Buffalo schools replacing lead poisoning risks

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Buffalo’s challenge to address lead poisoning of children includes cleaning up contaminated water sources in city schools.

Lead in school water isn’t a result of lead pipes leading from streets or in the buildings, but plumbing fixtures, school officials said. Testing conducted in 2022 and 2023 revealed 237 fixtures, including water fountains, with lead levels above current state limits, Investigative Post found.

Lead-contaminated water fountains and cafeteria fixtures — 34 fountains and 19 kitchen/cafeteria faucets and kettles, according to an Investigative Post count — have been replaced districtwide over the past few years, school officials said.

“Fixtures that are used for drinking and food preparation are prioritized for remediation or replacement,” district officials said. “All water fountains and faucets used for food preparation districtwide have been replaced.”

Meanwhile, as the district works on replacing other fixtures in bathrooms, science labs and additional locations, signs are posted telling students and staff that the sink water is not safe for consumption. The district did not have readily available information on how many of these fixtures had been replaced or still need to be.

“Signage is the immediate first step of remediation … while the district works to schedule replacement of the fixture, ” district officials said.

Overall, high levels of lead were found in at least one fixture in 75 percent of the district’s 61 schools. But the lead contamination identified in any one school was usually limited, often found in a few sink faucets in school bathrooms or janitor rooms. Still, a dozen schools had high lead levels in at least one kitchen or cafeteria faucet, and 13 schools had high lead in at least one drinking fountain, according to the 2022 and 2023 test results. 

The largest number of contaminated water fountains was found at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center on Jefferson Avenue. Testing identified 15 water fountains with lead exceeding current acceptable levels. Two had lead levels 10 times the acceptable limit. High lead levels were also found at seven of the school’s water faucets, including in bathrooms and the school cafeteria.

Makowski is one of the city’s newest schools, built in 1994 — eight years after the federal government banned lead plumbing. The school is located in the East Side’s 14208 ZIP code, which has the fourth-highest rate of elevated blood lead levels in children in the county, and the eighth highest in the state, according to New York State Health Department data.

Makowski enrolls children in pre-kindergarten through grade four, where children are typically between 3 and 10 years old. 

The health effects of lead in children — which include brain and nervous system damage, behavioral issues and developmental delays — are most detrimental to children under 6 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

School officials who spoke with Investigative Post said they were unaware of Makowski having the most lead-contaminated fountains, but that the district had those fountains “replaced, retested and returned to service.”

“It is one of our newest buildings, and it kind of highlights that it's not necessarily the plumbing, but it's the fixtures,” said David Hills, the district’s chief operating officer.

Southside Elementary School in South Buffalo had five water fountains as well as one kitchen faucet with higher-than-acceptable lead levels. Olmsted 156, a middle and high school in the former Kensington High School building, had four fountains with high lead levels.

Changing rules over time

The high lead levels occurred despite the school district spending more than $1 billion over a decade ago to update its school buildings. In more recent years, the school district was awarded $290 million in American Rescue Plan funding, $13.6 million of which went on building maintenance.

Lead typically gets into water by being transported through pipes made prior to the 1940s when lead material was permitted in them, or because of plumbing fixtures made with lead. School officials said the issue was addressed as part of the school reconstruction program, but that some state and federal guidelines have changed since the project was undertaken some 20 years ago. For example, New York State in December 2022 established stricter requirements — reducing the lead action level in drinking and cooking water from 15 parts per billion down to five parts per billion.

The district has been monitoring and replacing water fixtures in schools over the years, according to senior chemist Valencia Sease.

“Fixtures have been purchased that had been considered lead free in 1980, lead free in 1984, lead free in 1986,” Sease said.

“Some of it goes to the process of how water comes into a system. Water that is sitting for an excessive amount of time may have lead leaching into the water,” she added.

School officials said they have devoted funding in recent years to decrease the presence of lead in school drinking water, as well as water used in cooking preparation.

“We have, the past couple years, spent a whole lot more money on fixtures than we had expected. But we just keep that budget line increasing to cover the number of fixtures we have to replace,” Hills said.

School officials said they are confident the lead problem is in fixtures and not suggestive of a larger issue.

“By the testing and the results, it's indicative of the fact that there is not a system-wide problem,” Sease said.

“If it was larger than just the fixture, we would have multiple water sources, either in a wing of the building or the whole building, that would test at the action level,” she said. 

At Makowski School, for example, the 22 water sources with higher-than-acceptable lead levels account for a fraction of 219 water fixtures in the school. 

Lead plumbing was banned in 1986 with the enactment of the Safe Drinking Water Act, but the school district’s senior chemist said that it’s not uncommon for lead to be found even in newer fixtures and schools like Makowski.

“There's no such thing as a lead-free fixture. All fixtures legally can have some percentage of lead in them. It has changed over the years which has helped contribute to being able to decrease the exceedance level,” Sease said.

Can wash hands, dishes

Every year, approximately 450 children under the age of 6 in Buffalo are diagnosed with elevated blood lead levels. The city accounted for three of the four ZIP codes in the state outside of New York City with the highest percent of children tested with elevated levels of lead in their blood, according to state health department data for 2020, the most recent year for which data is publicly available. In several Buffalo ZIP codes, as many as 20 to 25 percent of children tested had elevated lead levels.

The three ZIP codes — 14211, 14212 and 14213 — include two on the city’s East Side, specifically the Schiller Park and Broadway-Fillmore neighborhoods. The third is in the Grant-Ferry neighborhood on Buffalo’s West Side.

Much of the city’s concern with lead focuses on lead paint, considered the primary cause of lead poisoning in children. With 60 percent of Buffalo’s housing stock built before World War II, Buffalo has one of the largest concentrations of houses in the country built before lead was banned from paint in 1978.

City Hall's major initiative for addressing the lead paint problem is a rental inspection program. Critics say the city has failed to enforce its own program. The city responds it is — just not as quickly as critics would like. As of October, the city reported having inspected 6,000 of 36,000 units that qualify under the city inspection law.

In city schools, the issue is water sources, not lead paint. The school district’s latest data shows that 46 of the 61 public schools had at least one water sample that exceeded the state’s current action level during 2022 and 2023.

Riverside, like Makowski, had almost two dozen fixtures with elevated lead levels in their water samples. Unlike Makowski, none of the Riverside sources were fountains. They were all faucets and faucet basins, most found in bathrooms and locker rooms located in the school’s outdoor pavilion area, the data shows. The pavilion was built in 2008, district officials said.

Across schools, drinking fountains with high lead levels as well as cooking sources are shut off or removed from service prior to being replaced, school officials said. 

Signs are immediately placed on all other faucets that tested high for lead to indicate that the sink should not be used for drinking, they said. Remediation and replacement work is done by district employees.

Lead-contaminated water in bathroom faucets can be used for handwashing since it does not permeate skin, according to state health department’s guidelines. School officials emphasized water from bathroom faucets should never be consumed.

“Hand washing only is fine, because no one should be drinking out of a bathroom,” said Sease, the district’s senior chemist.

Similarly, lead-contaminated water cannot be used for cooking, but can be used for washing dishes and cookware. Once items are replaced, the state requires a follow-up test.

“If we continue to see a high level, even though the fixture has been replaced, then we do further investigation,” Sease said. “But in almost all cases, the fixture being replaced removes the next water sample from testing at the action level.” 

The state requires all school districts to test water sources for lead every three years. Sease said the district is preparing to enter its next three-year testing cycle.

I'Jaz Ja'ciel