PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Local environmental groups say the School District of Philadelphia has been slow to test the drinking water in its schools for lead contamination.
Using data from the district’s own testing, the groups say that of the 65 schools sampled so far, 64 had at least one drinking water outlet that tested positive for lead.
The highest concentrations were found at three elementary schools: Duckrey in North Philadelphia, Logan in Germantown and Anderson in Cobbs Creek. Duckrey had the highest reading at 8,768 parts per billion.
A 2017 city law requires the district to test its outlets for lead by the end of this year. To date, the district has posted results for only 29% of its schools, according to David Masur, executive director of the PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center.
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“Unfortunately what our data shows today is that the district is chronically behind in its testing and that there are hundreds of [drinking water] outlets that are testing positive for lead,” he said Wednesday at a news conference outside district headquarters.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, any lead in water is harmful, especially to growing children. The district in recent years has installed what it calls hydration stations, where students can refill water bottles with filtered water.
Masur said the district should use federal stimulus money to complete the job.
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“The district should make a comprehensive effort to take out those old, antiquated drinking fountains and replace them with these lead-filtering hydration stations as quickly as possible,” he added. “If the district uses just a small percentage of that [COVID-19 relief] money — less than 1% of that money — they can replace every drinking fountain across the district in every single school with a lead-filtering hydration station and solve this problem comprehensively once and for all.”
PennEnvironment, along with the PennPIRG Education Fund and the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality, created a website where the public can track the results of lead testing in schools.
The district, in a statement, said that if a water outlet tests above the city’s threshold for lead, the outlet is shut down. The district said it has more than 1,300 filtered hydration stations in its schools, and it says the PennPIRG report is a mischaracterization of water quality in school buildings.
