The latest on lead in school water: what are the results for your school and what should parents do?

Update 9/16/18:  Today's NY Times has a letter from Claire Barnett of the Healthy Schools Network and Joan Leary Matthews of NRDC, urging the governor and state Legislature to lower the action level for lead, as there's no safe amount of lead in water that children drink.  

Sue Edelman also has an update, detailing in the NY Post how a new fountain/bubbler bought with funds raised by students at the International  High School in Prospect Heights is already releasing lead above the action level, raising suspicions that lead may be in the pipes.  According to the mandated reports the DOE has made to the state, no pipes were replaced in any of the NYC public schools.

This week, several media outlets reported on the new results from lead tests in NYC school water in the New York Times,  Chalkbeat, and the Daily News.  

The new data shows that 25% of schools still have at least one fixture with water above the “action” level of 15 parts per billion that requires remediation, compared to over 80% of schools before the latest round of remediation efforts began in last year.  The release of this data came after the DOE had refused to provide the updated retesting results for two weeks, and only after an article exposing the delay was published in the NY Post on Sunday. 

A spreadsheet showing the new results for every schools sorted by district is posted here.  There are now 391 schools with 1165 outlets that released lead above the legal limit, compared to 10,633 outlets before.

To recap:  In response to the Flint water crisis, the NY Legislature passed a new law in 2016 that required all public schools to test their water every five years using the “first draw” of water, rather than flushing the pipes before testing, which lessens the amount of lead in the sample.  Any outlet with water above 15 parts per billion (ppb) would from now on require fixing until the samples fell below that level.

Still to this day, the DOE officials claim to reporters that they previously they used a “practice [that] was developed in a partnership with the federal Environmental Protection Agency” even though EPA guidelines for over a decade have said that the first draw should be tested for lead om schools, rather than after the pipes were flushed.  See 3Ts for Reducing Lead in Drinking Water in Schools, dated Oct. 2006:

Before the Flint crisis erupted, many schools hadn’t been tested for over ten years.  Moreover, the DOE was only testing buildings built before 1986, even though newer ones also had this problem, and were using the flushing method instead of the first draw, which more accurately measures how much lead is in the water that students drink at the beginning of the school day. 

Yet DOE went through a new round of testing in the spring of 2016 by using the flushing method, and had found 1,341 elevated samples in 510 schools, with fewer elevated samples on the second draw.

After the new state law passed in June 2016, the deadline for testing all water outlets with the new, more accurate method was September 30, 2016 for elementary schools.  Middle and high schools were supposed to have completed testing by October 31, 2016.

In July 2016, the city sent out conflicting messages.  First, DOE officials said that “At every location where elevated levels persisted after a second test…it turned off the source of the water and then started making repairs or replacing the fixtures. “  A Mayoral spokesperson claimed that in the case of “any elevated sample, relevant fixtures and piping are replaced to the wall, and retested out of an extreme abundance of caution.”

Yet while most districts started testing their school water over the summer of 2016 using the first draw method, the DOE refused to do this until after the NY Times called them out on it on September 1, 2016, in a story that revealed that they were still flushing the pipes beforehand  (though the Times story and most news articles since still fail to mention the new state law.)

Even then, the DOE said they would “continue doing pre-stagnation flushing when it was necessary to collect samples on Monday mornings or over school holidays."  If and when the DOE abandoned this practice which ran counter to the law and EPA guidelines is unclear.

In any case, NYC officials didn't begin retesting schools according to the mandated method until late November 2016.  According to the new state law, schools were also supposed to post the results of all lead testing and any remediation plans on their website no more than six weeks after the school received the lab reports.  Yet as Sue Edelman reported, last week many school websites lacked these reports.

Not until April 17, 2017 ,  six months after the deadline, did DOE release results from testing school water by the required method.  Then they found 10,633 elevated samples in 1,278 or 83% of all public schools. See the DOE older spreadsheet posted here. 

