HEALTH

Arizona officials tested 13,000 school faucets for lead. Here's what they found

Ricardo Cano
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality this year took lead screening samples of 13,380 water fixtures in 1,427 schools.

The vast majority of the sinks and water fountains Arizona K-12 students use at school are producing water with low or no levels of lead, according to a new report from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. 

But most districts in the state, including those in the Phoenix area, have at least one water fixture where lead was above the acceptable level.

The department this year took lead screening samples of 13,380 water fixtures in 1,427 schools. It found that 96 percent of those fixtures had initial screening levels that were below the precautionary lead threshold of 15 parts per billion, according to the report.

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Officials found 532 fixtures had elevated levels of lead, but 110 of them either "were not drinking water fixtures" or were located in unoccupied buildings, according to the report. The report details the numbers in each district. 

Trevor Baggiore, ADEQ’s water quality division director, said the department is working with the state's School Facilities Board to make sure the fixtures that had elevated traces of lead will be replaced.

Screening program cost about $230K

Schools with the 422 drinking water fixtures have followed protocols that include shutting off fixtures to prevent students’ access to them.

A drinking fixture at Kuban Elementary School in the Murphy School District had the highest readings of lead at 7,010 parts per billion.

Baggiore said the district immediately shut off the fixture after the initial results. A follow-up sample was much lower – 45 parts per billion – but still above the precautionary threshold.

Baggiore said officials were unsure if that fixture, a sink inside the school’s library, was one normally used by students.

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in January began the six-month effort to test all of the state’s district schools for lead in drinking water.

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in January began the six-month effort to test all of the state’s district schools for lead in drinking water.  

Baggiore said no one before had done a full-scale effort to test Arizona public schools’ drinking water. He said it was done out of precaution following recent drinking water crises in other states.

Schools in Arizona that do not serve as their own water provider — which includes all but 85 of the state's 2,000-plus schools — are not required to test their drinking water for lead.

The statewide lead screening program cost about $230,000.

Big price tag for problem fixtures

Lead exposure is especially harmful to young children, though its presence is uncommon in Arizona drinking water. 

There hasn’t been a recorded case in Arizona of anyone having elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream due to drinking water.

“My takeaway from this effort is that the majority of schools in Arizona don’t have a problem with lead in their drinking water,” Baggiore said.

The School Facilities Board estimates it will cost about $400,000 to replace the fixtures with confirmed elevated levels of lead in drinking water, according to the ADEQ report.

The ADEQ report notes that older school buildings had a higher rate of detection in initial lead screening samples. For example, about 9 percent of buildings built before 1989 that had fixtures tested had initial samples of lead above 15 parts per billion. 

In buildings that had been built after, that percentage dropped to about 3 percent. The report noted the disparity is "as expected due to more protective construction standards that came into effect in 1987."

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