NC has 3 years to test schools and daycares for lead and asbestos. Here's how it will work.

Some North Carolina schools and daycares will soon be tested for lead and asbestos.

State leaders told the State Board of Education on Wednesday the plan so far is to start with elementary schools and then schools with more low-income students. The third priority will be schools with majority non-white students, and the fourth priority will be schools built before 1988.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is working with RTI International to start training school leaders to collect water samples. They also expect to visit more than half of all schools to do asbestos and lead paint testing and remediation, based on the age of the schools and when lead paint was banned in 1979 and when asbestos-contaminated materials were largely phased out of production in 1989.

Exposure to lead can lead to brain and nervous system damage and result in developmental problems in children. Exposure to asbestos can lead to several diseases, including a type of upper body cancer known as mesothelioma.

Previous water testing at daycare centers and voluntary testing in some North Carolina school systems has found lead in water taps, indicating the potential for more lead to be found across the state.

If the state finds lead or asbestos, school officials can block access to the affected areas or install water filters to remove lead, Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, RTI International’s director of environmental health and water quality, told the board.

The state has three years to do the testing, which will take place at about 3,100 schools and 5,700 daycares.

The results of every school and daycare will be posted on a public website.

State legislation in 2021 put $150 million of one-time federal pandemic stimulus funds toward the testing and some remedial work wherever hazardous substances are found. For remedial work other than water fixes, public schools would need to match every $2 from the state with $1 of their own. Daycares would not need to match funds.

That funding is key, because laws often require tests but don’t provide a way to address the results of the tests, said Ed Norman, environmental health program manager at DHHS.

“We actually have the money to fix it this time,” he said. That said, he believes the state has enough money to test and address water problems but may not have enough money to strip lead paint from walls or remove asbestos.

In 2019, the state tested lead in water at daycares. Those sites will be included again for lead paint and asbestos testing.

Here’s how the facilities will be tested:

• For water testing: Staff in charge of facilities will take online training on how to conduct water sampling. Once they complete it, they’ll receive kits. Then, they’ll sample water from kitchen taps and drinking water fountains and send the samples back to RTI International for testing.
• For paint testing: Staff can submit any reports conducted examining the presence of lead paint in their schools or detailing action taken in response to those reports. If the school or daycare doesn’t have any reports, RTI officials will visit to conduct testing themselves.
• For asbestos testing: Staff can submit any reports conducted examining the presence of asbestos in their schools or detailing action taken in response to those reports. If the school or daycare doesn’t have any reports, RTI officials will visit to conduct inspections themselves.

Schools are required to have asbestos management plans, so Norman said he wasn’t sure how many schools would need inspections to find it. However, “very few” schools have ever tested for lead paint, he said.

Any time lead or asbestos is detected, school officials would be notified and then families. If lead is detected in water, the state would tell schools the night before the state would tell families, and schools could block access to a problem water fountain before school starts the next day.

“There’s a lot of transparency here,” Hoponick Redmon said. Posting the result online and sending an alert to families means people don’t need to worry about calling their school or daycare about the results, she said.

Eventually, if feasible, schools could decide to install a new faucet fixture or a water filter certified to remove lead. The county health department would then revisit the school to see if the new faucet fixture or water filter has reduced lead levels below the hazard level.

North Carolina defines a hazardous level of lead to be 10 or more parts of lead per billion parts of water.

“In most cases, faucet fixture replacement and filters certified to remove lead are effective,” Hoponick Redmon said.

If schools needed to replace old pipes that are leaching lead into the water system, the state would need to get the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality involved, Hoponick Redmon said. The DHHS program doesn’t have the money to replace pipes, but DEQ has access to some funds for that.