Now, after remediation, there are still 391 schools with elevated levels, with fewer fixtures – or 1,165  -- still releasing water above the action levels.  According to the DOE, additional unspecified efforts will be made to lower these levels or remove the outlets permanently. 

But perhaps the most surprising finding is that there are now 42 schools where the most recent round of testing found more outlets with lead above the legal limits than before. According to the NY Times a DOE spokesperson explained this ”because the schools had added new fixtures.”  But from examining reports on the school portals, the real reason appears to be that more fixtures were tested in the second round than in the first. 

Originally, only drinking fountains and fixtures like kitchen sinks where the water would be used for cooking were tested.  Subsequently, they apparently tested all “operational outlets”, including sinks in bathrooms and locker rooms etc.

According to the letter on its DOE school portal, Baruch IS 104 in Manhattan had only three out of 68 outlets that originally tested above the action level on Jan. 14, 2017.  Now 25 of 90 outlets are elevated. ( I have posted Baruch’s lab report here; but you can find it on the DOE school portal for every school under “data and reports” and then “facilities.”)  The highest amounts of lead at Baruch seem to be in water from sinks in the boys locker room.

A similar letter on the Truman HS DOE portal shows that the school originally had 11 of 276 outlets above the action limit, but now 27 have tested above 15 ppb, out of 333 outlets.   Long Island City HS originally had 13 outlets testing above the action level out of 190, while now there are 26 out of 200 fixtures.

For the names of schools where the new results find more contaminated outlets than before,  see the last tab on spreadsheet here. 

In June 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics released  new guidelines that schools should limit the amount of lead in their water to no more than 1 part per billion, as opposed to the 15 parts per billion mandated in NY state law. Why? Because as AAP stated, ”There is no identified threshold or safe level of lead in blood…No Amount of Lead Exposure is Safe for Children.”  

Indeed, research has shown that children with blood levels even less than 5 micrograms per deciliter suffer from lower IQs , worse test scores, and higher rates of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity.  
 
Here is a post I wrote earlier, citing evidence that there is no safe threshold of lead in water-- given that any detectable blood levels of lead in children are correlated with worst outcomes.  

This includes a study by researchers at Yale and Brown called "Lead Exposure and Racial Disparities in Test Scores," showing that preschool children with very low levels of lead in their blood are likely to have lower test scores in subsequent grades in math and ELA.

According to the GAO, as of September 2017, seven states and DC require regular testing of lead in school water, with Maryland calling for re- testing every three years.    In NY, Sen. Michael Gianaris has proposed a bill that would require re-testing every three years in New York, instead of the current five.  DC law now requires annual testing in their public schools, as Dr. Marc Edwards, who exposed the Flint water tragedy, recommends.   

As to the action levels of lead, Illinois requires that any school outlet that has any detectable level of lead in the water must be fixed;  and DC schools must remediate outlets with lead levels above 5 ppb.

Given this research, if I still had children in the public schools, I would send them to school with water bottles every day and urge them to drink from these sources rather than any school fixture.

Update on lead in school water and AM NY on need for more transparency from DOE

Credit: Metro NY

AM New York just ran an editorial decrying the lack of transparency of  DOE's findings on excessive levels of lead in school water,  as well as a handy map and other visuals showing the extent of the lead problem, with more than 80% of NYC public schools having at least one affected water outlet. 

The editorial highlights two schools where the levels found were especially alarming: PS 723, a District 75 school for special needs students in the Bronx where the lead levels were 6,000 times the "action" level of 15 parts per billion,  and William E. Grady Vocational High School in Brooklyn, which had more than 100 samples that violated this level, with three that tested above 30,000 parts per billion.

On May 9th, the DOE released an updated spreadsheet with information on every water fixture's lead levels on May 9th but it contains no information about remediation efforts or retesting after remediation was done. Here is a link to the DOE web page on lead; and here is a link to the  latest DOE lead test results.  

