A preschooler at Fords Prairie Elementary burns off energy after lunch in the school's multipurpose room in December 2016.
The Centralia School District has removed nine fixtures from Fords Prairie Elementary School after Department of Health test results indicated elevated levels of lead in the fixtures, the district announced this week.
“We’re going to increase our testing patterns to test all the faucets every year,” said Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos. “We are looking at, if not the most economical way, the safer way.”
While only four fixtures tested at or above the Environmental Protection Agency action level of 20 parts per billion, another five were above 12 ppb. Centralia removed all nine fixtures. Three of the fixtures were bubblers, where students could get drinking water.
Davalos did not immediately know what part of the school those drinking fountains were in, or how much student traffic they may have seen.
“I really couldn’t say for certain,” Davalos said. “If they were bubblers, I don’t know if they were operational. Just the fact that they have water in the classroom, there is never a guarantee I can say kids didn’t use that at one time or another. That’s why we do these tests and the state is doing what they’re doing.”
The DOH tested the fixtures at Fords Prairie on May 1 and provided Centralia School District with the results on May 22. The DOH also tested all the fixtures at Edison Elementary School in March and released the results in April. Centralia School District removed two fixtures at Edison after the test results showed elevated levels of lead.
However, the DOH has not tested the fixtures at Jefferson-Lincoln Elementary School.
“They told us that was going to happen, but so far we haven’t heard from them,” said Davalos, adding that the district plans to reach out to the DOH about testing fixtures at Jefferson-Lincoln Elementary School.
There is no state law that requires school districts to test their fixtures for lead, which largely leaves the decision of how and when to test up to individual districts. The DOH plans to test 500 elementary schools in the state before July 2019, but the tests are optional for the school districts.
“If we can get them to come back and test more we will,” Davalos said. “I know they’re getting around to as many as they can.”
Lead poisoning is most dangerous to children under 6 and can severely affect mental and physical development. However, Elizabeth Coleman, who is the environmental public health division communications lead at Washington State DOH, told The Chronicle in April that elevated blood-lead levels in children doesn’t typically stem from lead in schools.
“We just know that overall there is no safe level of lead, but kids who have those elevated blood-lead levels, we see it coming from their home environment or something larger in the environment,” Coleman previously told The Chronicle.
