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Dangerous levels of metal found in water at California child care centers. Search our data

Sacramento Bee - 5/16/2023

About 1,700 licensed child care centers in California — a quarter of the nearly 7,000 tested so far — have been serving drinking water with lead levels exceeding allowable limits, according to data that the nonprofit Environmental Working Group secured from the state.

Susan Little, a senior advocate for the environmental group, said it’s “really alarming” that California infants and preschool-age children are being exposed to this risk in places where their parents think they are safe. Lead, of course, has been proven to permanently damage children’s brains and other parts of their nervous system.

“Young children are especially susceptible to the effects of lead because their bodies just absorb it ... as if it were calcium,” Little said, “and that lead does lasting damage to their development and to their brain function and to potentially their behavior, as well as other more serious things because lead is linked to cancer and other health harms.”

Elk Grove’s Merryhill Preschool on Calvine Road ranked ninth on a list of 13 child care sites that had drinking water with lead levels of 500 parts per billion or higher, Little noted. California has said water used for drinking or food preparation should have lead levels of no more than 5 parts per billion.

The Merryhill school made the list because one of the roughly 15 outlets it uses for drinking water or food preparation had lead levels of 890 parts per billion, 178 times the state limit.

In a statement emailed to The Sacramento Bee, Merryhill leaders said that the safety and well-being of children in their care is their top priority, and they had not used the classroom where that faucet was located since the pandemic began. Parents were notified of the results and the measures taken, they said.

“The affected faucet had not been in use since the classroom closed more than three years ago, and the water our students drink comes from our kitchen faucet, which tested fine,” they said.

Faucets at 100-plus Sacramento-area centers over limit

Although Elk Grove’s Merryhill school stood out for the high concentration of lead in one of its faucets, a searchable database created by The Bee shows more than 100 child care centers in the Sacramento region had at least one faucet testing above the state’s allowable limit.

California is one of only 11 states in the country that require licensed child care facilities to test for lead in drinking water, Little said, so many of the nation’s children are at risk of exposure.

Topping the environmental group’s list of 13 child care centers with the highest rate of lead contamination was San Diego’s La Petite Academy, 10050 Carmel Mountain Road, with an outlet that had lead levels of 11,300 parts per billion, Little said. She said that number rivaled those found in Flint, Michigan, in 2016, when state and federal officials advised residents there not to drink the water and declared a state of emergency because of the levels of contamination.

Courtney McKenzie, a spokeswoman for Learning Care Group, which operates La Petite Academy, said that this faucet and another one that had lead levels of 787 ppb have not been in use since prior to the pandemic. She did not specify when they were taken out of use. After testing, she said, the company removed the fountains at those outlets and placed a notice of the results in a common area.

“Learning Care Group is committed to the health and safety of our school communities,” company leaders said in the statement. “Going above and beyond state guidelines, in August of 2022, we tested all 27 possible water outlets at this location, including those that were not actively in use.”

For the list of the top 13, Little’s team cited only the faucet with the highest lead levels at each facility.

Little said that testing began at California’s licensed child care centers in 2020 but that the pandemic slowed down the process. She said her organization pressed the California Department of Social Services to release data they had on completed tests, and they received information on 6,866 of more than 14,000 licensed operators in the state.

‘Children absorb half the lead they ingest’

Parents should demand information on whether their licensed child care provider has completed mandated tests, Little said, and if they have not, push them to do so.

If the site failed to meet standards on the first test, the providers can change out faucets or other fixtures known to raise lead levels and provide a new sample on the same day. State data provides results of both tests.

If a water outlet doesn’t pass inspection, state regulations require that centers abandon use of it until it can be fixed. DSS provides guidelines on how companies should ensure access to enough water sources. In some cases, providers can qualify for funding from state and federal agencies to pay for lead testing.

“Children ... can spend the majority of their waking hours in licensed care,” Little said, “As a result, they are consuming most of their water and their calories oftentimes at these centers, so an infant who is on formula will be primarily drinking their calories with water-based formula that ... is usually mixed with water from that center’s faucet.”

The Environmental Working Group worked in 2018 with Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, to develop the law that required testing of child care centers. Known as Assembly Bill 2370 and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom nearly five years ago, it ensured that the child care centers would have to use standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency on the timing and size of samples, Little said.

This was crucial, she said, because the state’s K-12 schools had previously been mandated to do testing, but lax requirements had allowed them to do things that would lower lead levels in the sample. And, since the EPA action level was 15 parts per billion, many schools didn’t report lead levels between the EPA number and the state limit of 5 ppb.

Holden is now sponsoring AB 249 to require schools to perform tests according to guidelines similar to those that child care centers must meet. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there’s no safe level for lead in drinking water.

Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group said: “Children absorb half the lead they ingest, and malnourished children absorb it faster. ... Even at low levels, lead exposure in children is linked to developmental delays, damage to the central and peripheral nervous system, and impaired blood cell function.”

These tests show just how common lead contamination is in drinking water, Stoiber and Little said, and state leaders should act quickly to protect the health of California’s children in both schools and unlicensed family child care homes.

©2023 The Sacramento Bee. Visit sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.