Gov. Chris Christie wants all New Jersey schools to test their water for lead. Should schools have been doing this all along? Watch video
TRENTON -- Prior to elevated lead levels being detected in water at New Jersey's largest school district, Aqua Pro-Tech Laboratories typically received few requests to test water samples from school sinks and water fountains, said Rob Barrett, the company's chief executive.
But in the two months since Newark Public Schools shut off water in 30 buildings because of lead contamination, the Fairfield-based company has become so inundated with calls that it started turning schools away, Barrett said.
"This is seven days a week, 24 hours a day," Barrett said of his company's new testing schedule. "We never had to run on weekends. We ran a night shift, but now we are running around the clock."
Even before Gov. Chris Christie's announcement this month that all schools will be required to test for lead, New Jersey schools were rushing to test their drinking water so they could tackle new questions from parents and criticisms from activists.
When was the water last tested? Is there lead in the pipes? How do schools know that the water students are drinking is safe?
These are questions schools shouldn't be answering for the first time, said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
"This should have been done last year and the year before for the last 15 years," Tittel said of water testing. "And then we wouldn't have a problem with lead in our schools."
Survey: What are schools doing about lead?
An NJ Advance Media survey sent last month to 50 New Jersey school districts, including at least two from each of the state's 21 counties, found that some districts may have never tested the water inside their schools because they have no records of any inspection.
Most districts surveyed were not testing annually before conducting tests this spring. Some said they had not tested in more than a decade, dating as far back as 1993 in Montclair.
Because many New Jersey schools were built before 1986, when the use of lead in pipes was outlawed, some districts said they simply aren't sure whether there is lead or lead soldering in their schools' pipes.
Indeed, most districts that responded to the survey had multiple buildings that were constructed before the ban, dating as far back as the 1880s.
"Given the age of our building, it is possible, (there is lead in the pipes)" said Susan Genco, superintendent of Cranbury School District, where the original school building was constructed in 1945.
Yet each of the 15 districts that responded to the survey shared one response in common: since the news in Newark broke, they have either tested their sinks and faucets in recent weeks or plan to take action soon, according to their superintendents.
Testing of school water thus far has detected traces of lead higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's action level in several more New Jersey schools, including some in the Bridgewater-Raritan, New Brunswick, West-Windsor Plainsboro, Princeton and Parsippany school districts, according to school officials.
Heightened scrutiny of water quality also led to the revelation that schools in Elizabeth and Paterson found elevated lead levels in their water in prior school years but officials never informed parents.
"Flint, Michigan highlighted it, but it really didn't get anybody jumping here until Newark," said Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators. "And then folks could realize or did realize that this is an issue that hits at home."
Why weren't schools testing?
Tittel doesn't understand why it took some schools so long to start testing their water for lead, he said.
The EPA issued recommendations more than a decade ago warning that school water needs to be tested after it passes through a building's pipes, said Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
An EPA fact sheet published in 2005 spelled out why:
Public water systems that supply water to schools may meet EPA's lead standards, but lead can still get into school drinking water as it moves through a school's plumbing system. Lead can seep into the drinking water from plumbing materials and fixtures.
"Testing is the best way for schools to know if there are elevated levels of lead in a facility's drinking water," the recommendation said.
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The EPA's action level for lead in water is 15 parts per billion, roughly equivalent to 15 drops of water in an olympic-size swimming pool. However, there is no safe level of lead exposure for children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even at low degrees of exposure, lead can affect a child's intelligence, ability to pay attention and academic achievement, the CDC has warned.
"In this case, what you don't know will harm you," Tittel said of undetected lead in drinking water.
Bozza attributed the lack of water testing inside New Jersey schools to a lack of awareness.
The vast majority of the state's schools get their water from a local municipality or water company and had never been required to conduct testing to see how much lead, if any, is in the water flowing out of school sinks and water fountains, Bozza said.
Since the water companies had been testing the water before it entered schools, districts didn't consider that it could be contaminated by lead pipes or lead soldering before it came out of a water fountain or sink inside the building, Bozza said.
"I don't think anybody suspected it was a problem," Bozza said. "People just assumed once they got the water reports everything was fine and didn't think about the infrastructure and the impact it might have."
A history of problems
Even before the water problem in Flint made national news and Newark Public Schools announced it was shutting off water in certain buildings, some schools in New Jersey that did test for lead knew they had problems with their water.
In 2002, Camden Public Schools shut down water fountains in older buildings and switched to bottled water because of lead levels well above the EPA action limit. The district has used bottled water ever since because it's cheaper than replacing the aging infrastructure that's causing lead to leak into the city's public water, according to the district.
More recently, testing in Jersey City schools in 2013 found that water from nearly 200 water fountains and sinks contained lead contamination. The district said those fountain and sinks were already shut off.
Testing in Newark Public Schools this year revealed lead levels that were multiple times higher than the EPA action level in some schools. The district turned to bottled water and offered to test about 17,000 children for lead poisoning.
City officials and local health experts have said it is unlikely that children would suffer permanent damage from the levels of lead recorded in the schools' drinking water alone.
The risk of lead poisoning comes only with long-term exposure to lead, health experts said.
However, school isn't the only place students may have been exposed to lead. One in three homes in New Jersey was built before lead paint was outlawed in 1978, and elevated lead levels were detected in about 3,500 New Jersey children last year.
A state law mandates testing of children under the age of 6, and elevated lead levels have been detected in 220,000 children since 2000. The majority of those children did not require medical treatment.
What's next?
While the lead contamination in Newark schools raised concerns for parents, the revelation that the district knew about the water problems since at least 2012 prompted even more questions across the state, said Rose Acerra, president-elect of the New Jersey PTA.
"The main concern was that either they weren't testing schools because they were not mandated to or those that have (tested) were not being transparent about it," Acerra said.
In his call for statewide testing, Christie said those parental concerns are fair.
Schools will be required to test their water for lead and make the results available to parents and employees. The state will not track the results, and schools will retain control over how to remediate any problems.
"We are taking these steps today because I think they are the ones that are most prudent and they are the ones that are most needed," Christie said. "I think what people need is information so they can feel safe."
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.