That is definitely a possibility. I did live for years in an old apartment building in NYC with ancient pipes.
Not so much the pipes,,,,,
Various metals are in foods, the air we breathe, and yes in old structures that may have been repurposed into living quarters..
For most people, we have know tolerances for these contaminants, and the epa keeps a eye on their set levels of what is ok...but some people have little or no tolerance because of systemic issues where they may lack some protein or whatever or have a inherited digestive issue and this can affect their immune system Reponses to various environmental contaminates that are innocuous to most people but not to everyone.
It’s jus common sense, but this is out of the box for a trained doctor. Worse than that, today they have very little time to spend on a diagnoses, and if they get it wrong, it is sometimes better to do no harm.
BTW....In the case of copper pipes. Copper forms a oxide coating that generally prevents copper from being particalized in a form that can be inhaled or easily distributed.
But that does not eliminate the natual copper that exists in the soil and some plants pick it up and it can be in the air as a derivative from various combustion processes.
I only mentioned it because ozone is a major oxidizer..
I’m just a layperson on this issue but I’m pretty good at trouble shooting. For example, I have a dog that has a deficient digestive tract, due to what I do not know, but the person I got him from as a puppy thirteen years ago became aware of this genetic trait and upon the vets advice, wrote it off as a grass allergy.
It was not long, couple years before the dog began showing symptoms, loss of hair, lethargy, constant scratching. and he stunk like a fish.
It took me a couple years of trial, error, misdiagnoses before I landed on the cause and on a supplement to relieve the symptoms.
He is 13 now....he would have died or been put down like all his siblings and his sire a long time ago. It was death by fungus and bacteria that the dogs immune system could not deal with effectively.
I never told the vet because he had already done his damage by not looking into this as I did, but it’s a good example of what occurs in human medicine.
Another good one is my own immune system. I discovered though trial and error that I cannot take a over the counter medicine known as Naproxen or alleve.
It interferes with my immune response to common bacteria that is everywhere in the environment and causes me to develop infections. (mostly Staph)
I can take other nsaids, like ibuprophen, (Tylenol does nothing) but I cannot use that one compound. The results are the same each and every time. Infected nodules....on various parts of my body...many seem to be related to lymph nodes.
So that’s just me....otherwise I have a fantastic immune system..Not a single cold or flu in decades..(but it is eating my 65 year old joints)