The B.C. government came under fire Thursday for waiting four years to test the drinking water at Prince Rupert schools despite finding elevated lead levels under similar conditions at nearby Kitimat schools in 2012.
The Prince Rupert school district and the Northern Health Authority notified parents and children at four schools this week that lead levels in the tap water exceeded Health Canada guidelines.
The warning was similar to the one issued at Kitimat in 2012 when the death of salmon eggs in a classroom aquarium triggered an investigation that also uncovered elevated levels at four schools.
Exposure to lead can cause behavioural problems and learning disabilities in children, according to Health Canada.
North Coast NDP MLA Jennifer Rice said the province should have moved far sooner to test other schools in the northwest. “It has been four years since the situation in Kitimat,” she said. “They waited four years to even test Prince Rupert.”
The NDP also released a 2014 journal article showing the government’s own scientists reviewed the Kitimat case and concluded that there was a need “for routine monitoring of drinking water in schools.” The government, however, never acted on that advice.
Dr. Perry Kendall, the provincial health officer, was unable to explain Thursday why health officials took nearly four years to test the drinking water at schools in Prince Rupert.
He said the two medical health officers currently working for the Northern Health Authority have been in their positions for less than two years.
“Neither of them know why there wasn’t any followup,” he said.
Kendall said the province has been dealing with the issue of lead in drinking water for decades, particularly in coastal communities. He said the acidic water can accelerate the leaching of lead into water that has been sitting in contact with older plumbing, such as lead pipes or lead solder.
“This was a big news item in public health through the ’80s and the ’90s, so I had thought that this was being dealt with systematically between health departments and school boards,” he said. “I was surprised to find that it hadn’t been dealt with in the north in their coastal communities.”
Dr. Raina Fumerton, who took office as northwest medical health officer in October 2014, said she recently initiated the testing in Prince Rupert given that its water is similar to that of Kitimat and has schools built prior to 1989, when lead was commonly used in plumbing materials.
“It is not our mandate to be testing all schools across the north,” she said. “Unless requested by a particular school, we don’t usually get involved.
“That said, I think we’ve done a very good job in terms of assessing the risk to the two larger communities in the northwest and implementing appropriate mitigation strategies.”
The Prince Rupert school district told parents this week that it has started flushing school pipes each morning and has purchased new fountains that filter lead from water.
“Ideally, the testing would have been done [earlier],” Kendall said.
“What we do know historically is that when we found schools with high lead levels and we’ve tested the children’s blood to see if they’ve actually been drinking enough of it to make a difference, we don’t find that they have any elevated levels.
“You’d have to drink a lot of that first-flush stuff in the morning to get the higher levels, and it doesn’t seem that kids consume enough of the drinking water to actually make a difference to their measurable blood levels.”
Kendall said his office is checking with every health authority to find out how many of them have dealt with the issue and whether there’s a backlog of places that have yet to be tested.
Health Minister Terry Lake said he will discuss with Kendall whether B.C. should follow Ontario’s lead and require regular testing for metals in school drinking water.
“Is this a widespread enough problem that we need to take a routine approach to it?” he said. “My understanding is it is not a problem everywhere. So dealing with it on a site-specific basis is probably more effective.”
