Lead in Water of East Coast Schools Cited

Despite a 1988 federal law, toxic lead can still be found in many school drinking fountains in the Mid-Atlantic region, a report said Saturday.

In a recent report, the Inspector General’s Office of the Environmental Protection Agency found that the EPA, states and local school districts are doing a poor job of implementing the laws, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

“Our findings confirm that harmful amounts of lead exist in drinking water provided by schools,” the report said.

The study covers schools in the EPA’s Region 3, which includes Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

“We had a law passed in 1988 to protect kids in school from lead, and the EPA and the states have dropped the ball,” said Erik Olsen, a lawyer with the National Wildlife Federation.

Exposure to the heavy metal can impair a child’s neurological development and learning ability. Contamination has been a problem in some older models of water coolers that have lead-lined tanks, and the EPA has estimated that as many as 250,000 children nationwide may be drinking contaminated water.

The report said one unidentified Maryland school district found elevated levels of lead in 32% of its water coolers, with some found to have lead levels five times higher than the EPA standard.

An EPA spokesman said the agency has been constrained in enforcing the Lead Contamination Control Act by a lack of resources and the way the law was written.

The law sets no penalties that could be levied to require compliance, and Congress has not allocated money to enforce it.