This post was originally published on Word In /black.
By: Aziah Siid
In Harford County, Maryland, students are bringing water bottles to school — and not just because they want to stay extra hydrated. At the end of August, 10 campuses in Harford County Public Schools shut down their drinking water systems after tests revealed alarming levels of toxic “forever chemicals” in their wells.
But a lack of clean water at schools isn’t just a problem in Harford County, a semi-rural area about 30 miles northeast of Baltimore. From Flint, Michigan, to Jackson, Mississippi, school systems in communities across America — particularly those serving low-income and minority students — are grappling with contaminated water.
A Wake-Up Call from the EPA
The crisis in Maryland started last Wednesday when officials with Harford County Public Schools reported high levels of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in at least 10 schools’ water systems. The culprit? Wells with PFAS levels up to 25 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s new limit of 4 parts per trillion.
“PFAS are a family of man-made toxic forever chemicals that are in the blood of nearly 99% of Americans,” Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at Environmental Working Group told local station WMAR.” They were first developed back in the 40’s and 50’s and have been leaching into our environment ever since then.”
The EPA warns that FAS exposure over long periods “can cause cancer and other serious illnesses that decrease quality of life or result in death.” Yet water utilities nationwide are just starting to test for PFAS so the scope of the problem remains unknown.
Schools in Harford were advised that students and staff shouldn’t consume the water. Students were encouraged to bring refillable water bottles to school and were told that “corrective action may be a lengthy and costly process,” according to the HCPS advisory.
A Tale of Two Water Fountains
Although Harford public schools are about 60% white and 20% Black, water quality problems are far more common in majority Black communities and school districts. Typically, the issue is abnormally high levels of lead in drinking water, although some schools have run out of water completely.
While it may seem like a mundane or secondary education issue, contaminated water or lack of water entirely is disruptive to a school at best, and at worst can have a profound, lasting impact on a child’s education.
In Flint, Michigan, for example, a report released in March found that — a decade after the municipal water system switched from Lake Michigan to the polluted Flint River — the children who drank the unclean water lost the equivalent of five months of learning. Test scores for the city’s children declined, with the biggest gap among low-income children, and the number of special-needs students climbed 8%, with boys overrepresented in the increase.
Andrew Whelton, a civil engineering professor at Purdue University, has extensively studied water systems in schools across the country. He said the barrier between healthy and contaminated drinking water can be as thin as a state line.
“You can live on one side of the [state] border and your children will be drinking 14 (parts per billion) of lead in water,” an unsafe level, he said. “On the other side of the border, it’s less than 1 ppb.”
In 2018, the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan watchdog group, reported that more than a third of all the public schools that had tested their water in the previous two years and reported the results found elevated levels of lead. But just 43% of all schools had even tested for lead during the previous two years.
Only about 10 states and the District of Columbia require lead testing in schools; otherwise, it’s entirely voluntary.
Researchers like the American Academy of Pediatrics, have asserted for years that no level of lead in water is safe for humans. Prolonged exposure can contribute to conditions like ADHD, behavioral problems, incontinence, and a drop in IQ.
Experts recommend robust testing of faucets, fountains, and pipes can help districts pinpoint the highest-risk areas and prioritize improvements to minimize costs.
