Do We Provide Our School Kids Safe Drinking Water?

With so many toxins entering our environment every day, we feel like nowhere in our lives is immune to the effects of water pollution. Unfortunately, we have some worse news: one place we need to think more about water quality is our children's schools. The first is the concern about bacteria. A study of contact surfaces in preschool classrooms found that 50% of contact surfaces had influenza A virus and 22% were positive for norovirus, which can cause gastroenteritis. Where are they most popular? Yes: fountain switching. One of the reasons for this is usually the lack of maintenance and cleaning services for these fountains.

Lead, in particular, is a major concern because of old metal pipes and systems that bring water into schools. Of the nearly 11,000 schools tested across the country, 44 percent had one or more water samples with lead concentrations at or above their state action levels, according to a Harvard University study published in 2019. What's more, the absence of federal quality standards and statewide requirements for school water and plumbing testing means schools may have undiscovered problems, or test results may not always be made public.

To make matters worse, there's a reason lead poses a greater health hazard to children than adults. The first is that lead is bioaccumulative. This means it stays in the child's system and builds up there over time. This is partly due to the body's inability to distinguish lead from calcium.

While students using school water may be at risk of drinking unsafe contaminants, there are some practical steps families can take to help ensure children have safe water at school, one of which is the use of filtered water bottles. Simply send your kids to school with filtered water in a refillable bottle. It removes over 99% of contaminants, including lead, and even uses selective filtration to keep important minerals like calcium where they should be.

Whether your child's school plans to reopen in the coming weeks or months, parents, teachers, and staff are well prepared to continue their education and protect the health of students and adults at school. Protecting children's health from drinking water pollution is something that neither parents nor schools can ignore.

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