Got a letter in the mail yesterday from the water company which basically says, "Warning, we don't know if the private service line that runs from our lead-free pipes into your home, which you are responsible for, is lead or not and here is what you should do."

Hubby and I first freaked out but then calmer minds have sort of prevailed, and I'm not sure how to proceed. We have lived in this house for 25 years. The house itself is almost 100. My initial thought is that the water company did some sort of internal audit and discovered that they have no record of the makeup of our private service line. Which just means they have no record and perhaps this letter is their legal CYA letter. They have a guide for helping you determine if you have lead pipes, but this is not very helpful. It doesn't look like the picture of a lead pipe with the bulbous ends, and the pipes have threads, but are not magnetic. So maybe lead? I also can't tell from the scratch test they recommend. It's all just old and brown when I scratch it. They also asked me to take a photo and indicate what type of pipe it is and submit it through an online form (which again makes me think this is a CYA thing). I chose "unknown" and submitted the photo.

Neither of us has ever had any health issues that would indicate lead poisoning. We both get yearly extensive blood panels because of "the old" and no doctor has ever raised a concern about what they see and related it to lead (hubby has hypertension, but lead is not the only cause of hypertension).

I've had a plumber down there who put a shut off valve on the main line, but after the pressure gauge, so not really where the service line comes out of the wall, but my plumber is a rock star and I would like to believe that he would have noticed it when he was down there if it physically looked like lead. Maybe I'm delusional.

I also looked back at our home inspection, and while there was never a lead water test, there are pictures of the service line in the inspection but nothing indicates that there may be lead pipes in the inspection report. Is this even a thing they would check? And if they did, would they put in the report that it definitely ISN'T lead, or would they only note if they id'ed it as lead?

I ordered a lead water test kit off Amazon to try the cheap route before I panic and start wondering how I am going to fix this if in fact it is lead. I guess I'm just wondering how to proceed and how worried or not worried I should be. Why after 25 years is this suddenly a thing? I called the water company to try and get more info but they have a 3-day call back waiting period.