Healthy Water Healthy Kids

Healthy and clean water means healthy kids. According to a 2010 study from the Public Health Institute’s California Environmental Health Tracking Program, over 1.2 million children across America have elevated levels of lead in their blood. Many of those children are being exposed to lead at school, where the action level is 20 parts per billion (ppb) rather than the standard action level across the country, which is 15 ppb.

Schools are supposed to be safe environments for students to learn and develop. Instead, students are expected to concentrate on learning when they’re drinking poisoned water that reduces IQ and causes aggressive behaviors.

Students in West Virginia are fighting for their right to clean water in schools where the principal checks the color of the water every morning. More often than not, when the water is not clear, the school puts plastic bags over all of the fountains. Students are also instructed to use sanitizer to wash hands after they use the bathrooms instead of the colored toxic water. The same scenario is also happening in Vermont and in states across the country.

Laws can be passed on a state and federal level that require schools to test their water for lead, inform parents and communities about their findings, and provide funds to filter water or replace piping to prevent future exposure. Laws like these can prevent harm. If there had been mandatory testing of drinking water in schools, it is possible that the Flint Water Crisis would have been exposed earlier and exposure to lead would have been limited.

Water should be considered a human right, but children in this country are being forced to drink toxic water while they try to learn. Children are required to attend school, so schools should be required to ensure that the water their students are drinking is healthy and safe.

Think of all of the testing children are required to endure. They have almost weekly subject exams and annual standardized exams in math, English, and science, but schools are not required to test drinking water to make sure their students have a safe water supply. No child should drink from a water fountain and wonder if they’re being poisoned. Children deserve better. It is the country’s duty to protect and develop the next generation, but with the lack of water testing, far too often, they are being poisoned them. In this way, America is failing its children.

The Facts at a Glance

For additional information, including in Spanish, please view the PDFs at the bottom of this page.

Lead is a potent neurotoxin that is dangerous to everybody, but especially to infants, young children, and pregnant people. For young kids, even very low amounts of lead—including levels below those deemed safe by the government—can lead to fatigue, kidney and nervous system damage, anemia, stunted bone and muscle growth, and vision and hearing loss. Lead poisoning can also irreversibly damage a child’s developing brain and cause behavior problems, hyperactivity, a decreased IQ, and other learning disabilities.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a standard for lead in drinking water at 15 parts per billion (ppb). However, some experts believe this standard is too high to effectively protect children. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends a standard of 1 ppb or less of lead in water for any school, daycare, or other source of water a developing child might drink from. The actual health-based goal for lead, defined by EPA, is zero. The 15 ppb figure represents a more “realistic” and achievable number for utilities and water companies due to technological and logistical constraints.

Did you know?

No quantity of lead ingested is safe for the human body.

Lead enters the water supply through the corrosion of pipes, fixtures, and solders that contain lead. Congress banned the installation of new lead plumbing materials in 1986, but as many as 10 million homes built before that have plumbing composed entirely of lead, and millions of additional homes contain lead solder. Even “lead free” materials were allowed to contain up to 8% lead until 2014, when it was reduced to 0.25%. As long as lead exists in plumbing fixtures, it can leach into drinking water.

Did you know?

Nearly everyone in the U.S., regardless of where they live, is at risk of ingesting dangerous concentrations of lead in their drinking water.

Testing Your Water for Lead

Gathering Information

Every municipal water system has a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR), which includes testing results for lead and other drinking water contaminants. You can find your CCR here. The EPA’s website also provides useful resources including links to a safe drinking water hotline, regulations on water quality standards, and background information on lead and other contaminants.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a list of state lead programs that provide additional local information and resources on lead in drinking water.

The lead results reported in the CCR are determined by procedures defined in EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). Under this rule, a small portion of a municipality’s water system is tested, and if 90% of water samples from a municipality are below 15 ppb, then the community’s water is deemed safe. This means that some of the water tested could have levels much higher than 15 ppb. Additionally, much of the water was not tested at all. Also, as discussed earlier, 15 ppb of lead still presents significant risks, especially for infants, young children, and pregnant people. For these reasons, lead levels reported on the CCR should be taken with a grain of salt.

