While a congressional hearing Thursday focused attention on the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, news reporting from around the country reveals that the problem of lead-contamination afflicts communities nationwide.
A multi-part USA Today investigation published this week identified almost 2,000 additional water systems in all 50 states where testing has shown excessive levels of lead contamination over the past four years. “The water systems, which reported lead levels exceeding Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] standards, collectively supply water to 6 million people,” according to reporters Alison Young and Mark Nichols.
The series installment released Thursday details hundreds of educational facilities across the nation “where children were exposed to water containing excessive amounts of an element doctors agree is unsafe at any level.”
According to the paper’s analysis of EPA data, about 350 schools and day-care centers failed lead tests a total of about 470 times from 2012 through 2015.
Indeed, NPR ran a story on Wednesday on how “[b]ottled water has actually become a long-term solution in Baltimore,” where elevated lead levels were discovered in scores of schools in 1992. After years of trying to fix the problem, NPR reported, “in 2007, the entire school district switched to bottled water.”
A similar “solution” has been in place for two years at an elementary school outside of Fresno, according to California’s Desert Sun on Wednesday.
Common Dreams wrote last week about how public schools in Newark, New Jersey, were forced to shut off drinking fountains after test results showed high levels of lead in the water supply; NJ.com says similar tests have uncovered lead in water lines at Morristown Medical Center, as well as supplies overseen by the Passaic Valley Water Commission, which brings water to towns across five North Jersey counties.
“We need to do a better job of testing throughout the state and fixing these problems,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, earlier this month. “We can’t allow our children to be put at risk.”
Data analyzed after the Flint story broke showed that that lead exposure “is a pervasive issue in the United States,” Sarah Frostenson wrote for Vox at the time. “In some places outside of Flint,” she said, “more than half of children test positive for lead poisoning.”
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported Thursday on “startlingly elevated” levels of lead in Jackson, Mississippi’s drinking water.
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