&gt;It&#x27;s hard to imagine why the U.S. ever had a single lead water pipe, let alone huge numbers of them.<p>I always supposed that that&#x27;s where the word &#x27;plumber&#x27; came from, or &#x27;loodgieter&#x27; (lead caster, Dutch). Both words strongly refer to lead. Growing up in Holland in the early 80&#x27;s our house had lead pipes. When I bought my first house in 2003 it too still had a lead water main. I drank a lot of that water, tap water over here has the same purity (basically actually is the same) as mineral water, with no side effects.