New York Changes How It Tests for Lead in Schools’ Water, and Finds More Metal

From New York Times, Feb 3, reporter Kate Taylor. Full story here.

When experts said last year that New York City’s method of testing water in public schools for lead could hide dangerously high levels of the metal, officials at first dismissed the concerns. They insisted that the city’s practice of running the water for two hours the night before taking samples would not distort results.

Still, the city changed its protocol, and the results from a new round of tests indicate that the experts were right.

So far, the latest tests have found nine times as many water outlets — kitchen sinks, water fountains, classroom faucets or other sources — with lead levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s “action level” of 15 parts per billion as last year’s tests found, according to a report released by the state health department last week.

And in some schools where the earlier tests detected problems, the lead levels identified by the new tests were much worse.

And:

At Intermediate School 27, the Anning S. Prall School, on Staten Island, a first round of tests, conducted in April 2016 after the water had been allowed to run, a practice known as pre-stagnation flushing, found six outlets with lead levels above the E.P.A. threshold. The highest level was found in water from a classroom faucet, where the lead concentration was 49 parts per billion.

When the school’s water was retested in December without letting the water run, 53 outlets had lead levels above the E.P.A. threshold. Fourteen had levels over 1,000 parts per billion, including a fountain with a lead concentration of 3,680 parts per billion, and a classroom faucet with a lead level of 32,500 parts per billion.

And:

“This result illustrates how pre-stagnation flushing can mask serious lead in water problems in schools,” Marc Edwards, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who helped uncover elevated lead levels in the water in Flint, Mich., said in an email. “I applaud their retesting in a manner that better reveals the widespread scope of the contamination and health concern.”

Although no level of exposure to lead is considered safe, Professor Edwards said that any tap providing water with a lead level of more than 400 parts per billion represented “an acute health risk” to young children.

Water absorbs lead when it sits stagnant in pipes for long periods of time. For that reason the E.P.A. recommends that schools testing for lead take samples after water has been sitting in pipes for at least eight hours.