Roughly one out of every 20 water taps in city elementary schools has tested positive for elevated lead levels, a Post analysis of Department of Education data has found.
Amid rising concern over lead in schools, the DOE checked about 100,000 taps in elementary buildings — including water fountains and faucets used for cooking — across the five boroughs between December 2016 and February of this year.
More than 6,000 registered lead levels above 15 parts per billion — the Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold for remediation.
While the number of tainted taps varied wildly with each school, some buildings were riddled with lead-laden faucets, the Post’s collation of DOE data found.
At PS 95 Eastwood in Jamaica, Queens, 34 of 98 taps — or more than a third — registered elevated lead concentrations in January, according to DOE figures.
One first-floor cafeteria tap there showed a startling level of 3,200 parts per billion while four other water sources at the school had levels above 500 parts per billion, DOE data show.
PS 95 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, also saw more than a third of its faucets exhibiting high lead readings, with 32 of its 94 samples requiring instant remediation.
The actual parts-per-billion readings at the school were unavailable because the data weren’t posted to the school’s DOE homepage. All but a handful of city elementary schools posted the results of their lead testing.
Of the five boroughs, Brooklyn had by far the highest number of elementary schools that registered 20 or more tainted taps — with 18 schools falling in that category. Queens had 10 schools, The Bronx seven, Manhattan three and Staten Island two.
At PS 92 Adrian Hegeman in Flatbush, Brooklyn, one of the 32 taps that required removal in a boys bathroom registered a lead level of 11,000 parts per billion, according to DOE data.
With the scandal of the Flint, Mich., water crisis still fresh in the public’s minds, concern over the lead in city schools has spiked in recent months.
All five borough presidents signed a joint letter to schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña last month pressing for more urgency in tackling the matter.
“The tragedy of Flint, Mich., should not be repeated here,” the letter stated.
The DOE has assured parents that all suspect water sources have been removed and that remediation processes are continuing.
“New York City’s drinking water is of the highest quality, and families can rest assured that water in schools is safe for students and staff to drink,” said DOE spokeswoman Toya Holness. “The water delivered from the upstate reservoir system is lead free, and there has never been a known case of lead poisoning due to drinking water in schools.”
But Dr. Morri Markowitz, director of the Lead Poisoning Treatment and Prevention Program at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center, said the DOE was being evasive.
“It’s a total deflection of an answer,” he told said. “No one has actually ever looked at this. Without any systematic testing of kids in schools, we just don’t know.”
Markowitz said the matter’s urgency is frustratingly difficult to gauge. He said the 15 parts-per-billion marker is the arbitrary result of a negotiation between water providers and the EPA.
“It’s not a health-based standard,” he said.
The likelihood of lead poisoning, he said, depends on several variables, including a child’s size, how much water he actually consumes, the lead level and over what period of time.
“At some point, we need testing and research,” Markowitz said. “We need to actually define the risk here.”