Are You Drinking Acidic Water? The Silent Risks of Low pH (and How to Find Out)

A caller in Connecticut had just gotten his lab report back and the first line on it was lead. The house was built in 2006, the sample came straight off the well tank, and the pH was 6.8. He wanted to know how a well could have lead in it. The short answer is that it did not; the likeliest source was the brass tee on his tank, and the slightly acidic water dissolving it. That is the whole story of acidic water and your health: the acid is not the worry, what it pulls out of the metal between the well and your glass is. This page is what I tell people who call me with a report like that in hand: what the risk actually is, the numbers on the report that matter, whose house is the lead case, and what to do about it this week, starting with the one test that shows pH, copper and lead from a single sample.

The acid is not what hurts you

The EPA puts pH (the acidity number on a test strip) on its nuisance list, next to taste and staining, and puts copper and lead on its health list, naming "corrosion of household plumbing systems" as the source of both. The effects the EPA lists for low pH itself are "bitter metallic taste; corrosion." So the acid is the cause and the metals are the harm, and the question this page answers is how much metal, in whose house, and what to do about it. For scale: about 18 percent of the wells my customers have had lab-tested came back acidic, and how often those wells were also over the EPA lines for copper and lead is in the table below.

Acidic water puts copper in your drinking water

Acidic water dissolves copper from your pipes into the water you drink, and a lot of times you do not know it. That is how I put it in the video below. A copper pipe does not get thinner into thin air; every bit of metal that leaves the pipe wall is in the water that went past it. In a house with copper plumbing you can see the evidence as blue-green stains where the water dries. At higher copper levels people have sent me pictures of buckets they filled from the tap where the water itself was blue-green, and that much copper is toxic to drink.

The EPA puts the copper action level at 1.3 ppm. Short-term exposure above it, the EPA says, causes gastrointestinal distress; long-term exposure causes liver or kidney damage; and anyone with Wilson's disease should talk to their doctor if their water is over it. Copper gives a metallic taste and blue-green staining from about 1.0 ppm, which is why the taste often arrives before the number does. In the lab tests my customers send in, the acidic wells carried about five times the copper of the neutral ones, and the highest acidic result was 10.8 ppm, more than eight times the EPA limit.

A buyer whose water was pH 6 wrote that it "was picking up an unhealthy level of copper," and after the neutralizer went in he "had the water retested by a lab and the copper is well below the threshold for concern." That is the sequence: fix the pH, and the copper number at the tap follows it down.

Three minutes on camera: where acidic water comes from, why a plastic-pipe house shows nothing, lead solder in older houses, and how to get the water tested.

Lead (the bigger concern, in pre-1986 homes)

Until the 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments, plumbers were legally allowed to use lead-tin solder to join copper pipes. The Act prohibits solder or flux that is not lead free after June 1986, so a house plumbed before then very likely has lead at every soldered joint, and acidic water dissolves that lead the same way it dissolves the copper. If you have acidic water in a house built up to 1986, there is a good chance you have lead in the water as well, and you are consuming the lead along with the copper. The EPA's action level for lead is 0.015 ppm (15 parts per billion) and its health goal is zero, because, in the EPA's words, lead "can be harmful to human health even at low exposure levels." For children the EPA lists behavior and learning problems, lower IQ, slowed growth, hearing problems and anemia, and says there is no known safe level of lead in a child's blood. For adults it lists kidney problems and high blood pressure.

Two things I tell customers that the 1986 rule does not cover. First, lead does not come from the well. In thirty-two years of doing this I have not seen it come from lead deposits in the ground; it comes from the plumbing. The Connecticut caller I opened with had lead as the first line on a report from a house built in 2006, sampled right at the well tank, and the likeliest answer was the brass tee on the tank: brass can be made with lead, and the EPA says that where there is no lead service line, the most common source is brass or chrome-plated brass faucets and fittings and lead solder. So a newer house is not automatically clear. Second, acidity raises the odds but a normal pH does not clear you either: of the acidic wells my customers have had tested, about one in eight was over the lead limit, and so was about one in twelve of the wells at pH 7 and up. That is why the lead number comes from a lab test, not from the pH.

