Yes. If the water service under your lawn is lead, it should come out. Toronto Lead Pipe Solutions replaces those lines for Toronto and GTA homeowners, and the reason is simple: the pipe itself is the source of the lead in the water.
Health Canada set the drinking-water guideline for lead at 5 micrograms per litre (0.005 mg/L) in 2019, down from 10. The same guidance says levels should be kept as low as reasonably achievable, because there is no known safe amount of lead in blood. A service line made of lead cannot meet that standard on its own. Water sitting in the pipe picks up lead. The longest sit is overnight, so the first draw in the morning is the sample that fails.
What the pipe actually does to the water
Lead does not have to flake off in chunks to be a problem. It dissolves. Soft water, hot water, low pH, and water that has been still for hours all increase how much comes off the pipe wall. Toronto Water adds a phosphate corrosion inhibitor to slow that process. It helps. It does not take the lead pipe away, and it does not hold the level at zero. Homes that still have a lead service regularly measure above the 5 µg/L guideline, especially on that first morning litre.
The people who pay for that are the ones whose bodies are still building. Lead crosses the placenta. It shows up in breast milk. In children it is tied to lower IQ, attention problems, and hearing effects, and the damage is not something you reverse with a better diet later. In adults the same metal raises blood pressure and is linked to kidney disease. It stores in bone and leaks back out during pregnancy, menopause, and broken bones. A glass of water is a small dose. Forty years of glasses is not.
Filters and flushing are a holdover, not a fix
Running the cold tap until the water from the street arrives, usually 30 to 60 seconds and longer in a big house, drops the lead from the water that was sitting in your service. A filter certified to NSF/ANSI 53 for lead reduction, or a reverse-osmosis unit certified to NSF/ANSI 58, will take most of the rest out at that one tap. Both of these work only if they happen every time. A filter past its rated litres does not remove lead. The kitchen tap can be protected while the kettle, the bathroom cup, and the pot used for pasta are not.
Use a filter and flush if you are waiting on a replacement, and use cold water for drinking and cooking. Do not boil water to remove lead. Boiling concentrates it. Then book the replacement. The habit is not the solution.
A partial replacement can make it worse
This is the part most pamphlets skip. If only the city's half of the service is replaced, or only yours, lead levels in the house can go up for weeks or months. Cutting into an old lead pipe exposes fresh metal. Connecting new copper directly to a leftover piece of lead can set up galvanic corrosion, which eats the lead faster than the old pipe was leaching on its own. Health Canada and the U.S. EPA both warn about partial lead service replacements for this reason.
The useful job is the whole service: city side and private side, done together when the city will coordinate, or the private side as soon as possible if the city has already done theirs. Galvanized steel that used to sit downstream of lead is a second problem. Rust inside galvanized pipe traps lead scale and releases it later. If the basement run is old galvanized, replacing the yard pipe and leaving that rusted indoor line can keep lead in the water.
When to stop waiting
Replace it if anyone in the house is pregnant, nursing, or under six. Replace it if you are about to sell or renovate, because the line will come up on an inspection and the trench is easier before a new driveway goes in. Replace it if the city has already swapped their portion and your side is still the original grey pipe. Age of the house is the screen: Toronto stopped using lead for new water services in the mid-1950s, so a pre-1955 house is the one to check first.
A scratch test at the meter takes a minute. A permitted replacement takes a day on most lots, and the water is back on the same day in most cases. Toronto Lead Pipe Solutions will look at the pipe for free and give you a written price before anyone digs.
Written by Toronto Lead Pipe Solutions Team