Brass PEX fittings corrosion risk

[ShadowAviator]

A local plumber mentioned he prefers using the plastic PEX fittings since the brass can have corrosion issues. I did some reading and it appears there was an issues with dezincification on some fittings. I read about Zurn ending up in a lawsuit or something.

Most of my fittings are from Viega, so I called them and asked. Apparently Viega switched to using bronze 6 years ago or so. So those fittings are probably okay.

However, I do have some brass fittings I got off of supplyhouse.com. The brand was Bluefin (imported from China, I think).

I guess my question is, did the issues with the brass fittings ever get corrected?

I suppose the safe thing would be to just stick with Viega, but if the other brass fittings are fine then I don't want to just leave them lying around.

Edit: To make things more confusing, according to Viega's website the fittings are brass. I think its called Eco-Brass or something. Not sure what to think.

 

[Gsmith22]

Brass and Bronze are both copper alloys meaning they are predominantly copper. Brass is a mix of copper and zinc. Bronze is a mix of copper and tin. There tend to be other metals mixed in too but something like 99% of the composition of the two alloys are these metals. I haven't researched Viega's product line but I am pretty sure it is probably brass and not bronze due to the greater ease in fitting production with brass relative to bronze. Probably the easiest way to tell them apart is the exterior surface - brass tends to be smooth and bronze tends to be rough. A bronze part has to be cast and the rough surface is from the mold. Bronze also tends to have more lead naturally and with the requirement of lead free materials for potable water, the use of bronze has diminished for potable water.

Brass comes in two flavors - red and yellow with the main difference being the amount of copper. Red brass is like 85% copper while yellow brass is more like 60% copper (red is correspondingly more expensive than yellow). The de-zincificaiton occurred to yellow brass fittings as the zinc was corroded away by the water. With less copper, there was more to corrode in yellow brass leading to leaks. So manufacturers switched to red brass to combat this problem. My guess is the problem was somewhat water content dependent but they probably weren't about to produce two sets of products without some way to verify it would be okay in a particular customer's water system.

I have researched and can't determine what all the pex manufacturers currently use (for brass) as the switch to red brass occured pre-lead free material requirements. Not sure if there is a difference between yellow and red brass for lead content (they both should be mostly copper and zinc). So like your plumber, I also used as many plastic EP fittings as I could (my system uses Uponor). Still had to use some of the brass fittings where an EP fitting wasn't made but at least any corrosion issue has been minimized in my system. Plus I'm on a well and monitor whats in my water. Municipal water supply clients probably don't even think about what is potentially dissolved in their water.