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It was meant to be an easy school project to spark children’s curiosity about waterBut pupils at 14 schools participating within the Great British water development have made a much more startling discovery – that their beverage contains lead that’s up to 5 times above the recommended maximum.
“We really didn’t expect there to be any questions of safety in the least so this has really taken us all of sudden ,” said Andrew Fox, chairman of trustees for the Don Hanson Charitable Foundation, which ran the project.
The charity distributes “Hanson boxes” containing educational materials on a special topic annually to twenty ,000 schools. The water development was a last-minute addition to the present year’s boxes, Fox said. quite 600 schools received materials for youngsters to check things like the acidity of rainwater, survey local ponds and therefore the taste of their beverage .
“We were doing blind tasting and searching at rainwater and there was a pond survey then we started getting these weird results,” Fox said.
Several schools reported levels of lead at 50 micrograms per litre – five times the utmost allowed. Even low levels of lead are toxic and may reduce children’s IQ and damage their systema nervosum .
Lead piping and lead solder are banned from water systems for many years within the UK, and therefore the beverage Inspectorate’s latest report says last year only 40 instances of lead contamination above the utmost were discovered.
The charity conducted its own tests on samples returned by 81 schools and has confirmed that 14 samples have lead above 50 micrograms per litre, with several more showing signs of elevated levels.
The charity is now contacting the faculties to alert them and filtration firm Aquaphor, which co-sponsored the project, said it might supply free water filters to affected schools.
Around 8 million properties within the UK, mostly homes built before 1970, are estimated to possess some sort of lead within the beverage system. Water companies add small amounts of orthophosphate to water to scale back the danger of lead from pipes dissolving into the water, which may keep lead levels below the present maximum of 10 micrograms per litre.
A spokesperson for the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs said: “The UK has very top quality beverage . While the utilization of lead pipes has long been banned, many older properties may have lead pipework which can inevitably cause contamination.
“If a faculty becomes aware they need lead pipework or have a test which has failed for lead, they ought to contact their local waterworks who are going to be required to enforce the removal of the lead pipe by the owner of the building.”In some parts of the united kingdom , water companies have removed lead piping from schools. In 2019, Thames Water replaced pipework in about 450 primary schools in London built before lead piping was banned.
But some headteachers are concerned that the value of replacement will fall on their budgets.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of faculty leaders’ union NAHT, said: “Many schools are old buildings that need an excellent deal of cash to take care of , including to try to to major works like removing lead piping. Government doesn’t fund schools sufficiently to make sure they’re fit purpose.
“An NAHT survey of quite 1,500 members thanks to be released later this month reveals that 83 per cent of faculty leaders don’t believe that they need sufficient capital funding to take care of their existing buildings and facilities, and even more, 88 per cent, regard the capital funding they receive as insufficient to develop and improve their buildings and facilities to satisfy the requirements of pupils.
“We believe the govt should take urgent action to determine the condition of the entire school estate, including lead piping, asbestos and ventilation, and invest enough money to form sure all children are being educated in safe, healthy environments.”
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