Council Directive 98/83/EC on the quality of water intended for human consumption establishes a high level of protection for the consumer and requires Member States to ensure that substances and materials used in preparation and distribution of drinking water do not reduce that level of protection. The Directive's point of compliance is at consumers’ taps. This implies a need for control of all drinking water construction products, including pipes and fittings within consumers’ premises. Most of the metals used in metallic construction products are controlled as parameters by the Drinking Water Directive. The stricter requirements that have been imposed by the 98/83/EC Directive indicate a need for a stricter scrutiny of the leaching characteristics of currently available metallic products. In the light of the above report, a scientific study aiming at the determination of variations in drinking water quality as an effect of interactions with metallic materials in distribution systems was conducted. In Italy, 15 main water suppliers and 13 state laboratories homogeneously distributed over the country, except for Sardinia, were involved in the research. 6000 samples were taken from 3800 sampling sites selected according to specific criteria and following specific sampling procedures. The samples were analyzed for Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb, and Zn and these experimental data were completed with information on buildings, pipes, etc. The major problems with respect to the metals originated from Fe, Ni, and Pb. High Fe concentrations could be related to corrosion processes, Ni outliers to tap materials and Pb levels to lead pipes in old buildings. With respect to the sampling procedures (random without flushing, migration for 30 min or 240 min, both after 5 min of flushing) the statistical analysis showed that random sampling without flushing gave results similar to those ensuing from 4 h migration time, and this for all types of metals.