Lead in PA School Drinking Water

For our children to stay healthy, they need access to safe, clean drinking water.

Every parent should be able to expect that their child’s school district and school board are doing everything in their power to meet that need. And this includes protecting them from exposure to toxic substances that may be found in the drinking water supplied on school premises.

Recent research in Pennsylvania and across the country has indicated that children are ingesting lead via the drinking water provided in schools. A 2021 review of statewide data for Pennsylvania by the non-profit

Women for a Healthy Environment, for example, showed that more than 90% of school districts in the commonwealth that tested for lead in their schools’ drinking water were reporting lead contamination.

Lead is a powerful neurotoxin, and especially harmful to children.

• The World Health Organization states that there is no safe level of lead exposure for children. Even tiny amounts of lead in children’s blood have been linked to cognitive impairment, behavioral problems and learning difficulties.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) likewise states that even low levels of lead exposure in children can lead to nervous system damage, learning disabilities, hearing problems, impaired blood cell formation and function, and a range of other impacts.
• A 2022 study found that childhood lead exposure has shaved an average of 2.6 points off the IQ of every American alive today. That’s around 824 million IQ points lost nationwide due to lead exposure.

Despite a growing awareness of the dangers of lead, school districts across Pennsylvania and nationwide have been slow to act. The absence of strong policies at the local, state and federal levels is allowing school districts to continue with a business-as-usual approach that leaves our children at risk.

Strong action at the state and local level is essential in addressing the threat of lead in school drinking water, not least because even the weak federal standards regarding lead in water do not apply to most school districts. 

Pennsylvania’s only statewide policy designed to address the problem of lead in school drinking water – Act 39 of 2018 – unfortunately provides little to no protection for Pennsylvania’s children. The law contains glaring loopholes that make it easy for school districts to avoid testing and remediating problems that may exist, or even informing parents, teachers or others about lead found in school drinking water. 

Evidence uncovered through a series of Right-to-Know requests submitted to nine of the largest school districts in Pennsylvania indicates that, when it comes to lead in drinking water, school districts are failing in their responsibility to protect children in a number of ways. These include:

• The “public meeting” exemption. A loophole in Act 39 of 2018 allows school districts to opt out of testing for lead altogether, provided they simply discuss lead-related issues in their school facilities at a public meeting at some point during the school year. The Altoona Area School District, Norristown Area School District and West Chester Area School District are among those who appear to have used this provision to avoid annual testing for lead in drinking water, potentially putting the health of children at risk while still complying with the law.
• Failing to test or discuss lead issues in a public meeting. While discussing lead issues at a public meeting is enough to exempt a school district from testing under current Pennsylvania law, several districts appear not even to be doing that. The Altoona Area School District, Bethlehem Area School District and Hazleton Area School District, for example, have had years when they neither conducted testing nor discussed lead at a public meeting.
• Testing only a few outlets. Testing just a few outlets rather than all drinking water taps virtually guarantees that some lead in a school’s water system will go undetected. Yet even a school district that tests just a single outlet in each of its schools is technically in compliance with Pennsylvania’s current law. We found that the Bethlehem Area School District has reported testing just three outlets in each of its 22 schools, York School District one outlet in each school building in its nine schools, and West Chester one outlet from each of its 17 schools.
• Making water testing results difficult or impossible to find. Any parent should be able to easily access the results of lead testing at their child’s school. Some districts we assessed, however, make it difficult or nearly impossible to do so. We were unable to find any discussion of lead in drinking water on the websites of the Altoona, Bethlehem, Upper Darby, Harrisburg, Hazleton, Norristown or York school districts, for example. In some cases, we found references to lead testing buried in board meeting minutes, but in only a small number of those cases did minutes also include results of testing. While these are technically publicly available, they are not easily locatable. Some testing results were only accessible to us through legal avenues, through Right-to-Know requests.
• Failing to publish results showing lead from school taps on the Department of Education website. The lead testing requirements under Act 39 of 2018 mandate that test results showing the presence of lead in school drinking water be reported to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) and posted on the department’s website. Our research found that this does not appear to be consistently happening. Several of the test results obtained through our Right-to-Know requests coming back positive for lead contamination are missing from the list on PDE’s website.
• Failing to provide sufficient access to drinking water. Kids need adequate access to drinking water throughout the day, so they can stay healthy and hydrated. Since 2018, Pennsylvania law has required that school buildings must provide one drinking water source for every 100 students, teachers and other occupants, yet only one of nine school districts surveyed – York – was able to demonstrate compliance with this requirement.

Pennsylvania’s lax requirements around lead in school drinking water, combined with apparent noncompliance with those standards by many school districts, are putting the commonwealth’s children at risk. 

To properly protect Pennsylvania’s children from the threat of lead contamination in water, policymakers must replace the state’s current “test and fix” law with one that requires prevention at every tap used for drinking, cooking and beverage preparation in our schools. 

Statewide policies to stop the widespread lead contamination of school drinking water should include:

• Mandating the replacement of all schools’ drinking fountains with lead-filtering water bottle filling stations and the installation of lead-capturing filters on all other taps used for drinking, cooking and beverage preparation. Fountains beyond the 1:100 water source: building occupants requirement should either be replaced with lead-filtering water bottle filling stations or be shut off and/or removed.
• Mandating the installation of at least one such filtered outlet for every 100 students and/or school staff members in the building in line with current requirements under Pennsylvania law stipulating a 1:100 ratio of drinking water sources to building occupants. 
• Requiring the full replacement of all lead service lines and establishing policies to ensure that schools are no longer purchasing or installing plumbing and fixtures that leach lead into water.
• Allocating funding to pay for these replacements.
• Mandating that all drinking outlets in every school district across the commonwealth meet the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended limit on lead in schools’ drinking water of 1 ppb.

In addition, the federal government should:

• Update the Lead and Copper Rule to require water utilities to install water stations with filters certified to remove lead and such point of use filters at all other drinking water and cooking taps at schools and childcare centers. At the very least, this requirement should apply to the relatively few schools and childcare centers that are federally regulated as public water systems.
• Finalize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed 10-year deadline for water utilities to fully replace all lead service lines.
• Provide additional funding needed to help states and school districts to install filters and remove lead in water infrastructure, including lead service lines and plumbing/fixtures in schools.
• Marshal the authority of all relevant federal agencies – including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture – to protect public health from contamination of drinking water.