Some samples taken at PS 166, pictured above, showed elevated levels of lead.
Water samples taken from several schools on the Upper West Side have tested positive for lead in recent weeks, as the city has stepped up testing in the wake of renewed concern about lead contamination following the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Among the schools that have shown elevated levels of lead in at least some samples are PS 166 on 89th street (3 samples out of 156 taken), PS 199 on 70th street (1 out of 154), PS 75 on 95th street (2 out of 108), and PS 87 on 78th street (1 out of 92). (At PS 87, there were no samples found with lead during a retest.) The data posted online doesn’t specify how much lead was found in each sample. Lead can cause learning disabilities and other health problems in children.
Principals have been attempting to quell any concerns over the water samples, though one UWS mom we talked to called her principal’s letter “half convincing.”
The city has been adamant for years that New York City water is remarkably clean and safe. Under Mayor Bloomberg the city bought and protected land around the reservoir and switched out old pipes. But even if the reservoir is pristine and pipes leading into the city are clean, the lead in old pipes and fixtures at schools can leech into the water. And the city stopped testing hundreds of schools after 2005, according to an analysis by WNYC.
“The conventional wisdom used to be that the plumbing lead release would only get better with time,” Marc Edwards, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, told WNYC. “And so, back in the day, when schools sampled once and they went in and fixed all the problematic fixtures, they thought was this problem was done forever. We now know that this conventional wisdom is completely wrong.”
The city says it is flushing and using other measures to keep lead out of the water at schools.
“Beginning in 2002, the DOE partnered with DOHMH and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to test the water in DOE school buildings. Currently, in every NYC public school built before the 1986 ban on lead in construction, the water has been tested for lead. The vast majority are confirmed negative.
For those buildings that had even one outlet with results above recommended levels (even if the test was in the past), we have been implementing a protocol, approved by DOHMH and based on EPA guidance, involving a combination of weekly flushing, equipment replacement and more, to ensure the safety of students and faculty. Flushing has been shown to be highly effective in removing lead from water because (a) flushing builds up the protective coating on plumbing pipes and (b) flushing moves old water out of the system and brings in fresh water.”
To look up the results for your school, click here.
Image via wikipedia.
And that makes me wonder about all our older apartment buildings on the UWS as well.
Many years ago, when I was rearing children in NYC, the persistent fear of the day was lead in paint used in apartments. The city worked zealously to rid us of that terror and we now use lead-free paint. I recall that my husband, an MD, gave me to understand that one of the easy solutions was for children to EAT foods that would chelate the lead out of the digestive tract. One of the easiest was mayonnaise. ! don’t know how much/how little, but it did work. Any thoughts on interim researching such a solution as opposed to flogging Mayor de Blasio and his team and flying around the ceiling ? It just might be useful!
you mean well deserved flogging of diblasio…he’s a disgrace
Disgrace to yuppies and people who support abusive police officers.