A Seattle Public Schools administrator collects water for testing from a drinking fountain at Emerson Elementary School in South Seattle.
While there is no safe level of lead, the Washington State Department of Health has found “actionable” levels of lead in seven Lewis County elementary schools over the past year.
“The way we have been doing that is working through a list we got from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction,” said Lauren Jenks, director for Environmental Public Health Sciences with the DOH. “(We) prioritized the ones that hold the youngest children,”
In early 2018, the DOH began testing for lead in drinking water in school districts across Washington. Jenks noted that schools with daycares and older schools known to have issues with water, including middle and high schools, are a high priority for the department.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines for testing for lead in water dictate that any fixture that produces water with lead that is higher than 20 parts per billion (ppb) is “actionable” and should be removed. The DOH recommends on its website that school districts remove or replace any fixture that produces more than 9 ppb.
The DOH has tested for lead in half of Lewis County’s school districts, and found “actionable” levels of lead in most elementary schools it tested. While the department will continue testing for lead through June of this year, seven Lewis County school districts have not participated in the state-funded test yet.
The DOH has tested at least one elementary school in the Boistfort, Chehalis, Centralia, Morton, Mossyrock, Onalaska and Toledo school districts. In the Toledo and Mossyrock school districts, the DOH also tested the middle and high schools.
While the Mossyrock School District previously tested some fixtures in the district for lead, last year was the first time it tested all of its fixtures, said superintendent Lisa Grant. Results from the DOH found that eight fixtures in the elementary school contained lead above 9 ppb — the amount at which the DOH recommends districts replace the fixtures with lead-free fixtures or remove them permanently.
“Previously we didn’t do any testing, so we have become much more aware,” Grant said. “Now when we purchase (fixtures), we only purchase lead free.”
Grant said the district received a water replacement grant from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to replace all fixtures in the elementary school. The district immediately turned off the fixtures, and replaced all that were above the 9 ppb level throughout the district last summer.
The Cascade Elementary School building in the Chehalis School District — which currently only houses third grade — had a fixture with a lead content of 282 ppb, test results show. The DOH collected the sample in May 2018.
Chehalis School District superintendent Ed Rothlin said the district has since removed all fixtures in the building with more than a 9 ppb lead count. The district replaced three fixtures in the building that the third grade students use, which the DOH retested in September 2018.
“The Department of Health came in and requested to go in and test our fixtures at Cascade Elementary School,” Rothlin said. “… Of course what we did was we moved out of Cascade for the most part. We still have one grade level in there (and) we are not using the fixtures (with actionable levels of lead).”
Elsewhere in Lewis County, the DOH has not tested school district fixtures for lead. There is currently no state law that requires school districts to test their fixtures for lead, and if districts test at all, they decide how and when to do it.
The DOH has not conducted tests in the Pe Ell, Adna, Evaline, Winlock, Napavine, White Pass and Castle Rock school districts.
Jenks said the DOH began with a goal of testing 500 schools and has tested roughly 400 so far. She said that she doesn’t know which of the last 100 schools the department will test yet, but that the department doesn’t turn down schools that volunteer for testing. While the DOH covers the cost of collecting and analyzing the samples, the tests are optional.
Jenks didn’t know how many school districts in Lewis County, if any, are currently scheduled for testing, but said all elementary schools are eligible.
“The first thing we do is let the district know what the results were,” Jenks said. “In almost every school we do find some lead. If they have a faucet that is above the EPA action level, then we help them try to find money to replace it.”
Jenks said the DOH still works with schools to replace fixtures that are over the 9 ppb level, or helps districts come up with protocols to flush or filter the water. Jenks noted that the DOH conducts a “first-draw” test and the level it finds in the water isn’t what children would be drinking.
“There should not be lead in your drinking water, so we would like to work with the schools to get the number as close to zero as possible,” Jenks said. “... Lead ends up being everywhere in our environment. … Zero is not really possible, so we try to get it as low as we possibly can. We use these action levels to help us focus our resources. Where we have limited resources, we want to focus on faucets that have the most lead in them.”
