Publice, private and charter schoola across the nation are beginning to develop drinking water test plans. Have you developed yours? Microbac Laboratories is here to help keep you in compliance with new state laws that have or may arise.

How We Can Help?

Over the past few years, concerns regarding the presence of lead in school drinking water have made their way into headlines across the country. Because of this, the EPA has begun enforcing strict regulations that require schools to test drinking water for lead. And while 24 states plus the District of Columbia have programs to conduct testing for lead, only seven of those 24 require the testing – the other 17, according to Microbac testing specialists, participate voluntarily.  

“Currently, about half the states in the US require or strongly encourage schools to test for lead in their drinking water supplies at the point of use in the schools,” explained Microbac’s Ron Warila. “There are still many states that do not require testing, but some schools have taken the opportunity to do testing before it's mandated in their location. For example, we've done some testing in Massachusetts for a number of schools. It's not required at this point, but it was strongly recommended. It's obviously beneficial for the students, parents and the staff to know that their water is safe. And it's something that I think the EPA is going to put more pressure on the states to enforce.”

What’s Being Done?

“Microbac has been doing lead testing in drinking water for many, many years,” explained Warila. “We have multiple laboratories with capabilities to test lead in drinking water and we have specialized equipment just for that, to see very low levels of lead in drinking water. And our ability to handle large volumes of samples and provide a rapid turnaround time on results really sets us apart. We have state of the art equipment. We purchased many new ICPMS instruments (this stands for inductively coupled plasma with a mass spectrometer detector) to handle lead testing over the past few years and multiple labs within Microbac have those new pieces of equipment which are much faster and much more accurate than other equipment is capable of doing.”

The ability to detect very low levels of lead in drinking water is the key here. Why? Because there’s no safe level of lead. According to studies conducted by the Journal of the American Heart Association, lead causes high blood pressure, irreversible nerve damage and can permanently damage the brains of children. It is for these reasons that specialists believe required lead testing in school drinking water will only continue to spread – and when it does, Microbac is prepared to handle your drinking water samples. 

Reach out here, today, to request testing for your schools.