Should Missouri Schools Be Checking Water For Lead? Lawmakers Say Yes

In one of the homes where my family lives, we have well water.  It isn't the cleanest water, so on many occasions, in fact most of the time, we used bottled water.  My mother recently purchased a Hinckley & Schmidt water cooler.  Those wonderful huge blue water jugs that many of us have seen in offices.  Our radio station has a water cooler from Culligan and trust me, that water tastes much better than the water that comes from the tap.  If I made coffee with tap water instead of the filtered water, you would taste a difference.

I suspect many of us drank from a water hose when we were kids.  We used the drinking fountains in our schools and didn't think anything of it.  We were not worried about lead content, or how the water tasted.  Times have changed.  People in Flint Michigan, don't have clean water.  Perhaps you are concerned about the quality of the water that comes from your taps as well.  Missouri lawmakers want to make sure that the water your kids are getting in the schools are as clean as they can be.

Missouri lawmakers are poised to require schools test and, potentially, filter drinking water to prevent lead poisoning, making the state one of just a handful that require administrators to meet standards stricter than federal regulations. The state offers grants for schools to pay for water testing, but there is no requirement to test, and only a handful have opted to do so.

And while scientists agree there is no safe level of lead — a dangerous neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children — federal drinking water regulations allow far higher concentrations of lead before requiring water systems to take action.  You can read more about this HERE.  If this becomes law, perhaps parents can rest a little easier that the water their kids are drinking from our schools, it just as clean and healthy as it can be.