If you live in Kamloops or the Okanagan and you’re just finding out that your drinking water comes through asbestos cement pipes you might be concerned, but authorities say there is no evidence that you need to worry.

For years asbestos was used in everything in construction from flooring to roofing and even water pipes laid throughout B.C. Now that asbestos is well known to cause cancer, the sensible thing to do is get rid of it. But, scientists and experts have found that asbestos cement pipes don’t need to be replaced because they don’t pose a risk.

Concerns about asbestos are consistent. The non-profit Prevent Cancer Now publicly catalogued asbestos cement pipes following a Parliamentary Petition in 2023 that raised concerns about asbestos pipes and asked for review, which came up with no evidence of danger.

The City of Kelowna’s utility services manager Rod MacLean said the pipes don’t actually leak asbestos in any harmful amount.

“When we’re drinking water and through these pipes, the amount of asbestos in the water system is absolutely negligible,” he said.

Kelowna has roughly 192 km of asbestos cement pipes, West Kelowna has 50 km, Penticton has 27.4 km, the Regional District of North Okanagan has 200 km and Kamloops has 174 km. In B.C. 75 per cent of drinking water jurisdictions reported asbestos cement pipes.

The pipes were generally installed between the 1940s and and 1960s, but were discontinued in the 1970s.

The federal government said that asbestos fibres are effectively removed from drinking water supplies by standard treatment and they aren’t leached into drinking water unless the pipes are degraded or damaged.

Asbestos is harmful if inhaled but Health Canada and the World Health Organization say that drinking trace amounts of asbestos isn’t harmful since your body poops it out.

MacLean said new evidence could be found that shows risk, but at the moment the science doesn’t give cause for concern.

“We know that degradation is a problem or can be a problem, but it is negligible. And right now it’s treated that way. I can’t say in the future that this won’t change,” he said.

MacLean said there are a lot of things that can go wrong with a water supply and asbestos from water pipes isn’t a high priority.

“Compared to all of the other things that can go wrong in a drinking water supply, asbestos is the lowest on the totem pole,” he said.

The pipes have a lifespan of roughly 80 years, so they’re due to be replaced in the coming years.

“We track the conditioning age of all asbestos cement pipes in our inventory. We look at the condition and whether it degrades or not. . . We take water security seriously at the City of Kelowna,” he said.

Water utilities are not even required to test for levels of asbestos.

“Even the Canadian drinking water guidelines don’t point to problems or, or reports on any, any damages that occur from it,” MacLean said.

The biggest health risks are for people who work on repairing or replacing pipes since the asbestos can get released into the air and inhaled.

“The concerns that we have about asbestos pipe is if we have to go and repair it. We go to extra lengths to make sure that we have the safety, the work safe protocols in place for workers to go and say, cut the pipe or fix a leak or a pipe break,” he said.

He said the City of Kelowna keeps an eye on these kinds of things.

“We manage the safety so that everybody feels confident in the quality of their drinking water,” MacLean said.