A caller in Alaska had uranium, radon and "a little bit of lead" on his report and had already worked out that "the lead's from the acid." He was right. With older copper pipes and a low pH, the lead is coming off the solder, and once the pH is corrected the lead level at the tap should drop with it.

What your lab report numbers mean

Three lab results decide whether acidic water is a health problem in your house: pH, copper and lead. The EPA has a limit or range for each. Find your three numbers and read across. The right-hand column is how often the acidic wells my customers tested were over the line, so you can see how common each problem is rather than guess.

One thing about the sample. Copper and lead come from your pipes, not your well, so the number depends on how long the water sat in the pipes before it was drawn. The EPA says it directly: the more time water has been sitting in pipes, the more lead it may contain. The sample that answers "what does my family drink at breakfast" is the first water out of the kitchen cold tap in the morning, before anyone has run it. A sample taken after the water has run tells you what the well is doing; the first-draw sample tells you what the pipes are adding.

If the strip reads below 7

Only a lab test shows copper and lead

A hardware-store strip is enough to know the water is acidic. The certified lab test, mailed to you, run by an accredited lab, is for the two health numbers a strip cannot see: copper and lead at your tap, from a sample taken before anyone runs water in the morning.

See the certified well water test ($199)

53 contaminants. Results reviewed by Aidan, in plain English. On city water, use the city water test.

What drinking acidic water feels like

Most people first notice acidic water by its taste. The EPA lists a bitter metallic taste for low pH itself, and a metallic taste for copper above about 1.0 ppm. Iron tastes much the same, so the taste tells you something is dissolved in the water but not which metal; the lab report does that. A Maryland caller with a pH of 5 told me their son "can tell when water's not good," and kids often can. Two buyers described the change the other way round: one wrote that she "never cared for the taste of the water" from her well and that after the neutralizer it "tastes almost as good as bottled water"; another wrote simply, "Finally, we can drink our water from the tap!"

Beyond taste, what you feel depends on the metal and the dose. For copper the EPA's short-term effect is gastrointestinal distress, an upset stomach, and the long-term effects are to the liver and kidneys. Lead gives no taste and no symptom you would connect to the water, which is why it is measured and not felt. I am often asked whether acidic water is bad for your teeth, skin or hair. I do not have a source that says water at the pH a well produces harms any of them, and the EPA lists none; on skin specifically the EPA says human skin does not absorb lead from water and that bathing and showering are safe even when the water is over the lead action level. One buyer with pH 5.0 water did write that his "skin feels much more normal after showers" once the tank went in, which I pass along as one man's report, not a finding.

Plastic-pipe houses show no warning

If you do not have copper plumbing there is really no way to tell the water is acidic unless you get it tested. The blue-green stain that warns a copper-plumbed house is copper from the pipes; a house plumbed in PEX (the red and blue flexible tubing) or CPVC (the cream-colored rigid pipe) has no copper to stain with, so the water can be acidic for years with nothing to see. Most new houses are plumbed that way. What those houses do have is brass: the diverter valve in the wall behind the shower, the shut-offs, the tee on the well tank, the faucets. Acidic water attacks brass too, and in a plastic-pipe house the first sign is usually a diverter or a fixture that fails, years in.

So the rule is the same whether the house is old copper or new plastic: get the water tested. The strip tells you the pH; the lab tells you what the fittings have been adding to it. What the signs look like in a copper house, and how to tell them from iron, is on signs of acidic water.

Nobody tests a private well for you

Nobody routinely tests a private well for pH, copper or lead. The EPA's 6.5 to 8.5 range is guidance a private well is not required to meet, so the only person who will test your water is you. A Virginia caller buying a new house on its first well was told by the seller that "the water is potable and the health department passed." He said what I would have said: that does not mean it is safe to drink. The test a health department runs before a house can be occupied checks bacteria, nitrates and turbidity. It does not check pH, copper or lead, and in Virginia most of the homes we ship to have acidic water. On city water the utility is required to control how corrosive the water is; on a well there is no such rule, which is why the EPA tells private well owners to test every year for bacteria, nitrates, dissolved solids and pH. If nobody has tested yours, the report you are waiting for does not exist yet.

