Is Your Garden Hose Hazardous to Your Health?

The garden hose is a common, one could almost say ubiquitous, gardening tool. No serious gardener would be without a way to bring water to the furthest reaches of their garden plots. It’s a bit scary to think that your garden hose could be a health hazard, but it’s a fact. Here’s why.

Many cheap garden hoses are made of polyvinyl chloride – PVC. PVC uses lead as a stabilizer, and that lead can leach into water standing in the hose. In fact, when Consumer Reports tested a number of garden hoses, they found that the amount of lead in water that has stood in a hose can be as much as 100 times the allowable concentration of lead. That’s enough to cause lead poisoning in some people – particularly in small children who are much more sensitive to the effects of lead and whose bodies are much less efficient at eliminating it. And THAT is a particularly troubling because – think about it – who in your family is most likely to grab a cold drink from the inviting garden hose? Children, who are most prone to damage from lead, which can permanently damage their brains and nervous systems.

Should you worry about lead if you water your vegetables and fruit with a PVC garden hose? Research shows that plants don’t generally absorb lead through watering, but plants grown in soil with a high lead concentration can show elevated levels of lead. Soil, on the other hand, does retain lead for a long time – it’s part of the reason that children in urban neighborhoods shouldn’t play in lots where old houses have been demolished. How long does it take to build up toxic levels of lead in your gardening soil if you’re watering it with lead-laced water every day? No one really knows.

Luckily, there is a solution – replace your old PVC hose with a drinking safe garden hose. These hoses are made from rubber or have an interior coating that prevents any chemical leaching into the water that passes through it. They come in all sizes and diameters, so you should have no trouble finding a ½” garden hose or ¾” garden hose in 25-foot and 50-foot lengths, the most common garden hose sizes.

And if you go to the trouble of buying a drinking safe garden hose, be sure to follow these other tips for making sure your garden hose is safe for drinking water.

-          After use, drain your garden hose and store it on a garden hose reel to prevent standing water inside it.

-          Keep the hose out of direct sunlight, which can heat the hose to high temperatures and incubate any bacteria inside it.

-          Let the water run for a minute or two before drinking from the hose or filling drinking containers from it. That will flush out any standing water that might be harboring bacteria.