Ontario's Chief Water Inspector announced earlier this week that the Environment Ministry will order testing of water in 36 towns and cities because people living in older homes may be exposed to lead in their drinking water.

Chief water inspector Jim Smith said he had written to every municipality in Ontario last month suggesting they test lead levels at taps in their homes after high lead levels were found in about 25 per cent of older London, Ont. homes.

Smith is recommending the testing because of lead service lines or lead solder used to connect the pipes.

Sarnia is the only town to report its findings. Two of 14 homes tested had lead levels in tap water above provincial standards.

"I've determined that I should send out orders to a number of municipalities' drinking water systems so I get the information quicker than what I'm seeing happen across the province," Smith said in an interview.

Hamilton and Owen Sound have also reported finding lead in drinking water inside homes above the provincial standard of less than 10 micrograms per litre.

The Ministry of the Environment says most municipalities will test lead water levels for free. However, if the service line has to be replaced, the homeowner will end up paying about $2,000.

Kelly O' Grady of Lead Environmental Awareness and Detection acknowledges that addressing the issue of high lead levels in the home is not cheap.

"It's expensive to get rid of lead pipes, especially if it's the copper pipes with the soldered joints," O'Grady said. "It's very, very expensive to rid your house of that type of plumbing. So what you can do is get an inexpensive charcoal filter and use it for drinking and cooking water."

O'Grady started Lead Environmental Awareness and Detection in 1998 after discovering one of her children had been poisoned by lead levels in water.

"He was very difficult to manage," O'Grady told Canada AM. "He was having behavioural problems. And I was always already an experienced parent, so I was wondering what's going on with this child."

O'Grady said a 1996 report by a U.S. child psychiatrist indicating bone lead levels were the greatest predictors of behavioural problems in adolescent boys, led her to examine environmental factors and how they may have been affecting her child.

Experts had previously thought that running the tap until the water temperature became colder would rid it of lead, but they now say this is not guaranteed.

The list of Ontario communities to be tested includes:

Alexandria, Amherstburg, Atikokan, Beardmore, Belleville, Brantford, Brockville, Burlington, Chatham, Cornwall, Dryden, Fort Frances, Guelph, Hamilton, Kenora, Kingston, Lindsay, North Bay, Perth, Peterborough, Picton, Renfrew, Sault Ste. Marie, St. Catharines, St. Marys, Smiths Falls, South Peel, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Timmins, Toronto

With files from The Canadian Press