Water Shut Off To Detroit Schools After Tests Reveal Kids Drinking Dangerous Levels of Lead

 This week, Detroit Public Schools announced that they will be  shutting off drinking water for all 106 schools in the district, after  more than half of them tested for dangerous levels of lead and copper. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told parents in an email this Tuesday  that his office began testing all of the schools his spring, and found  that 16 out of 24 of the first schools tested had levels that were far  too high for safe consumption. 

“Although we have no evidence that there are elevated levels of  copper or lead in our other schools (over 50) where we are awaiting test  results, out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety of  our students and employees, I am turning off all drinking water in our  schools until a deeper and broader analysis can be conducted to  determine the long-term solutions for all schools,” the email stated. 

The city’s water and sewage department said that they will be  providing water for the students until the municipal water supplies are  suitable for consumption. 

“The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) and the Detroit Water and  Sewerage Department (DWSD) want to assure Detroit residents and  customers of GLWA’s regional system that they are not affected by the  lead and copper issues that the Detroit Public Schools Community  District (DPSCD) is experiencing. Aging school infrastructure (i.e.  plumbing) is the reason for the precautionary measure of providing  bottled water. The treated drinking water provided by GLWA and  distributed by DWSD not only meets, but surpasses all federal and state  Safe Drinking Water Act regulations for quality and safety. The water at  GLWA’s treatment plants is tested hourly and DWSD has no lead service  lines connected to any DPSCD building,” the agency said in a statement. 

Flint, Detroit and other areas of Michigan might get most of the  attention with lead-contaminated water, but this is a problem affecting  the entire country. In fact, Reuters recently published  neighborhood-level blood lead testing results from 34 states, as well  as Washington DC, which were collected by the Centers for Disease  Control and Prevention (CDC). 

The results showed that 3,810  neighborhood areas have levels of lead that are at least double those  seen in Flint. Close to half of these sites had levels that were  actually four times as high as those in Flint. Some of the areas shown to be affected the most were parts of  Pennsylvania, New York, Baltimore and parts of Ohio. Researchers noted  that areas which were heavily industrialized before lead was recognized  as a problem have become hotspots for contamination. 

A color-coded map  identifying many of these hotspots was published with the report,  showing some of the highest levels of contamination in Savannah,  Georgia; Brooklyn, New York; and even as far north as Rutland, Vermont. The results showed that despite the fact that Flint had become the face of lead contamination in America, it doesn’t even rank among the most toxic water  supplies in the country. Far from being a localized problem, it seems  that water supplies throughout the entire country could be compromised.  

In 2013, prior to the Flint controversy, The American Society of Civil  Engineers gave the nation’s water infrastructure a “D+” on their Report Card for America’s Infrastructure in 2013. It is estimated that the much-needed overhaul of the country’s water infrastructure could cost over $1 trillion. Lead contamination has become less of a widespread problem over the  decades as it has been removed from products like paint and gasoline,  but sadly the pipes that local and state governments are responsible for  have not caught up with the times.