Not just Detroit: Lead in drinking water plagues schools nationwide
Across most Baltimore City Public Schools, students haven't been able to drink from water fountains for a decade, ever since elevated levels of lead were found. But at Hampstead Hill Academy, a special kind of water fountain is keeping kids hydrated and giving parents a sense of security about the water their youngsters drink.
At all six of these water hydration stations — which the Detroit Public Schools Community District is considering installing amid its current water crisis — filters weed out contaminants like lead and copper. Students can get a cool sip of water. Four are also outfitted with water bottle fillers.
"Our school is a big fan of the fountains," said Principal Matt Hornbeck, whose school was not among those with elevated levels, but made the switch soon after the districtwide shutdown of drinking water.
Across the United States, where concerns about the safety of drinking water have surged since the Flint water crisis, many schools are finding contaminants when their water is tested. Some are turning to water hydration stations while others are replacing traditional water fountains, ripping out pipes and fixtures, or relying heavily on bottled water.
More on Freep.com:
It's a costly endeavor. In Portland, Oregon, voters approved a bond that provided nearly $30 million to address issues related to water testing of its school district.
Around the country, these are among the districts dealing with water issues:
- In Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools, the nation's 14th largest school district is replacing hundreds of fixtures after testing earlier this year found elevated levels of lead.
- When classes began in late August for Portland Public Schools, it marked the first time in two years that students in most schools were able to safely drink from water fountains. In May 2016, 99 percent of the schools in the district were found to have at least one cold water fixture with elevated levels of lead.
- In New York City schools, high lead levels continue to be a problem, as well as in communities such as Hillsborough County in Florida.
- In Indiana, where 915 schools were recently tested as part of a voluntary, statewide lead sampling program, 61 percent were found to have elevated levels of lead.
This is the national backdrop as the Detroit Public Schools Community District faces its own crisis. In late August, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti ordered drinking water shut off districtwide after the results of water testing at 24 schools found 16 with elevated levels of lead and/or copper. Bottled water and water coolers have been brought into schools.
But don't expect an easy fix. John Burnham, a scientist who ran an environmental health and safety program at Oregon Health and Science University, was brought into Portland Public Schools to help steer the district through its crisis. By the time it's over, the district will have spent nearly three years studying the problem and fixing it.
"It's slower than you might think it is. It's not just yanking out some plumbing and replacing it," Burnham said. "When you have that many (fixtures), you have to decide how to do it. It's complicated."
There's a lot at stake. The Environmental Protection Agency says that even low levels of lead in the blood of children can result in behavior and learning problems, lower IQ, hyperactivity, slowed growth, hearing problems and anemia. Copper can also cause adverse health effects, including vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps.
Testing kids for lead exposure
Amid the debate about how to fix the problem and why only a handful of states in the nation mandate testing of school water is the concern over how much should parents worry about their kids' exposure.
Back in 2016, the Portland school district offered free lead testing for its 50,000 students and 5,000 employees. Nearly 2,000 took part, but only a handful, Burnham said, had test results that indicated the need to see a physician.
Because of privacy laws, the Portland district isn't sure what happened after those five or six individuals were referred to a physician. However, Burnham said, one thing is certain.
"We do know that the county didn't come back to us out of concern that exposure occurred at our schools," Burnham said.
That's because drinking water is just one possible source of contamination — and likely less of a source than homes, including older homes with lead pipes, lead paint or dust that contains lead. The EPA notes on its website that drinking water can make up 20 percent or more of a person's total exposure to lead — but that's far less than other kinds of exposure.
Burnham said schools still have a responsibility to ensure their drinking water is safe and not a contributing factor.
"Our job is to minimize their exposure to lead," Burnham said.
Derek Turner, spokesman for the Montgomery County district, said there has been an effort in the district to educate people in the community about checking for lead in their own homes.
"It's easy to look and get panicked at a school report. It's hard to recognize they probably haven't checked their own home for lead, ever," Turner said. "We want to encourage them. We all need to have safe water, whether it's in a school, a rec center, a home or a place of worship."
Lead exposure has long been an issue in Detroit. Dr. Kanta Bhambhani, director of the Lead Clinic at DMC Children's Hospital of Michigan, told the Free Press recently that it's a perennial problem because there are so many sources of potential exposure.
