Tag Archives: Lead in Drinking Water

What is Needed to Ensure Safe Drinking Water in Ontario’s Schools?

March 10, 2020

Lead in drinking water has been in the headlines for many months now, starting in early November. More recently, a February 27, 2020 Global News report entitled, “One in four Ontario schools and daycares found lead in tap water” highlighted how lead in drinking water continues to be a healthy and safety concern.

When parents send their children to school or daycare, they presume that the drinking water available to them is safe and free from any lead. That is clearly not the case in many instances. So, what needs to happen to change this reality?

Here are a few ideas:

There is currently no provincial policy mandating school boards to report lead exceedances to parents and students. As one school principal said in the Global News report cited above, “a clear ministry policy would help guide schools in what they should be communicating to parents and students”. Fix Our Schools believes that transparency about the state of our children’s schools is extremely important. Therefore, we urge the provincial government to institute a clear communication policy on drinking water safety in schools and daycares. In the spirit of transparency, we’ve also been routinely calling on the provincial government to update and release its disrepair data for all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools. 

There is currently no provincial funding that is provided to school boards to specifically address lead in drinking water. Given that most school boards face many urgent repairs every day such as leaking roofs, unless funding is provided to address lead in drinking water, the solution in many instances where exceedances are found may just be to cap off drinking water sources and place “handwashing only” signs on sinks in classrooms. Therefore, if we want safe drinking water to be available in schools and daycares, then adequate provincial funding must be provided to fix the root causes of lead in drinking water.

 

There is currently no standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools that would outline the metrics that could be used to measure whether a school is, indeed, in an acceptable state for children to spend their days. While our provincial government has been diligent in collecting disrepair data in schools, this data does not reflect lead in drinking water, asbestos issues, rodents and vermin, classroom temperatures, or portables to name but a few other elements that contribute towards students’ learning environments.

These solutions focus on what Ontario’s provincial government could do to ensure safe drinking water in provincial schools and daycares. However, we would be remiss if we did not mention that our Federal government is responsible for ensuring safe drinking water for First Nations School Infrastructure. Fix Our Schools urges our Federal government to take this responsibility seriously and to co-develop a comprehensive plan with First Nations to ensure safe drinking water is available in all First Nations schools.

 

 

Lead in Drinking Water Continues to Make the News

November 14, 2019

The issue of lead in Ontario’s drinking water continues to make headlines daily. The upshot is that “Governments should stop dithering over getting rid of lead in water”. as expressed in an opinion piece in the Toronto Star on November 8, 2019. No amount of lead is safe in our drinking water so it just makes sense that our federal, provincial and municipal levels of governments across Canada must start working together to implement policies and allocate the funding needed to ensure all drinking water is safe – whether it be consumed in public schools or private residences.

Ontario Green party leader Mike Schreiner correctly notes that children ought to be able to use the water fountain at their school, without worry about lead contamination:

A young adult notes that her old high school has the dubious distinction of being the number one school in Ontario for lead toxicity in drinking water:

https://twitter.com/_rheaanne/status/1191754269386563586?s=20

Another citizen questions political priorities in Ontario, where cell phone bans were the government’s focus while lead in drinking water at Ontario’s schools seemed a lower priority:

And yet another citizen comments on how lead in water and general disrepair in Ontario’s schools must be priority issues in the days and weeks to come:

And another citzen highlights the importance of mulitple levels of government coming together to address this non-partisan issue of safe drinking water:

 

 

 

The Lead that may Lurk in the Pipes at Your School

November 7, 2019

In the second article in a series in the Toronto Star on November 5, 2019, the article entitled, “The lead that may lurk in the pipes at your school” continues to reveal grave concerns about lead in our drinking water – especially in our schools. The article starts off by stating that “2,400 Ontario schools and daycares exceeded the current federal guideline for lead in drinking water in the past two years”. This figure represents a 275% increase from two years ago, and reflects the fact that there is more frequent testing being done and more stringent federal limits of 5 parts per billion (pp) – down from the previous 10 ppb.

 

Apparently, twenty-three schools and daycares across Ontario reported samples higher than 1,000 parts per billion – dramatically higher than the federal safety limit and a level that experts say can impact blood lead levels in a child immediately and risk damaging cognitive development. While this data has been available on a provincial website, there were no warnings given or flags raised to students, parents, and teachers impacted by these high lead levels. Surely, children deserve to be safe in their place of learning and this startling discovery calls into question whether Ontario children are, indeed, safe in their schools.

 

One school cited in the article is White Oaks Secondary School in Oakville, which had 22 water samples exceed the 5 ppb limit last year on one campus and 26 water samples with exceedances on another campus, with one sample showing 140 ppb – a level that is 28 times the federal safety guideline. 

 

It is important to note that the $16-billion of disrepair noted in Ontario’s publicly funded schools does not reflect any work needed to eliminate lead from drinking water in schools. Fix Our Schools has been calling for a Standard of Good Repair for Ontario’s schools for years and has asked the provincial government repeatedly to develop and execute a Standard of Good Repair for our schools that would include not only standards for lead in drinking water, but also standards for things such as air quality, asbestos and classroom temperatures – none of which are currently reflected in the $16-billion of disrepair noted in Ontario’s schools. Given that the effects of lead in a human body are irreversible, lead in our children’s drinking water at schools is an issue that must be taken seriously.

The Ontario Ministry of Education appears to be pushing blame and responsibility down to school boards for resolving the issue of lead in drinking water, saying that “while it allocates funding to school boards, those boards are responsible for deciding how the funds are spent, as they are in the best position to determine their renewal priorities and local needs”. However, school boards rely exclusively on provincial funding to be able to maintain and repair its buildings and this provincial funding was a mere fraction of what it ought to have been for almost two decades. This gross and chronic underfunding by our provincial governments have left school boards in the unenviable position of having to make impossible decisions. How would you decide whether your first priority is to repair a leaking roof or to replace lead pipes, knowing you don’t have the money to do both? Again, we must emphasize that the $16-billion of disrepair logged in Ontario’s publicly funded schools does not reflect repairs needed to replace lead fixtures, pipes, and solder.