“Then at eight o’clock, 500 children come in and they drink the water,” said Ronnie Levin, who runs the water and health program at Harvard University’s T.H. Jones - the spokesman - stressed that lead testing is not required and that water samples were from the “worst-case” scenario early in the morning, before any faucets had run.

That threshold was never meant to be a health standard, he said, but that’s how it’s been rationalized over the years.ĭPS refused multiple Denverite requests for interviews with district officials for this story. Local governments and water utilities have historically justified doses of 15 parts per billion or less because of meager resources to fix the problem, according to Bruce Lanphear, a professor who specializes in environmental neurotoxins at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. It can lower their IQs, according to a 2016 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The metal is linked to physical and cognitive problems in kids. While lead remains, parents have no reason to be concerned, according to Denver Public Schools spokesman Will Jones, because lead levels are now below what the Environmental Protection Agency considers “actionable.” But there’s no such thing as a “safe” amount of lead in the body, according to the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control. Others received signs instructing no one to drink the water. Some of those water sources have been treated to lower the lead concentrations.

The vast majority of schools still have lead concentrations above zero, and nothing requires that to change.Ībout 3 percent of water sources across more than 100 schools tested positive for lead at levels considered high by experts. Old pipes at Denver Public School buildings have been leaching lead into some water sources, and though officials have treated the most polluted sources, kids were exposed for years beforehand, and contaminated water fountains and sinks remain.Īccording to hundreds of pages of data collected by the school district and Denver Water in 20, all but 10 city schools tested positive for some concentration of lead in at least one water source - a sink or a water fountain, for instance.

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