Lead poisoning: can filtered water still contain lead? tastes very sweet... please help!?

i'm a college student. the water here is not very good (you can sometimes smell the chlorine in the shower...)

bottled water is really expensive so I use a brita filter pitcher. I noticed my water lately has been undesireably sweet. I just changed my filter and ran water through it a few times and the water still tastes REALLY sweet.

I've been known to be picky about water in the past, but I think this is really quite pronounced.

I've read that lead has a sweet taste and sweet water is a sign of toxic levels of lead... i need to drink water though!

this filter supposedly reduces 98.7% of lead. my water has tasted fine in the past... anyone? help!

Here's the problem.... filters only filter.
Yeah, I'm sure everyone is saying "duh!", but my point is that it can only remove a certain amount and it's not perfect in removing things.

However.... you're right that it reduces almost all of the lead. If you are using a water filter that does that, the only way that there is enough lead to cause a problem is if there is hugely toxic levels of lead in the regular tap water.
In other words, there's not enough lead to hurt you, and you're not tasting lead being that sweet. Lead acetate may have a sweet taste (that was the only form of lead that I could find that mentioned a sweet taste), but so do many other things. There may be some potent sweetener that fell into your pitcher (hey, I've seen it happen), or there could be some other chemical combination.

If you're really concerned about the water quality, you could ask for the college's toxicity reports for the tap water. Assuming they'll let you see it, you should see how little lead is in there (which HAS to be under EPA standards or the college would be shut down until it was fixed).

Agree with the previous response. But the question is whether the pitcher is NSF-certified for lead. Before you purchase the next pitcher, check NSF's website for a list of certified pitcher for the specific water problem.

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