California Plastic Pipes & Water Contamination

This is an excerpt of the December 21, 2020 episode of What's Up With Water. This week Circle of Blue reports on a new study revealing the water contamination risks of plastic pipes exposed to the heat of wildfires. In California, wildfires have been brutal in recent years. They have incinerated millions of acres of forest and blazed through developed areas with vicious force. Fifteen of the 20 most destructive fires in California history have occurred since 2015, obliterating thousands of homes and buildings statewide, from the Sierra Nevada foothills to the Coast Range. Because these fires are now burning where people live — or, people are living where the fires are — new hazards to health and infrastructure have emerged in the ashes. Among them is the contamination of drinking water, which occurred after catastrophic fires in Santa Rosa, in 2017, and in Paradise a year later.