Lead in school water: 3,000 fixtures above state limit on Long Island, Newsday finds

Nearly 3,000 drinking water fountains, ice machines, classroom sinks and other fixtures in Long Island schools exceeded the state's standard for lead, a Newsday review of school testing reports found — more than twice as many as reported in a state database.

Districts said these noncompliant fixtures, tested over the past three years, were immediately shut off, replaced or marked for hand-washing only, following state law. But the results, according to public health experts, show that thousands of schoolchildren could have been exposed to water with harmful lead levels for years. 

Of the 123 district results Newsday reviewed, all but 10 had some fixtures that did not meet the state standard of 5 parts per billion for lead levels in school drinking water.

Brentwood, Smithtown, South Huntington and West Islip had more than 100 noncompliant fixtures, while others had dozens or a handful.

The districts with the highest percentage of outlets over the lead limit span Nassau and Suffolk counties, from Lawrence on the Queens border to Hauppauge. Seven of the top 10 districts have 50% or more non-white students, including Baldwin, Valley Stream 24 and Lawrence, which are all 90% or more non-white. The list also includes districts like Kings Park and Three Village, which are 22% and 34% non-white, respectively.

Corinne Marcello, president of the PTA at Bayview Elementary School in West Islip, said she hadn’t been aware that some fixtures in her child’s school tested above the state limit. Bayview had 13 fixtures above the limit and three that were above 100 parts per billion. “I assumed the water was fine,” she said, but “that is concerning that the numbers are very high.”

Other schools also had fixtures with very high lead levels. A drinking fountain at the Heights Elementary School in Roslyn Heights, for example, tested at 263 ppb. A "pasta pot" faucet at South Woods Middle School in Syosset tested at 2,330 ppb, according to the district's lab report — 465 times higher than the limit.

Those two test results and hundreds of others are not included in a state Health Department database available to the public, however. 

At the Roslyn Heights elementary school, the drinking fountain was fixed, retested at 1 ppb and returned to service, according to the lab report, prepared by an engineering firm. The new results were then entered into the state's database, which replaced the original results in the state's records. 

The kitchen faucet at South Woods was "permanently removed from service." That faucet too was erased from the state's count. 

Environmental health advocates said the state's database gives the public an incomplete picture of lead in schools and conceals where kids may have been drinking tainted water for years.

"No one should be looking in the DOH data if you want to know what's going on in your kid's school," said Joshua Klainberg, an expert on lead contamination at the New York League of Conservation Voters. He recommended looking at a district's lab report, then asking if noncompliant fixtures have been replaced or otherwise fixed.

Lower numbers in state database

New York launched a testing program for school drinking water nearly 10 years ago, the first state in the country to do so. Public school districts are required to test for lead every three years, most recently between 2023 and 2025. Those results are posted on the Department of Health website. 

The state's database shows 62 districts with at least one fixture testing above the limit and 1,167 fixtures across Long Island above the limit. 

But those numbers don't tell the complete story.

Newsday's review of district lab reports found 113 had at least one fixture above the limit and 2,977 outlets above the standard. Those numbers include a handful of outlets in administrative buildings, which are not included in the state database. 

The districts' lab reports noted a range of reasons the outlets were later reported as compliant. 

Under state law, fixtures testing above the limit must immediately be removed from service and then either replaced, fitted with filters and retested or permanently shut off. 

In some cases, the fixture was replaced; in others it was simply shut off or a sign was posted saying the fixture was not to be used for drinking. Some fixtures were recorded as "not applicable," because it was not meant to be used for drinking. Those too were removed from the state's records.

In future rounds of testing, the Health Department said it will use a different reporting system. The new system will make it easier to track the original number testing above the action level and how they've been fixed, according to Michele Herdt, director of the school environmental health program at the Health Department.

Besides giving parents and students a more comprehensive view, preserving the original results in the state's records can also lead to greater accountability, public health advocates said.

"Having that historical data is useful to see where has remediation been successful — so that we can actually say, with data, that we are making progress in reducing lead in schools," Robert Hayes, who heads the clean water program at Environmental Advocates NY, told Newsday. 

"The whole purpose of doing these tests was to protect the children and to provide transparency to the parents, and to the teachers and staff," Adrienne Esposito, director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in an interview.

"Lead in drinking water is a statewide concern in New York due to aging infrastructure," Erin Clary, a spokesperson for the Department of Health, wrote to Newsday in an email. "It's not unique to any one district but a common finding during proactive testing required under the regulations."

Newsday contacted the 61 districts on Long Island listed in the state database as having noncompliant fixtures, individually or through their media representatives, about their results. Those that responded said fixtures testing above the limit have been removed from service, labeled or remediated.

"The district takes water quality and student and staff safety extremely seriously and acted promptly to ensure that all drinking water outlets available for use meet state standards," Island Park Superintendent Vincent Randazzo wrote in a statement. The district had 12 outlets above the standard, according to both the state database and its engineering report.

Lead is a neurotoxin that causes learning difficulties and behavior changes, according to the World Health Organization. At high levels of exposure it can cause permanent brain damage, and children are especially at risk because their bodies absorb more lead and because their brains are still developing. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a limit of 1 part per billion, based on medical research showing "there is no safe level of lead exposure." 

"Lead effects overall, they're cumulative, and they're irreversible," said Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, an environmental health scientist at RTI International, an independent research institute in North Carolina.

Redmon, who runs programs to eliminate lead-tainted drinking water in Georgia and North Carolina schools, said the risk of exposure increases as children consume more water.

"So, if a kid is in that school system, and they're drinking their water Monday through Friday during the school year ... that's more of a risk than occasional usage."

Finding the source

The Department of Health must be notified of a noncompliant fixture within one business day, staff and parents must be notified in writing within 10 days, and the test results must be posted on the school website within six weeks. The schools are also supposed to explain what it is doing to address the problem.

But the right fix isn’t always obvious. When lead is detected in a school fountain, the source could be a lead pipe, lead solder used to connect pipes or parts of the faucet or fixture itself.

"If multiple fountains are failing, it indicates there’s a larger issue — that it may be coming from the plumbing rather than the outlet itself," said Martha Mihaltses, who manages lead in water testing projects for some Long Island school districts for the engineering firm H2M.

Lead plumbing and solder were banned by the federal government and New York State in 1986, but old pipes and fixtures remain in houses and apartments as well as public buildings like schools.

Until 2011, a faucet or other fixture was legally "lead free" if it had less than 8% lead. Now the limit is 0.25%.

Redmon said if schools replace older fixtures with higher lead content, add filters certified to remove lead and continue to test, "that, together, the vast majority of the time, can ensure kids are drinking, safe, lead-free water."

As the 10-year anniversary of the state's school testing program approaches, Klainberg said, "no doubt, New York has made great gains to reduce lead in school drinking water compared to its state and federal counterparts." Many states still have no mandated testing program, and the 5 ppb limit is lower than the federal government's present level of 15.  

He said lowering the level further to 1 ppb would be a "game changer."  

And experts are looking forward to clearer record-keeping in the next round of testing. "This is an issue that deserves maximum transparency," Hayes said. "Parents and families deserve to know both what lead levels their kids were previously exposed to and what levels their kids might be exposed to now."