World Water Crisis (LIFE)

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Demand Safe Drinking Water in Schools

Urge U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address the problem of toxic drinking water in the nation's schools

Sponsored by: The Child Health Site

Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins that put the nation's students at risk. Contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states, but the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied.

Urge U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson to address the widespread problem of toxic drinking water in the nation's schools. Sign the petition below and tell a friend.

In recent years, students at a Worthington, Minn., elementary school and a 6-year old girl in Seattle experienced severe stomach aches and nausea after drinking water tainted with lead and copper. Below are the findings from a database analysis showing federal drinking water violations from 1998 to 2008 in schools with their own water supplies:

• Water in about 100 school districts and 2,250 schools breached federal safety standards.

• Those schools and districts racked up more than 5,550 separate violations. In 2008, the EPA recorded 577 violations, up from 59 in 1998 - an increase that officials attribute mainly to tougher rules.

• California, which has the most schools of any state, also recorded the most violations with 612, followed by Ohio (451), Maine (417), Connecticut (318) and Indiana (289).

• Nearly half the violators in California were repeat offenders. One elementary school in Tulare County, in the farm country of the Central Valley, broke safe-water laws 20 times.

• The most frequently cited contaminant was coliform bacteria, followed by lead and copper, arsenic and nitrates.


Urge U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson to address the widespread problem of toxic drinking water in the nation's schools. Sign the petition below and tell a friend.

Formal Letter being sent to the EPA by the The Child Health Site:


Dear U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson,

I urge you to address the widespread problem of toxic drinking water in the nation's schools. The EPA is responsible for overseeing the safety of our nation's drinking water systems, but it has not taken concrete actions towards a reliable national strategy for monitoring schools' water.

The current process that requires local schools to test and report problems to the state, and then to the local government, is not adequate and prevents the EPA from reliably identifying the worst offenders, carrying out enforcement, and removing unsafe water from our schools. Scientists say the current testing requirements also fail to detect dangerous toxins such as lead, which can cause damage to major organs and may retard children's learning abilities.

It is very important for the EPA to act quickly to address any report of pollution in the water our children drink, as supplies at thousands of schools have been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides, and dozens of other toxics. This problem must be fixed so that it our schools will never have contaminated water again, and parents can rest assured that their children will be safe. Please act now!

If you are interested in signing the electronic petition, please visit here:
http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/campaign.faces?siteId=5&campaign=safewater