that man learned to handle during the Bronze Age due to its malleability, softness and density. Lead workers, called “plumbarius” in Latin and “plummier” in Old French, eventually discovered the metal’s resistance to corrosion and decided to use it for more than just weapons and building materials: they created the first “modern” pipes. Thus, the word “plumber” is derived from plumbum because all plumbers were originally lead workers.

Following the innovations of the open trench and hollowed-out tree trunk, lead was used to create sophisticated pipe networks, primarily in Rome. Plumarius would form the lead pipes by creating sheets of molten metal and bending them inward to form a circle. They then crimped the metal where the two sides met, which made a watertight seal. As they did with many technologies, the Romans took lead pipe technology above that of their predecessors and beyond their immediate successors. The Romans created huge bathhouses with hot and cold water! To finish the water’s journey to the large bathhouses, which were used for communal events, including social gatherings and political negotiations, elaborate faucets and water spouts were created, many of which were also made of lead.

A couple of thousand years later, after many of the secrets to melting different types of metals had been discovered, lead was still in use, especially in the booming cities of the United States. Lead was still used during the Industrial Revolution for its resistance to corrosion, but it was also combined with iron at that time. Rigid metals like iron, combined with lead, facilitated the expansion of the plumbing system and the vertical demands of multi-story buildings. However, in the 20th century, copper took the lead in the plumbing pipe industry due to its abundance and similar resistance to corrosion. Still, lead solder was used to join copper pipes until the last quarter of the 20th century, when the health effects that had plagued America and Rome for so long were traced to their origin.

Lead, whether ingested orally or through skin contact, acts as a neurotoxin and has been found to cause long-term health damage and even death. Long-term exposure causes nephropathy and colic-like abdominal pain, affecting all organs of the body. All of these reasons, along with a plethora of people who have been defeated by the devastating effects of lead, led Congress to pass the Safe Drinking Water Act. This means that the pipes that carry consumable water to humans must be relatively free of lead. I say relatively because 0.2% lead is allowed in solder and 8% in plumbing. These ratios of lead to other plumbing material have been found by the government to be acceptable and do not cause harm.

People need to know what is behind the walls of their home and allow professional plumbers to fix the problem and give new meaning to the word “plumber”.