"We still see significant numbers of children with very high lead levels, which should not happen," Bhambhani said. "The reality is, many homes are getting old, dilapidated. There's a lot of chipping, peeling paint that kids are exposed to."
The clinic expanded its hours in the wake of the test results in DPSCD.
Estimated 43 percent of schools test for lead
Meanwhile, neither federal law nor many states require schools to test their water.
The EPA regulates public water systems.
Thomas Lyon, a University of Michigan professor who studies public water systems, said municipal water systems must be tested for compliance at least once a year while large city systems test much more frequently, "with many testing as often as every half hour."
"They test for compliance with a range of contaminants, including fecal coliform bacteria, lead and a variety of others," he said.
But while those systems test the quality of the water coming out of their treatment system, there is no federal law that requires schools that rely on these systems to test their water, according to a July report from the Government Accountability Office.
The report estimated — based on the results of a survey conducted in 2017 — that 43 percent of schools in the nation had tested their water for lead in 2016 and 2017, after the Flint water crisis grabbed national headlines. Of the rest, 41 percent hadn't tested and 16 percent didn't know whether tests had been done.
Of those that did test, 37 percent found elevated lead.
Lyon, the UM professor, , said he believes all schools should be testing their water, especially schools located in older buildings.
"Children shouldn't have to be worried about drinking lead or other contaminants out of their drinking fountains," said Lyon, who is the Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at UM.
Only seven states — California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Virginia — along with the District of Columbia, mandate school testing, according to the GAO report.
The EPA has, however, established what it calls "action levels" — levels of lead and copper that, if reached, should prompt action. For lead, that's 15 parts per billion. For copper, it's 1.3 parts per million. Those are the levels many school districts use when testing water.
Some states, including California, have adopted tougher standards. Michigan also recently adopted new rules that lower the action level for lead from 15 parts per billion to 12 parts per billion. But those don't kick in until 2025.
Age a factor, but newer buildings hit too
Even newer buildings can have lead contamination. In the Detroit district, one of the schools that recently tested for elevated lead levels is Cass Technical High School, which opened in 2004.
That may, in part, have something to do with a change in federal rules. According to the GAO report:
"Although lead pipes and lead solder were not commonly used after 1986, water fountains and other fixtures were allowed to have up to 8 percent lead until 2014. ... Consequently, both older and newer school buildings can have lead in drinking water."
Age, though, is a clear factor. And the fact that nearly half of the schools in the nation haven't tested for lead may seem surprising given the relative age of school buildings in the U.S.: A 2016 report put that average age at 44 years.
Age is certainly an issue in the Detroit district. Vitti said during a meeting Tuesday that older plumbing in old buildings causes buildup of copper and lead.
Declining enrollment, and the resulting underutilization of many buildings, is also a factor because it reduces the frequency with which water fountains and other fixtures are used. Buildup of contaminants like lead and copper happens when water sits for extended periods of time.
"If a school is only educating 300 students but built for 1,000, the piping was built for 1,000," Vitti said. "The more the water is being used, the more the pipes are being flushed out. So we have schools that are not using the amount of water that they were created to use."
In Detroit, Cass Tech is one of 16 schools — out of 24 total — where recent testing revealed elevated levels of lead and/or copper, prompting the drinking water shutdown. An additional 18 schools had previously been identified, and their drinking water had already been shut off.
Results for the rest of the district's school buildings — there are 106 total — are pending. Unlike many schools that only test a few locations in their buildings, DPSCD had all drinking water sources tested in all of its schools.
The district brought in water coolers and bottled water. But longer-term fixes are still being discussed.
Vitti is proposing spending $2 million to add water hydration stations, which he said are safer drinking solutions because they filter out contaminants.
'Every elevated fixture ... brought thoughts of Flint'
The solutions for how to address contaminants have varied from district to district. The Portland district is nearly complete with a $28.8-million effort to replace fixtures for its drinking fountains and kitchen sinks — anything that provides water for human consumption. It's taking a conservative approach, replacing all fixtures regardless of whether the water flowing from them had high lead levels.
The money to pay for that work is coming from a $790-million school bond voters approved in 2017 that addresses a number of issues. Of that amount, $150 million was targeted at health and safety issues such as addressing lead, asbestos and radon.
In the Montgomery County district, officials are replacing the 238 fixtures (out of 13,248) where testing earlier this year found elevated levels of lead, Turner said.
