I'm researching my selection of a cold water only faucet for filtered drinking water and couldn't find an up-to-date thread to post in.

I know there are plenty of folks who aren't concerned about lead in water. But for those who are, and will be filtering their water, I wanted to share information about how to not put lead back into your water by selecting a faucet that contains undesirable amounts of lead.

I have a toddler, so lead in water is something I'm concerned about. I know that when my drinking water leaves the water plant, the lead levels are low. But in traveling through pipes to my home and to my faucet, I didn't know whether there was any lead in the water my kiddo drinks. So I took a water sample to a certified lab and learned that while my lead levels do not exceed the federal action levels, there is some lead. And some public health experts caution against children consuming any lead -- in other words, there is no safe level.

With this data in hand, I've decided to filter the water to my ice maker and to a dedicated faucet at the sink. I can afford the filter my water, and it will give me some peace of mind even beyond the lead, should contaminants get into the water supply.

Given that I'm going to filter the lead out of the water, it only makes sense that I would select a faucet that wouldn't let the lead back in. What I didn't know is that before 2014, "low lead" faucets could have up to 8% lead -- so not really very low lead at all. Beginning in 2014, low lead means really low lead -- less than .25%. So I'm now on the hunt for a modern, really low lead faucet and surprisingly it's both time consuming to figure out and there are many faucets that don't yet meet the new standard.

I find this U.S. EPA document to be instructive: http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100GRDZ.txt

Look for "NSF/ANSI Standard 372" for a low lead faucet.

Hope this helps someone!