As the AM New York editorial pronounced,“Of course, most NYC school buildings are old, and finding some lead in the pipes is not a surprise. But the extent of the findings, both in the levels and the number of schools affected, is stunning. The problem has been exacerbated by the DOE’s insufficient public response....

While the DOE followed the guidelines in state legislation passed last year by sending letters home to parents and posting the letters to school websites, city officials should do more. A more comprehensive and user-friendly response by school and city officials is warranted. DOE should make sure its online school search functions include faucet-by-faucet lead levels, and explanations of the risks they pose. (Right now, none of that information is easily searchable.) It should publish lists of schools with the worst levels of lead, and issue clear explanations of the results and what parents need to know. The state health department should do more, too, perhaps by analyzing the city’s by-faucet data and providing resources and guidance.”

On May 16,  the City Council Committee on Education and Finance held hearings where Chancellor Rose testified that the remediation of the outlets would not be completed until sometime next year.  She also minimized the seriousness and the extent of the problem by emphasizing how most children drink out of outlets after the water has flowed for awhile -- which really misses the point.  For more on the lead issue, including how DOE was months late doing the mandated retesting according to the new state law, and how even the action level of 15 parts per billion is too high according to the American Pediatric Association, see our previous posts here and here.

Updated: 83% of NYC school buildings have elevated levels of lead -- check the results here -- and more confusing messages from DOE

Update: See the interview on NY1 with Dr. Marc Edwards saying there is no safe level of lead in water.  See also today's NY Times says DOE is  flushing water from affected schools in addition to other remediation efforts -- which still doesn't explain how many schools have had fixtures replaced and how many have successfully brought down lead levels below the state limits.  The NYT also takes credit for the DOE testing the water correctly with the first draw and without pre-flushing, though unmentioned is that a new  state law required all districts to retest schools according to the new protocol by October 31.  

The NYT also repeats the standard DOE quote that "there had never been a known case of lead poisoning traced to drinking water in schools" without explaining that school-age children are rarely tested for lead. Nor as far as I know has the Paper of Record ever reported on the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics that remediation be required in any school where lead levels are above 1 ppb, rather than the 15 ppb limit currently in state law.

See the DOE spreadsheet of results from testing the outlets for leaD in each school posted here.  To the right is the summary of the results.

Despite  the claim by DOE below that a more detailed breakdown of the results is available here on the NY State Department of Health  website, they don’t seem to be included in that comprehensive list– perhaps because DOE completed their testing months later than all the other districts in the state  and months after the legal deadline.

The spreadsheet they did provide has lots of important data missing, including how many affected outlets there were in each school and what actual levels of lead `were found. 

The fact that 83% of schools had at least one affected water outlet does not appear to support the rosy tone of the DOE statement below that “the number of elevations are minimal” – or the assurances that “There has never been a known case of lead poisoning due to drinking water in schools” given the fact that few children are tested for lead after age 4, and any detectable level of lead in a child’s blood has been linked to intellectual and behavioral problems.

Lead experts Dr. Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech and Dr. Morri Markowitz of Montefiore Hospital, both quoted in an earlier NY Post article here, would probably not be so optimistic.  I am quoted in today's DNAinfo that the DOE should consider the need to test students for lead, especially in schools where the highest concentrations were found -- though Dr. Edwards said that might give parents false confidence since even excessive amounts of lead are removed from a child's  blood within 30 days, and after that, the damage has probably been done.  

The DOE also omits the information that I wrote about here, that the American Pediatric Association recommends remediation for any fixture or outlet where the water tests more than 1 ppb, vs. the 15 ppb that NY state has adopted -- because any detectable level of lead has been shown to have a negative impact on children's behavior and intellectual abilities.  In addition to considering the stricter standard, the city should also test water outlets in public libraries and recreation centers for lead, as Washington DC has now done.

