Schools Are Racing To Test Their Water For Lead

It may have started in Portland, where elevated levels of lead were found in the drinking water at two public elementary schools last month. High levels were later detected in more schools.

Schools in Chicago, Atlanta, D.C. and other school districts across the country have seen similar results from water testing in recent months.

With school out for summer and the ongoing Flint water crisis still looming on the minds of administrators and parents alike, many districts are moving to test their drinking water for signs of lead contamination. According to The Washington Post, at least one prominent testing firm is experiencing high demand and is already booked through the start of the school year.

Under current federal regulations, only 10 percent of schools nationwide ? those that rely on water supplies independent of any community utilities ? are actually required to test their water.

Some state lawmakers are moving to change that. In New York, the state legislature last month approved a bill that would be the nation’s first to mandate that public schools test their drinking water for lead. It is currently awaiting Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signature. Similar legislation has also been proposed in North Carolina. And in May, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ordered mandatory lead-in-water testing at the state’s schools.

This is important progress in the fight against lead exposure, which can cause brain and nervous system damage, hearing issues, reduced IQ and a myriad of other issues, particularly in children. But there’s reason to remain skeptical, experts say.

One of those experts is Yanna Lambrinidou, a Virginia Tech researcher who has been studying water contamination for many years and in 2010 co-authored the paper “Failing Our Children: Lead In U.S. School Drinking Water” in the journal New Solutions.

The Huffington Post recently spoke with Lambrinidou about this summer’s surge in testing and what solutions there might be for the massive problem.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How much of what is happening now with all this testing is being done to appease parents in the short term vs. working toward a viable long-term solution?

It’s hard to tell for sure. One thing that seems more clear to me is that we seem to be at a crossroads between two paradigms of thought about lead in drinking water. I think the paradigm we are in right now, and that we tend to be in as a nation, is the paradigm that was created by the EPA and by the Lead and Copper Rule that allowed for some lead to flow out of taps that people drank, while at the same time, schools and water utilities can claim that all is OK and that lead is a problem that’s under control.

That same paradigm seems to neglect the scientific evidence that lead in drinking water tends to release sporadically, so that a one-time test at one tap is not always going to capture worse-case lead in water levels at the tap. This paradigm is more of a regulatory compliance, check-the-box paradigm and less of a public health, protective paradigm that would surrender to the inconvenient but non-debatable truth that no lead in drinking water is safe for human consumption.

On one hand, I think this [testing frenzy] is very, very good and long overdue. But where I start to see a little bit of trouble is when I see that there are scientifically unsubstantiated assumptions that guide the way in which the water is being sampled, how the results are being interpreted and how remediation takes place.

I would really like to see a shift to a new paradigm where we accept that as long as there’s lead-bearing plumbing in school water systems, we ought to presume that taps that are not outfitted with a filter, or where there’s no alternative source of water, can expose our children to lead. And we need to address that. Whether it’s intentional or not, using this old paradigm can result in false assurances of safety that are not really backed by the science.