Is your child going back to school? Make sure advocating for lead-free water is on your ‘back-to-school’ list

Make sure your children are safe from the threat of lead in their school drinking water

Clean water

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The Problem: Lead in school drinking water

Health experts are clear that there is no safe level of lead, especially for children.  It leads to learning disabilities, hearing and speech problems, affects brain development, and lowers IQ.

Yet PennEnvironment’s newest study, Lead in School Drinking Water: How Pennsylvania school districts and the commonwealth are failing to protect children’s health, had some very jarring findings: that school districts regularly violate state laws and best practices when it comes to protect our children from this well-known drinking water contaminant, including:

  • Hindering access to lead testing results;
  • Failing to test school drinking fountains for potential lead contamination as required under Pennsylvania law;
  • Failing to test an adequate number of drinking outlets to detect potential lead contamination;
  • Failing to provide positive test results to the Pennsylvania Department of Education as required by state law;
  • Using loopholes in Pennsylvania’s existing requirements to avoid testing and reporting for lead;
  • And failing to provide sufficient access to drinking water as required under state law.

Our study only reaffirmed what drinking water experts have been saying for years: only testing for lead is a failed strategy that puts our kids at risk. It’s time to move beyond testing for lead, and tackle this dangerous contaminant in our schools once and for all. 

The solution: Remove all old water fountains and replace them with lead-filtering fountains, sinks and water bottle filling stations

The solution to keep our kids safe from the threat of lead in school drinking water is simple and has been proven incredibly effective: remove all those decades-old drinking fountains that could be releasing lead-tainted water, and replace them with  lead-filtering water bottle filling stations and drinking fountains in all Pennsylvania school buildings. These “hydration stations” make sure our kids have water to drink that’s safe from lead in the very place they go to learn and grow.

PennEnvironment is calling on members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to immediately implement a pending bipartisan proposal (Senate Bill 986 and House Bill 2011) that would require all school districts across to replace old drinking fountains that pose a risk of lead contamination with lead-filtering water bottle filling stations and drinking fountains. The legislation also includes $30 million in funding to help Pennsylvania school districts cover the cost of these much-needed upgrades to protect kids’ health.

Of course, individual school districts across the state should also do the right thing and voluntarily replace all of the old water fountains currently in their buildings with lead-filtering water bottle filling stations and drinking fountains as quickly as possible. Putting these water filtering systems in our schools is the only way to properly protect school children from the threat of lead.

Amplifying our findings–and the solutions needed to protect kids from lead in school drinking water

To get the results of our newest study out into the hands of parents, teachers, elected officials and others, PennEnvironment held three news conferences across the state to release our findings. 

The response from media outlets across Pennsylvania was incredible: more than 100 news stories ran in every corner of the state raising the red flag about our findings–and highlighting the solutions at our fingertips to quickly solve the threat of lead in school drinking water. 

This included stories in some of the state’s largest and most-read newspapers, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Harrisburg Patriot News, the Allentown Morning Call, and the Pennsylvania Capital Star. We also had coverage on nearly a dozen major TV news stations across the state and numerous radio stations, including local NPR affiliates in Harrisburg, WHYY in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and northeastern Pennsylvania

PennEnvironment will continue to uncover the risks posed by lead in school drinking water in Pennsylvania schools, and calling on state elected officials to take action as quickly as possible.

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