A Note About the New Guidelines

On February 29, 2016 (during the fallout from the Flint Water Crisis), the EPA changed its recommendations on how to test drinking water for lead. Although the EPA has issued these new guidelines, there’s no guarantee that water companies around the country have switched to the new sampling procedures. If you’re concerned about the lead levels in your water, find out what sampling procedures are being used, because it makes a huge difference.

The new and current sampling method includes these guidelines:

Do not remove or clean faucet aerators/screens prior to sampling
Do not flush prior to sampling
Use wide mouth sample bottles to allow water flow to enter at a rate similar to what consumers might use when pouring a glass of water to drink

The previous sampling method advised people to pre-clean the aerator/screen, flush pipes prior to sampling, open the tap slowly, and sample at low flow. With these guidelines, less lead gets into the sampling container and thus misleadingly low concentrations of lead are recorded.
Contact CHEJ (info@chej.org) to obtain a copy of the February 2016 EPA memo.

Lead can be present in water without any noticeable change in the odor, taste, or smell, so a specific test is necessary to detect it. Still, both do-it-yourself and professional lab lead tests can produce misleading results. Lead levels in water can fluctuate dramatically throughout the day, sometimes by as much as tens to hundreds of times higher. By testing your water for lead only once or twice, as is standard practice, you may not get a reliable or accurate estimate of the lead content in your water. After a single negative test, you might think your water is safe to drink, but it could contain dangerous levels of undetected lead. Water temperature also can also affect the amount of lead measured.

Doing the Testing Yourself

Because of the fluctuations described above, the EPA says that at-home test kits should not be used as the only determinant for whether your water is safe to drink. The kit should be used repeatedly under different conditions to address the fluctuations described above. Keep in mind that the results are still snapshots in time and not clear and accurate estimates of the lead in your water.

The First Alert WT1 Drinking Water Test Kit is one popular and easy-to-use lead-testing kit. Its results change color depending on the amount of lead in the water.

Seeking Out Professional Assistance

Government agencies, local utilities, and state-certified labs are widely regarded as more reliable and accurate places to measure lead content in drinking water. Just like the at-home test kits, though, taking a single sample or two and sending them to a professional lab will not provide an accurate representation of the lead content in your water. If you decide to send samples to a lab, make sure the lab is certified by the EPA and that you follow the EPA’s sampling guidelines (see above) and collect samples at different times.

How to Remove Lead from Your Water

In the Short Term

If your drinking water has elevated levels of lead, it is imperative to get a filter. Before you have obtained a filter, consider using bottled water instead of tap water and “flushing” the water at the tap before using it. “Flushing” refers to running showers and other high-volume taps on the coldest setting for 5 minutes, and running the kitchen tap on cold for another 2 minutes before using it for drinking or cooking. This should be done whenever the water has been sitting for a while in the pipes, such as when you first wake up in the morning or when coming home from work. Some researchers recommend flushing water as often as once every 2-3 hours.

Filters

Did you know?

Relatively simple, affordable, and long-lasting water treatment devices can easily be installed to ensure better protection against lead.

Use filtration systems at the Point-of-Use for water, where it comes out of the faucet, rather than systems at the Point-of-Entry, where water enters your house. If there is any lead piping within your household, it would contaminate water after being treated by a POE system.

To ensure these filters keep working, they must be maintained and replaced according to their manufacturers’ individual specifications.

A vast array of certified products are available that remove over 99% of lead in water and achieve lead levels below 15 ppb. When purchasing one of these products, look for seals from The Water Quality Association (WQA) and NSF International. These independent organizations are accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to certify products that reduce lead in drinking water. The best filters for lead meet the Class I particulate reduction standard (NSF/ANSI 42) and the lead reduction standard (NSF/ANSI 53).

The least expensive POU water treatment systems that are NSF and/or WQA certified are faucet-mounted filters or filtered jugs and pitchers. To view some specific options, click on the “Filters for Removing Lead in Drinking Water” PDF below.

Funding

The Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) provide funding to communities for issues related to water, including pollution cleanup and preventing exposure to hazardous contaminants in water. They have low interest rates and flexible repayment options. State governments receive these funds and then distribute them out. Any local government or community group can receive funding for water infrastructure projects, but they must prove they have an eligible project and the ability to succeed.

More information on CWSRF is available here. More information on DWSRF is available here.

Larger water infrastructure projects may be eligible for funding through the the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA). For more information on WIFIA, read the “WIFIA” PDF at the bottom of this page and click here for the program’s handbook.

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