The World Health Organization estimates that 240 million people worldwide are exposed to unsafe levels of toxic lead in their drinking water.
Millions of households in the United States continue to rely on lead pipes, a dangerous and outdated infrastructure that poses a significant health risk.
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Studies suggest that lead exposure from contaminated water contributes to over a million deaths annually.
Testing for lead can be expensive, but now, new technology will make it easier and less expensive to test the water you and your family are drinking.
Flint, Michigan, made headlines when lead levels in children doubled. But they are not the only ones: High lead levels have been found in tap water in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark, New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C.
A National Resources Defense Council analysis found that 56% of the U.S. population is drinking from water systems with detectable levels of lead.
“Once they get into a human, they sort of accumulate over time,” said Jia Xu Brian Sia, a material scientist at MIT.
Current EPA regulations require drinking water to contain no more than 15 parts per billion of lead.
“The right amount is literally zero,” said Luigi Ranno, a research assistant at MIT.
But current testing is costly, uses large equipment and takes days to get results. Now a new team at MIT has developed a new system using a simple chip-based detector that uses light to detect lead.
“Rather than using electrons or electricity to transmit information, we use light,” explained Ranno.
By using photonic chips, in less than five minutes the new system can detect levels as low as one part per billion. The system is portable, inexpensive and highly accurate.
And they plan to take it from the MIT lab to your home within two years, hoping to save lives around the world.
“That’s why we are doing it,” Sia said.
Too much lead can affect brain development in children, cause birth defects, can cause damage to the brain and kidneys, and can interfere with the production of red blood cells that carry oxygen to all parts of the body.
And once it is in the body, lead can be stored in your bones for years.
The MIT technology can not only detect lead but can also be adapted to detect cadmium, copper, lithium, barium, cesium and radium.