Seven years after the NBC4 I-Team first exposed lead-tainted drinking water at Los Angeles-area schools, thousands of schoolchildren are still drinking from fountains that might be unsafe.
2008 School Water Safety Reports: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Aging pipes are leaching tiny particles of toxic lead directly into water at drinking fountains, exposing children to potentially harmful amounts of lead. According to the Centers for Disease Control, children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can cause learning disabilities and a host of physical ailments.
Tests conducted by the I-Team on drinking fountains at schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2008 found lead levels up to 400 times the level deemed safe by government guidelines.
After the initial I-Team reports, the district pledged to fix the problem. But undercover video and internal documents, obtained by the I-Team, show the problem is still not fixed at most schools.
When asked if there might still be dangerous amounts of lead in the drinking water at some schools, LAUSD's Carlos Torres said, "Is it possible ... sure."
Parents have been battling LAUSD for years to provide safe drinking water for the district's 600,000 students.
"They made promises that they were not able to keep. I want them to do what they said they were going to do," said Steve Thoma, a parent at Woodlake Elementary.
Find out which schools might still have a problem with toxic lead in the water coming from drinking fountains. Watch Joel Grover’s full investigation, on NBC4 tonight at 11 p.m.
Four ways to protect your child from toxic school water:
- Ask your principal if every fountain on campus is flushed every day. Insist they do this, as required by LAUSD policy.
- Ask if filters have been installed on any fountains at school, and if so, ask which fountains now have filters. At schools where LAUSD has installed filters to remove lead, its usually on some but not all fountains.
- Send your child to school with bottled water or a thermos of filtered water from home.
- If your child is drinking water from a school fountain, suggest that they "flush" or run a drinking fountain for several seconds before gulping. This removes water that might have been sitting in lead pipes or fountains for a period of time.