What to do this week

Check the pH today with a strip. Then send a lab sample taken before anyone runs water in the morning, for copper and lead. Follow the EPA precautions while you wait, then fix the pH once the results are in. In order:

1. Today: check the pH with a strip or pocket meter. The kit in the plumbing aisle at Lowe's or Home Depot, or one from Amazon, answers "is it acidic" in a minute. Below 7.0, keep going.
2. This week: one certified lab test, sampled first thing in the morning. Take the copper and lead sample first thing in the morning, from the kitchen cold tap. One well water test reports pH, copper, lead, hardness and iron together, which is every number a neutralizer is sized from. On city water, use the city water test.
3. While you wait: follow the EPA's precautions. Run the cold tap before you drink or cook with it, since the water that sat in the pipes overnight carries the most lead. Use only cold water for drinking, cooking and baby formula; boiling does not remove lead. Infants on mixed formula can get 40 to 60 percent of their lead exposure from the water, so use bottled water for formula until the report is back. Showering and bathing are fine; skin does not absorb lead from water. If you use a pitcher or tap filter, the EPA says to make sure it is certified to remove lead.
4. Send me the report. Text a photo of the numbers to 443-277-2204. I will tell you which of the three lines matters in your house and what, if anything, goes in the line.
5. Below pH 7.0: fix the water. The copper and lead at your tap come from the water dissolving your plumbing; raise the pH to about 7 and the dissolving stops. That is the next section.

Ask Aidan

Have a lab report in hand?

Text me a photo of the pH, copper and lead lines. I will tell you whether the water is the problem in your house and what, if anything, belongs in the line.

Text Aidan 443-277-2204 Call800-460-5810Aidan

8 AM to 5 PM Eastern, seven days a week. A real person, usually Aidan.

How an acid neutralizer stops the metals

An acid neutralizer is a tank of crushed limestone (calcite) connected right after the well pressure tank. Water moves up through the limestone and comes out at about pH 7, where it stops dissolving copper, brass and solder. There are no chemicals in it and nothing is added to the water except a little of the limestone itself, which comes out as a small increase in hardness. A Delaware caller with a 1960s copper-plumbed house and "a little bit of blue staining" had been quoted a chemical injection system by his well driller; I told him what I tell everyone, that we do not use those because they have to be maintained monthly, and that a calcite tank is self-regulating. The 2.5 cubic foot non-backwashing model has no electronics, no drain line and no moving parts.

1. Acidic water comes in at the valve on top.
2. It travels down the center tube.
3. It comes out through the slotted plate at the bottom.
4. It rises up through the calcite (crushed limestone), and the pH climbs to about 7.
5. Neutral water leaves at the valve and goes to the house.
6. The fill port on the shoulder is where the calcite bags go in.

What goes in the tank depends on your pH: plain calcite down to 5.5 in the 2.5 cubic foot tank, calcite with FloMag (a stronger magnesium-based mineral) mixed in below that, and with the blend the water lands between 7 and 8. The 2.5 cubic foot tank in the cutaway is $1,495 shipped with calcite, $1,695 with the FloMag blend. You check the calcite level once a year with a flashlight; on a 2.5 cubic foot tank it needs more bags about every 30 to 36 months. The tank, valve and calcite ship separately and the calcite is loaded at install; I recommend a licensed plumber and I support your plumber by phone at 800-460-5810.

The rest of the cluster covers the pieces this page does not: how to fix acidic well water for the full method, the sizing guide for which tank fits your house and pH, servicing an acid neutralizer for the yearly check, and the cost guide for the whole bill.

What five buyers noticed after the fix

Five verified buyers, 2020 through 2025, describe what their water was doing and what they noticed once the pH was corrected. These are verified purchases from our product pages, in the buyers' own words, newest first.

Frequently asked questions