Still, the summary available on the DOE spreadsheet is far more informative that the letter that principals are supposed to send home to parent and the statement below. Instead of mentioning the 83% figure, the letter  says this: "Using State standards, 92% of our fixtures system-wide tested below guidance. This demonstrates that we do not have any systemic issues with water in our school buildings and our remediation protocol is effective."  Again, the messages sent out by DOE is confusing.  Is this after remediation or before?  

And see this from below: "Our comprehensive remediation protocol also includes replacing fixtures with elevated results as well as piping to the walls, and placing schools with elevated results on a weekly morning flushing protocol."  Why are they still flushing the pipes if remediation has worked?  Flushing as opposed to replacement is  not an approved  strategy according to the state law or or the EPA.

____

Message to reporters from the DOE:

New York City water is of the highest quality and water in schools is safe for students and staff to drink. The DOE’s rigorous testing protocol was developed in partnership with City and State agencies and we recently completed water testing on all school buildings across the City. Of all of the potential drinking water sources in the 1,544 buildings that were tested for the presence of lead, 8 percent (10,633 of 132,276) of samples taken had results over 15ppb. This is lower than the statewide average of 14 percent. Additionally, the number of drinking fixtures with results over 15ppb is 1.5 percent of all fixtures that were tested. A summary is attached and a detailed breakdown of the results is available here.

92 percent of all fixtures sampled tested below the action level of 15ppb. This demonstrates that our water system as a whole is safe and reliable. All cooking and drinking water fixtures with results over 15ppb are immediately taken offline and are only placed back online once they have been remediated and results from updated tests are below 15ppb. Our comprehensive remediation protocol also includes replacing fixtures with elevated results as well as piping to the walls, and placing schools with elevated results on a weekly morning flushing protocol.

Testing began in late November and families have been receiving detailed letters with results about their child’s school on a rolling basis. Schools and families received these letters within 10 days of when the DOE received the results, and in many cases, letters were distributed within 24 hours. The letter and the complete laboratory reports are also posted on each school’s website, with translated versions available in 10 languages. We continue to host community meetings across the City to ensure all questions from families and staff are being addressed.

The documents that are being shared with schools and families include details on the City’s water source, an overview of the DOE’s testing and remediation protocols, and information from DOHMH about the health effects of lead and what parents should do if they are concerned about their child’s exposure to lead. New York City water that is delivered from the upstate reservoir system is lead free and DEP conducts over 500,000 tests annually throughout the system. There has never been a known case of lead poisoning due to drinking water in schools. DOHMH investigates cases of elevated lead levels in blood samples from children, and the most common source of lead exposure for children with elevated blood lead levels is lead-based paint.

Nothing is more important than the safety of students and staff and we remain vigilant in our testing and remediation processes. As outlined in our testing protocol and as required by the State, samples are taken on a first draw basis only after water has been stagnant for a minimum of 8 hours, and sometimes much longer. When the water runs for even a few seconds, fresh water flows through the fixture and has lower lead levels.

This round of citywide testing also included all charter schools in DOE buildings. The New York City Health Code requires child care programs, including Pre-K for All programs, to test their water for lead levels, report results to DOHMH and remediate any outlet with test results above 15ppb. Information about test results at child care programs and the status of any remediation is on DOHMH’s website, Child Care Connect.

Attributable to Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Rose: “Families should rest assured that water in schools is safe for students and staff to drink. As our citywide test results confirm, the number of elevations are minimal and we take immediate action to remediate all fixtures with results above 15ppb. We have shared detailed information with schools and families, and will continue to keep communities updated.”

Attributable to First Deputy Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot: “Since 2005 we have seen an 86% decline in lead poisoning cases among children. We feel confident that the DOE is taking the right actions by taking drinking fixtures that have had lead exceedances off line until they can be replaced. Generally, these elevated levels are not reflective of the water children drink throughout the day, but concerned parents should speak to their child’s health care provider.”

Attributable to DEP Acting Commissioner Vincent Sapienza: “New York City tap water is world renowned for its taste and high quality. Our scientists conduct more than 500,000 tests each year to ensure the water meets or exceeds all state and federal health and safety guidelines.”