Digging Further Into a Water Problem

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Cases of bottled water at Sebring McKinley Junior Senior High School in Sebring, Ohio, where lead was found in the water in August.

MARCH 26, 2016
While the water crisis in Flint, Mich., has focused attention on water safety, many of the country’s 13,500 public school districts take the purity of their water for granted, experts say. Yet lead contamination has been found in schools nationwide.

Michael Wines, Patrick McGeehan and John Schwartz, who have been writing about water safety for The New York Times, recently discussed some of what they have found in their reporting. Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

JOHN SCHWARTZ: One of the frustrating things about federal regulations on water safety is that they apply only to exactly what they apply to — that is, they extend only as far as their enabling legislation allows. In the case of regulating drinking water, the regulations generally apply to suppliers of water, like your town water plant. When Congress tried to stretch the rules to apply them to schools through the Lead Contamination Control Act, the federal courts said the federal government could not order the states around that way. Congress has not done anything on the issue since then, so compliance with the Lead Contamination Control Act is voluntary. And so it’s not surprising that things slip through the cracks.

PATRICK MCGEEHAN: Still, John, many people seem taken aback to learn that there is no mandatory testing of water in schools. They may have had a false sense of security because they receive regular reports on the results of water testing in their towns. But those results may not include any schools. Momentum is building for change, though. In New Jersey, legislators are already calling for a law to make sure the water in schools gets tested for lead.

SCHWARTZ: It really is hard to assign responsibility or blame for the problem. Is it the federal E.P.A., state or city regulators, or school district officials? I might just go a little weaselly here and say “all of the above.” There’s no part of the system that hasn’t failed our kids when it comes to lead even though the laws have done a tremendous amount to remove lead from our environment — from gasoline, from paint, from plumbing fixtures. What’s left can be chalked up to a failure of will at every level, with occasional crises that can place the blame more on one link in the chain than another.


MICHAEL WINES: I’d add our political leaders to the list. Efforts to rid our homes and water of lead have lost government support and money in the last decade as so-called discretionary spending has been slashed from the federal budget. We don’t even properly track lead levels in adults anymore. The federal government stopped funding state grants for adult lead surveillance in 2013, and though it has restored part of the money, at least 13 states have stopped collecting data. Some of the 28 that still do collect data help pay for it with money from federal grants that are meant for other lead programs.

SCHWARTZ: Another issue is so-called environmental injustice — concerns that officials ignore complaints about the water supply from poorer minority communities. In Flint, a report by an independent task force focused on these concerns. They are part of the story of the problems in school districts, but not the whole story. As our story shows, some new schools have shown up with lead problems, too, because the school districts paid higher prices for brass plumbing fittings that contained lead.

MCGEEHAN: I have been struck by how genuinely disappointed scientific experts seem with the response, or lack thereof, from government officials who have seen data showing high lead levels. Over and over, I heard that little or no action was taken after tests showed alarmingly high levels of lead in water that kids are ingesting on a daily basis.

SCHWARTZ: What about adults? There is no safe level of lead, and each of us grown-ups probably has fewer I.Q. points than we would have if there wasn’t lead in the environment when we were kids. I wonder how much better off we’d be if we’d gotten the lead out earlier, and more effectively. Remember that lead also has been linked to behavior problems, including impulse control and aggression.

WINES: All of us probably do have lead in our bodies, John, and there used to be a lot more. Back in 1976, when leaded gasoline was still the norm, the lead blood level for an average American was 12.8 micrograms per deciliter. By today’s standards, that’s shockingly high. More recent data, from 2009 and later, put the level at 1.2 micrograms for adults and 1.8 for kids, who are far more vulnerable to lead’s effects than grown-ups. Some of the danger does decline with age; infants and toddlers are at greatest risk.

So aren’t the adults who were kids in the 1970s largely productive members of society today? Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been even more productive without so much lead in their bodies. Check out this study, which concludes that kids with a lead blood level above 7.5 micrograms have “significantly greater” intellectual deficits than kids below 7.5. Or this one, which blames blood-lead levels between 5 and 9 micrograms for a stunning share of failing grades in reading and math by Chicago third-graders. Many of us who were toddlers then are slightly dimmer bulbs, I.Q.-wise, than we would have been if we hadn’t been sucking in gas fumes.

MCGEEHAN: When you discuss even relatively low levels of lead with water-testing experts, their facial expressions and tones of voice tell you right away that there is cause for concern. If they’re worried, we all should be.

WINES: But don’t dwell on the past. Blood levels of lead not wildly far from the current national average are linked to heart troubles, clogged arteries, premature births, kidney disease and other nasty stuff. Add to that the social and financial cost we’re all paying for the unfortunate fraction of kids who really do have high blood-lead levels — mostly minorities and immigrants in poor neighborhoods. They will pay stiffer costs as adults in lost intellectual capacity, and a number of studies suggest that at least some violence by young men is tied to high levels of lead in babyhood.

MCGEEHAN: I am now dubious about the quality of the water my sons consumed at their suburban public schools. The data on our town’s water samples look fine, but it is possible that they do not reflect the situation in the schools. Some of those buildings are quite old, and that can create a problem. I’m now relieved when I see my sons and their schoolmates carrying bottled water, no matter the cost.

SCHWARTZ: This morning my New Jersey town sent a note to parents promising to share all testing information and stating that the most recent tests, in 2013, had shown no lead contamination. Parents should demand that information — and if there’s any doubt at all, send kids to school with a water bottle clipped to the backpack. But I’m no fan of bottled water, which creates waste problems and costs too much.

MCGEEHAN: I have occasionally sent my younger son off with a reusable one filled from the tap. But I probably won’t do that anymore, landfills be damned.

SCHWARTZ: By water bottle, Patrick, I meant that having your kids carry around a reusable bottle is a good idea, filled from the tap at home if you are comfortable with your own water supply. I just don’t like the disposable water bottles. Not that I want to start a huge argument or anything, but there were two million tons of plastic water bottles in landfills in 2005! Only 13 percent of plastic bottles get recycled. And the water isn’t necessarily any better than tap water, notes the Natural Resources Defense Council. Just sayin’.

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- Margaret Mead, Anthropologist