Not all Georgia schools test for lead in drinking water. Should they?

Principal Keisha Sims sent an urgent email request in April.

Tests had found that water at Margaret Harris Comprehensive School contained high levels of lead. The school was “in desperate need of additional water,’’ Sims wrote to a DeKalb County School District official.

“We are a school that serves students with severe disabilities, and we need access to water for diapering, G-tube feeding, suctioning and severe medical needs,’’ she wrote, requesting that district officials send bottled water. Georgia Health News obtained the email under the Georgia Open Records Act.

Sims received bottled water after the school found a high level of lead in several areas, including in a drinking fountain. The metro Atlanta county’s school system is one of the few in Georgia to test drinking water at every source in every building, which is what lead experts recommend.

Georgia Health News recently surveyed the 20 largest Georgia public school systems, including Bibb and Houston counties, on their lead testing policies. We found many differences in how school systems evaluated their water quality — if they had done any testing at all.

Just six of the 20 have tested multiple drinking sources in every school. Seven have done no recent testing at all. Others are planning to sample their water sources, or have done limited testing.

Bibb tests its 10 oldest schools for lead in its drinking water. Houston doesn't test any of its schools.

Nationally, many school systems have tested water fountains and faucets for contamination in the three years since the environmental disaster in Flint, Mich., where a switch in water processing caused a spike in the percentage of children testing high for lead poisoning.

There’s no federal mandate that schools test their water for lead. While at least 10 states and the District of Columbia have stepped in to require or incentivize testing, Georgia has not done so. Legislation in the Georgia General Assembly to require such testing passed the state Senate earlier this year but did not get traction in the House.

The Flint debacle raised public awareness of the health dangers that lead continues to pose for children, including impairment to memory and thinking skills, as well as behavioral problems.

There is no safe lead level in children’s blood, the CDC says. Even low levels can impact IQ, a child’s ability to pay attention, and classroom achievement. Children 6 years old and younger are at higher risk because they are growing so rapidly, and crucial brain development occurs at even younger ages.

Pediatricians are concerned about whether the current action level for lead is low enough.

That level — 15 parts per billion and above — is not a health standard. It instead is meant to be used by water utilities to determine if more treatment or other action is needed, like adjusting corrosion control levels, experts say.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that school drinking water sources not exceed 1 part per billion. Among school districts that do test, some have targeted elementary or older schools as a priority.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), through the Lead and Copper Rule, requires local water systems to test a sample of homes every three years for lead. That rule does not regulate or require testing of water within schools’ plumbing.

The EPA does not have jurisdiction over school systems except those few that maintain their own independent water supply. It does recommend, however, that all schools test their water outlets used for drinking.

As with homes, school buildings constructed after 1988 are considered generally at less risk of contamination. That’s because the EPA banned utilities from using pipes with large amounts of lead. In addition, the EPA required that lead solder used to connect pipes be at a lower level.

But experts note that newer buildings are not risk-free for lead exposure. Lead-bearing solder and fixtures, like faucets and fountains, can still be present. Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy, one of Atlanta Public Schools newest schools (opened in 2010), showed one of the highest levels of lead in its water testing.

Some schools also say that because their water is tested by the local water authority, it is safe. But relying on local authority water testing shows a “persistent misunderstanding” about the safety of school water, says Yanna Lambrinidou, a faculty member in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

“It’s misleading and leaves our children unprotected,” she says.

Lambrinidou, a longtime expert in lead contamination of water, says schools actually may be more vulnerable to lead in water than homes are — especially schools built before 1986.

That’s because schools can have longer sections of pipe, dead ends in the plumbing where water can sit and collect lead, and long periods of time when they are not being used, she said.

Testing on site is indispensable

Testing of school water should be done regularly and with proper sample collection methods, Lambrinidou said.

“Schools are lead exposure centers for our children, and we don’t have right now the understanding and programs in place, and even worse the political will to address that reality,” she said.

Testing for lead, and any needed repairs, comes with a cost.

Atlanta Public Schools, which tested on average 25 drinking water sources in each of the district’s 113 buildings, spent $200,000 on the 2016 sampling. DeKalb schools said they budgeted $450,000 for testing.

The cost of replacing lead pipes shouldn’t deter a school from doing the right thing, says John Rumpler, clean water program director at Environment America Research and Policy Center, an advocacy group.

“So if a school has a lead service line, that is the biggest source of lead by far — that’s a $3,000 to $5,000 job. I’m not saying that’s easy money, but it’s not going to break the bank for the biggest source of lead.”

Rumpler and others have led campaigns to educate parents and school administrators about lead exposure risks, including the school-based initiative Get the Lead Out.

Schools can take proactive steps, such as removing lead-bearing parts and installing filters certified to remove lead from water, he said.

“Can schools do everything they should do to ensure that their kids’ water is lead-free tomorrow? I don’t know,’’ he says. “Can they start taking steps to do a lot more than they’re doing now? Absolutely.”

For more Georgia Health News, go to www.georgiahealthnews.com.

This story was originally published December 28, 2017 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Not all Georgia schools test for lead in drinking water. Should they?."