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Over 10% of Memphis-Shelby County Schools have high levels of lead in at least one water source, according to the latest round of state-mandated testing.
Most of the contaminated sites are kitchen or concession stand sinks, the district said in a statement Friday. But two drinking water sources, located at Kingsbury Middle and Raleigh Egypt High schools, also showed lead levels well above the acceptable state limit of 20 parts lead per billion parts of water.
That threshold is set by a 2018 law that also requires Tennessee school districts to test water sources in buildings constructed before 1998 every two years.
The Environmental Protection Agency says the safety limit should be 15 parts per billion, or ppb. Children are especially vulnerable to lead, the agency says, which in even low levels of exposure can cause learning disabilities, impaired hearing, and blood cell damage.
Seven MSCS schools have water sources containing over 10 times the safe amount of lead. A cafeteria sink at Invictus Academy, for example, tested with a lead level of 765 ppb. And a Whitehaven Elementary kitchen sink came back with 581 ppb.
The district said in an emailed statement that all contaminated water sources were “immediately taken out of service,” and will be subject to corrective action and retesting in the next 90 days.
“We continue to provide bottled water to affected schools, and all of them have water filtration machines and hand sanitizer, which means students do not ever have to come in contact with the school’s water,” the district said.
In 2019, the first year of Tennessee school testing, 10 MSCS schools had contaminated water sources. The most recent tests flagged high lead levels at 24 out of the district’s 222 schools.
Below are those schools and their affected water sources. (A water source marked with an asterisk indicates a source with over 10 times the legal limit.)
- Bellevue Middle, kitchen sink (48 ppb).
- Bolton High, two concession sinks (148 and 28 ppb).
- Central High, kitchen sink (24 ppb).
- Cromwell Elementary, kitchen sink (29 ppb).
- Ford Road Elementary, kitchen sink (21 ppb).
- Geeter Middle, kitchen sink (44 ppb).
- Georgian Hills Elementary, kitchen sink* (204 ppb).
- Germantown High, two stadium sinks* (422 and 30 ppb).
- Invictus Academy at Airways, cafeteria sink* (765 ppb).
- Jackson Elementary, kitchen sink (49 ppb).
- Kingsbury Middle, bottle filler outside cafeteria (23 ppb).
- Middle College High, concession sink* (212 ppb).
- Northeast Prep Academy, kitchen sink (27 ppb).
- Oak Forest Elementary, kitchen sink (113 ppb).
- Peabody Elementary, kitchen sink (29 ppb).
- Raleigh-Bartlett Meadows Elementary, kitchen sink* (235 ppb).
- Raleigh Egypt High, kitchen sink* and cafeteria water cooler (276 and 31 ppb, respectively).
- Raleigh Egypt Middle, kitchen sink (23 ppb).
- Sheffield Career and Technical Center, kitchen sink (34 ppb).
- Sheffield Elementary, kitchen sink (42 ppb).
- Southwest Career and Technical, kitchen sink (161 ppb).
- Treadswell Middle, kitchen ice machine* (236 ppb).
- White Station High, kitchen ice machine (36 ppb).
- Whitehaven Elementary, kitchen sink* (581 ppb).
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
