Danvers Public Schools regularly flush, monitor districts drinking water for lead

Tuesday

Mar 14, 2017 at 1:08 PMMar 14, 2017 at 1:08 PM

THE ISSUE: Danvers Public Schools regulate lead in water at its locations via weekly flushing and consistent monitoring.

WHY IT MATTERS: Massachusetts recently earned a D for effectiveness in regulating and protecting school children from lead in their drinking water. New laws have been filed in the Legislature to further monitor and maintain safe levels in school districts.

Mary Byrne

In a recent report — which evaluated 16 states’ laws for their effectiveness in regulating and protecting children from lead in their drinking water — Massachusetts, along with several other states, didn’t do so well. It received a “D” grade.

Nearby, Maine and Connecticut received failing grades; New York received a “C” grade, New Jersey, a “C-”.

Now, public health advocates and lawmakers in Massachusetts are calling for stronger laws and more testing of the drinking water at public schools.

A report published by MassPIRG Education Fund and the Environment Massachusetts Research & Policy Center was part of a campaign launched to educate on the health issues of lead poisoning and to encourage the passage of a bill filed in the Legislature in January.

The campaign, called Get the Lead Out, was introduced one month after Sen. Joan Lovely and Rep. Lori Ehrlich co-sponsored a bill that would require the removal of lead service lines, the installation of NSF-certified filters on faucets and fountains, and regular testing of water at schools. It also requires water outlets that contain more than one part per billion immediately be shut off.

“No parent should have to worry about their child drinking water with lead,” said Lovely, chief Senate sponsor, in a MassPIRG news release. “We have got to do better than that. We owe it to our kids.”

Symptoms of lead poisoning in children include developmental delay, irritability, loss of appetite, hearing loss and seizures, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The 31-page report cited lead testing data collected on a voluntary basis through the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, according to MassPIRG Legislative Director Deirdre Cummings.

“Because [Massachusetts] has been releasing data, we started to look at the data and what we found was that almost half of the tests that they had done at the time ... were coming up with lead in those water tests,” Cummings said. “More concerning, more of those tests had levels greater than 1 part per billion.”

Massachusetts is one of few states that provide a comprehensive statewide picture of lead in schools’ water, according to the report. More than 40,000 taps in Massachusetts’s public schools were tested.

Although the Danvers Public School system does regular water testing on the schools in its district, its test results were not part of the voluntary submission program the report’s findings are based on, according to Edmund Coletta, director of public affairs at Mass DEP.

At the end of last year, the town filed a report with the DEP, documenting the results of the most recent district-wide lead and copper tests.

In conjunction with the Department of Public Works and the Health Department, 107 water fixtures throughout the district were tested the summer before the start of the 2016-17 school year. Of those, four locations, which amounted to 10 water fixtures, presented with elevated levels of lead or copper during the first draw sample.

A district-wide flushing followed, which brought lead and copper levels below action levels at all four locations. For lead, the “action level,” or measurement deemed too high, is .015 mg/L.

As a result, a district-wide flushing program was then put into effect, meaning all sinks, fountains and other kitchen facilities accessible to students and staff are flushed weekly, according to the report filed with DEP.

According to the report filed with MassDEP, Danvers has a history of water quality testing at school facilities on a rotating basis, but a facility-wide test, like the one described above, hadn’t be done in recent years.

Lead became an issue of national concern when in 2014, the water crisis in Flint, Mich. dominated headlines. After a series of cost-cutting measures, an entire city’s water source became unsafe for drinking because of lead and other toxin contamination.

Now three years since the news broke, city officials say safe drinking water is likely more than two years away, according to the Detroit News.

“When parents send their kids to school, they want to ensure it’s the best environment for them to learn,” said Cummings. “What new data is showing is that we have some work to do to ensure that all kids across the state, while they’re in school, have access to drinking water that is free of lead.