Are you worried?

DJ, I don't see why speaking of asbestos is not nice. it was a fact that in the 70's asbestos was prevalent in our food and drink. Asbestos pulp was used as a filtering agent in the food industry and us and our children would have ingested it without any knowledge of it. This is a different issue to the asbestos industry and it's dangers, which were known, if ignored.

We discuss the dangers of man made chemicals etc. yet asbestos, a natural material, has proven far more dangerous than many of those chemicals and is still a major danger as so much still exists. To not speak of it and it's dangers would be ignoring it.

Anya, old lead piping in hard water areas is not a danger as the water forms a scale which seals the water from the lead. Soft water areas are at risk.

Wobbly apparently you can ask for your water company to test your tap water for lead levels. So that's in the pipeline for us, if you'll,excuse the pun.

Yes you can, and they will. We had a concern over the taste of our water a few years ago, they came and tested it quite quickly. The problem was caused by higher than normal levels of chlorine due to a dry summer, the chlorine was reacting with the rubber seal in our kettle.

Lead is a natural constituent of ground water in many areas along with other minerals.

In our area we still have many miles of asbestos cement water pipes, which is why our mains pressure is so low, the pipes cannot take more pressure, provided they are not damaged, they are supposed to be safe.