Dutch drinking water sector readiness for stricter European Union lead norm

“The revised European Union (EU) drinking water directive has imposed a stricter norm for lead in drinking water. This has necessitated a reassessment of current and future assets maintained by Dutch drinking water utilities (such as brass-containing appurtenances), primarily from the perspective of lead exposure. Should such components result in a considerable exposure, a consequent widespread rehabilitation would require a significant investment. To quantify exposure to lead from brass components in premise plumbing systems, insights from numerical modeling and laboratory experiments are combined. An important insight is that a lead leaching component present in the kitchen tap poses a much higher exposure in contrast to it being present in the service line. This underlines the need to localize lead leaching components – where is it and who needs to take action to remove it. Subsequently, the robustness and vulnerabilities of profile sampling (a lengthy flushing followed by prolonged stagnation followed by collection of a series of water samples) in localizing lead leaching components are explored. This study has led collectively to two major conclusions for the Dutch drinking water sector: (i) there is no need for accelerated rehabilitation of brass-containing appurtenances such as water meters and shutoff valves and (ii) profile sampling is to be deployed upon measuring norm exceedance.”

(Citation: Dash, A., Dignum, M., Blokker, E.J.M. – Dutch drinking water sector readiness for stricter European Union lead norm – Cambridge Prisms: Water 4(2026)e17 – https://doi.org/10.1017/wat.2026.10026 – (Open Access))

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