When you turn on your tap, think of a cigarette package.

Instead of rotting gums and blackened lungs, the images should be of your child’s shrinking brain.

That’s because many of the city’s old homes are fed water through lead pipes. And lead, ingested continually in even small amounts, has really scary effects on kids.

Reduced IQ. Attention problems. More violent behaviour.

“We found one in five children with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) have it because of lead exposure,” says Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a Simon Fraser University health sciences professor and one of North America’s experts on the effects of lead exposure to children.

“There’s no evidence of a threshold. At the lowest levels of exposure, we see the greatest IQ (decreases).”

As a parent, this is terrifying. But even if you don’t have kids, you should be concerned about what is coming out of your taps if you live in a 60-year-old home. Heart disease or stroke could be in your future.

I bring this all up because one of the things on the city’s “gravy train” is its lead pipe removal program. The city budget committee approved cutting it by $17.5 million, or 6,000 homes, this year.

But before you — like I did — jump to the conclusion that the city is trading your children’s health for a car tax, know this: We have only ourselves to blame.

Let me explain.

Three years ago, the city introduced one of the country’s most aggressive lead pipe replacement programs, aiming to rip out all city-owned lead connections within nine years.

The problem was, few people bothered to rip up the lead pipes on their own property. Some couldn’t afford the $3,000 expense. Some didn’t think it mattered. Most, I wager, didn’t know what they were dealing with — the brochure for the city’s lead pipe replacement program does not spell out the health risks. The biggest clue: The city has offered low-income parents a $100 rebate on a filter for two years now, and not a single person applied.

This in a town where people will line up overnight for Boxing Day savings.

Whatever the reason, the program may have made things worse for some people. The water coming into old homes with lead intake pipes can be even more loaded with lead. Studies show that disturbances caused by replacing only part of a pipe can stir up the lead in the remaining pipes.

It’s like those orderlies you used to see wheeling cancer patients outside the hospital for a smoke. Good intentions, bad results.

Now, city workers want to add phosphoric acid to our water system to coat the lead pipes left under the streets and reduce the amount of lead in old houses by up to half. Win-win.

Except, I don’t want even half the amount of lead in my house. Neither should you.

There is a reason Lanphear has a water filter on his kitchen tap. And why Dr. Howard Shapiro, Toronto Public Health’s associate medical health officer, paid $3,000 to have the lead pipes feeding water to his home replaced.

“Evidence shows there is no safe level of lead,” says Kathleen Cooper, senior researcher and lead expert with the Canadian Environmental Legal Association.

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Here’s an idea: The money the city is saving by not ripping up as many pipes should be spent on advertising the health dangers of lead in our water and handing out more free filters.

I’m heading out today to buy a new filter for my kitchen tap. You should too.

Catherine Porter’s column usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca