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Cheap sewer pipe repairs can push toxic fumes into homes and schools – here's how to lower the risk

Andrew J. Whelton, Professor of Civil, Environmental & Ecological Engineering, Director of the Healthy Plumbing Consortium and Center for Plumbing Safety, Purdue University, The Conversation on

Published in Health & Fitness

Across the U.S., children and adults are increasingly exposed to harmful chemicals from a source few people are even aware of.

It begins on a street outside a home or school, where a worker in a manhole is repairing a sewer pipe. The contractor inserts a resin-soaked sleeve into the buried pipe, then heats it, transforming the resin into a hard plastic pipe.

This is one of the cheapest, most common pipe repair methods, but it comes with a serious risk: Heating the resin generates harmful fumes that can travel through the sewer lines and into surrounding buildings, sometimes several blocks away.

These chemicals have made hundreds of people ill, forced building evacuations and even led to hospitalizations. Playgrounds, day care centers and schools in several states have been affected, including in Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

With the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law now sending hundreds of millions of dollars into communities across the U.S. to fix broken pipes, the number of children and adults at risk of exposure will likely increase.

For more than a decade, my colleagues and I have worked to understand and reduce the risks of this innovative pipe repair technique. In two new studies, in the Journal of Environmental Health and Environmental Science and Technology Letters, we show that workers, and even bystanders, including children, lack adequate protection.

 

Our research also shows the technology can be used safely if companies take appropriate action.

As U.S. water infrastructure ages, communities nationwide are grappling with thousands of broken sewer pipes in their 1.3 million-mile inventory.

The new law provides US$11 billion for sewer fixes, about one-fifth of the EPA’s estimate of the need.

The least expensive repair method is called cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP. It avoids the need to dig up and replace pipes. Instead, contractors insert a resin-saturated sleeve in the manhole and through the buried pipe. The resin is then “cooked,” typically with steam or hot water, and transformed into a hard plastic.

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