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abundant  adjective - existing or available in large quantities

dissolved  verb - become or cause to become incorporated into a liquid

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Lead is poisonous to humans and can easily mix with water. After you know this, you probably would not drink water from a lead cup. But millions of people do this every day. A large percentage of the pipes in the world are made out of the lead. And we humans knew about the dark side of lead for centuries, but it has some advantages that cannot be neglected.

Lead is an abundant material here on Earth. It can be easily extracted from ores as it melts at relatively low temperatures and also is very soft, which allows us to form pipe shapes from it.

In antiquity, some scholars presumed lead is poisonous. But in reality, there are some places that water delivered by lead pipes is dangerous, and there are others where it is not. The reason for this took a lot of time to be discovered. 

It turns out water with a high concentration of dissolved minerals can form a protective shield around the pipe and makes the water safe to drink. But in others with a low level of minerals, the water is poisonous, and people are poisoning themselves slowly but surely. 

Even though today, a lot of efforts are directed towards replacing old lead pipes with newly made out of different materials, this is a costly and slow process.

Why are we using lead pipes?