In Maryland, where the district is located, a 2017 law requires public and private schools to conduct testing once very three years to determine whether there's lead in the drinking water. Turner said elevated levels of lead in schools can be a difficult issue for districts to deal with.
"Every time we talk about potential lead in water, it brings a lot of attention. Every elevated fixture brought thoughts of Flint to the forefront," Turner said. "It's been helpful that we've been so transparent about what we're doing."
In Flint, students still aren't consuming their drinking water. On the district's web site is this note from officials:
"The District has not, and will not allow students to drink water from the tap in the schools until the Flint School Board of Education, its Interim Superintendent, and the health and medical professionals of this great city—are satisfied with the safety of the water."
There may be an end in sight to the decade-long shutdown of drinking water in Baltimore City Public Schools. Sixteen schools are now using systems that filter water at the entry point to the school building and three — including Hampstead Hill — are piloting "point of use" systems that filter water at specific water fountains or other fixtures, said Edie House-Foster, a spokeswoman for the district.
"The pilot is ongoing and the district will evaluate the results to inform potential expansion at the end of the 2018-19 school year," House-Foster said in an email.
Meanwhile, water filtration systems are being used at another seven charter or contract schools that operate their own buildings. The Baltimore district has more than 170 schools.
The July GAO report noted that all of the schools that had elevated lead levels had taken some step to fix the problem.
- 71 percent replaced water fountains
- 63 percent took water fountains or faucets out of service without replacing them
- 62 percent flushed the school's water system
Among the remaining steps: Filters were installed, bottled water was used or pipes were replaced.
The costs have also ranged from a median of $4,000 for school districts that needed to make fixes in one to four schools, to $278,000 for districts that needed to take action in 51 or more schools.
'We have to keep kids safe'
In Portland, the district has been working to turn the corner from 2016, when an investigative report by an independent agency highlighted a number of missteps and failures to promptly notify the public of test results.The controversy led the superintendent, as well as some other district officials, to resign.
Burnham, who retired in 2015 after spending 23 years as director of environmental health and safety at Oregon Health and Science University, was brought into the district to hold the same title, on an interim basis.
After he arrived, the district pulled together a "war team" that included health and safety leaders. The team met regularly — almost daily for a while, he said. The district brought in consultants to test and study fixtures across the board. And the district's board considered a range of recommendations for fixing the problem — with price tags of $3.5 million to $107.5 million.
That most expensive option? That would have replaced all the pipes in the school district. The least expensive option called for replacing only fixtures that were testing high.
The board went with the mid-priced option to spend $28.8 million to replace "all of the visible fixtures ... from the stop valve all the way up to the drinking fixture," Burnham said.
Burnham has a mountain of advice for Detroit officials now dealing with the water issues in the district. For one, he said, they must become familiar with the EPA's "3T's for Reducing Lead in Drinking Water in Schools and Child Care Facilities." The reference guide — on training, testing and telling — provides guidance on training school staff, testing for lead and communicating to students, parents and staff about monitoring programs, testing results and risks. They'll also have to slightly modify those guidelines, which he said assumes water is still being used normally.
The district must figure out what kind of record-keeping system it will need to keep track of fixtures across the district, so officials can monitor what's been tested and the results. He also said district officials will need to decide what to do about watering school gardens, which often grow fruits and vegetables for consumption.
He said the district also needs to decide whether it wants to use the EPA action levels — which soon could be revised by the federal agency — or establish its own levels. Schools aren't required to use the EPA levels — and some states have more stringent guidelines.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that "no safe blood lead level in children has been identified." The American Academy of Pediatrics made a similar statement in a 2016 report, saying, "There is no identified threshold or safe level of lead in blood."
In Montgomery County, officials have been using the EPA levels. But Turner said some have suggested lowering the lead action level to 10 parts per billion or 5 parts per billion.
"We're 100 percent open to that," Turner said. "At the end of the day, we have to keep kids safe if they want to learn. That's our responsibility."
Contact Lori Higgins: 313-222-6651, firstname.lastname@example.org or @LoriAHiggins
How to get tested for lead
Parents who want their children tested for potential lead exposure can go to the Lead Clinic at DMC Children's Hospital of Michigan from 1-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at 3950 Beaubian, across the street from the hospital. Parents can call 313-989-4007 to set up an appointment.