Linux: Checking if a socket/pipe is broken without doing a read()/write()

I have a simple piece of code that periodically writes data to a fd that's passed to it. The fd will most likely be a pipe or socket but could potentially be anything. I can detect when the socket/pipe is closed/broken whenever I write() to it, since I get an EPIPE error (I'm ignoring SIGPIPE). But I don't write to it all the time, and so might not detect a closed socket for a long time. I need to react to the closure asap. Is there a method of checking the fd without having to do a write()? I could then do this periodically if I'm not writing anything.