Dive Brief:

• New York City changed its practice of running water through faucets and drinking fountains for two hours the night before a test and found far more cases of dangerously high lead levels than it did in 2016.
• The New York Times reports the city announced last year that just 1% of outlets in schools had lead concentrations higher than 15 parts per billion, the EPA’s “action level,” while re-testing has so far identified nine times as many water outlets with lead levels at 15 parts per billion or higher.
• One Staten Island school formerly found its highest lead concentration level was 49 parts per billion in a classroom faucet and, in a re-test in December, found a classroom faucet had 32,500 parts per billion, 14 total outlets had more than 1,000 parts per billion and 53 total outlets surpassed the EPA action threshold — compared to six that had last year.

Dive Insight:

Reuters analyzed lead testing data from across the country shortly after the Flint, MI, water contamination crisis and found almost 3,000 places where lead poisoning rates are even higher than in Flint. The problem is pervasive in cities with aging infrastructure and black children are disproportionately likely to be exposed to overly high lead levels than their white peers.

Researchers at Brown and Princeton have found reduced lead levels positively impact student reading scores in a statistically significant way, even if the original lead concentration wasn’t remarkably high. This is one reason why schools and cities with lead problems have been urged to invest in the costly work of replacing old pipes.