Parents demand answers on lead

By Sanjay Bhatt
Seattle Times staff reporter

More than 30 people came to Alternative Elementary No. 2 (AE2) in Seattle yesterday to get answers about their school's lead-contaminated drinking water — and about half of them specifically wanted answers about Room 5.

The fountain in that room had a "first-draw" water sample that contained 1,600 parts per billion (ppb) of lead — 80 times the federal guideline for school drinking water, or 20 ppb.

The "second-draw" water sample, collected after running the fountain for 30 seconds, showed only 6 ppb.

Ron English, who is managing the water-testing and remediation program at Seattle Public Schools, told the crowd that the district planned to test the fountain and other spots tomorrow.

Those results will help determine whether the district needs to replace the plumbing in the 43-year-old building, he said. For now, the school will continue to receive bottled water.

The Seattle School District has tested 1,597 fountains in 89 buildings so far. Among the second-draw water samples, 60 fountains in 30 buildings showed sustained lead levels above 20 ppb. Above this level, federal law recommends school districts take action.

There were emotional appeals and angry questions from parents yesterday about why the district didn't tell of the lead content in the drinking fountains years ago.

Three of 27 fountains sampled in 1992 had excessive lead levels. In the latest round of sampling, all three fountains failed the first-draw test, and one failed on the second draw.

Sarah Westervelt, a parent of a former AE2 student who attended class in Room 5, said the district probably violated federal-notice rules then and "needs to be involved" in fixing the damage the lead-tainted water may have done to children's health.

The School Board announced yesterday that it would not investigate why the district didn't monitor lead levels and inform the public in previous years.

English said the district doesn't have any immediate plans to test students' blood lead levels.

Parents who want to have their child tested for lead poisoning should contact their pediatrician and discuss all possible sources of lead exposure, including lead in the home and neighborhood, Dr. Alonzo Plough, director of Public Health — Seattle & King County, said in an earlier interview.

The lead levels in drinking water reported by Seattle schools are "unlikely" to cause symptoms of lead poisoning, Plough said, but it is important that the district is working to eliminate lead exposure.

Over the past decade, 6,091 children in King County were screened, and 153 showed lead poisoning. Most were tested because there were high lead levels in the paint and soil around their homes. Water was never blamed as the source in those cases.

Only in the most severe cases of lead poisoning is there a lead-purging treatment called chelation therapy, according to the state Department of Health.

There is no safe level of lead exposure. Even low levels in children age 6 and younger can cause subtle damage to the brain that doesn't manifest for years, experts say.

But the length of exposure, the cumulative amount of exposure, and other factors must be taken into account, making it hard to say that lead exposure caused an individual child's neurological problems.

Dr. Jerome Paulson, a pediatrician and consultant for the nonprofit Children's Environmental Health Network in Washington, D.C., said children under age 6 are the most vulnerable to adverse health effects.

The digestive tract of a child under the age of 2 absorbs about half of the lead ingested. As children get older, the percentage absorbed by their gut declines steeply, to 35 percent between age 2 and age 6, and to 10 percent by adulthood, he said.

A diet high in calcium and iron — found commonly in milk and red meat, respectively — probably protects the body from lead, Paulson said.

Sampling from AE2 this spring showed very high levels of iron in the drinking water.

A Washington, D.C., investigation this year screened 201 residents from 98 homes with water that had second-draw lead levels over 300 ppb.

All had blood lead levels below a level considered toxic, according to a March report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.