School drinking water contains toxins-more toxins going into our children sigh

[Guest guest]

I agree with Dr Gordon....I have see autistic children heavy with heavy

metals do very well on Zeolite. The ACZnano Zeolite is excellent, but I have

been taking the ZeoliteGold as well as the nano Zeolite and brain fog is

becoming less and less.

 

The tragedy is with all these toxins, vaccines, GMO foods and BPA in

bottles, plus the schools piping becoming so toxic, it is becoming a must to

adapt to a daily life long detox for ALL, adults and especially children.

 

Angel Huggzz

Linda or Angel

===================================

 

Drinking water in schools is clearly unsafe; lead is just the tip of the

iceberg.

Once we educate everyone, then someday we will have RO units in schools

but that will take a long time. In the meantime water is merely one source of

toxins now found in everyone so maybe the answer is to put Zeolite in

everyone to help filter this stuff out before it gets more concentrated in our

tissues like brain and heart.

Go to http://www.ewg.org and see the average levels of ENDOCRINE

DISRUPTORS and Neurotoxins found in everyone in our country but averages 6

times

HIGHER IN CHILDREN!! So there is no wonder we have an epidemic of health

issues in children, but doctors treat it by adding even more toxic drugs.

 

Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)

President, Gordon Research Institute

www.gordonresearch.com

 

INTEGRATIVE MEDICAL-CONSULTING

 

School drinking water contains toxins

By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer Garance Burke, Associated Press

Writer 1 hr 8 mins ago

 

CUTLER, Calif. – 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.

 

An Associated Press investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at

public and private schools in all 50 states — in small towns and inner

cities alike.

 

But the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government,

even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied.

 

" It's an outrage, " said Marc Edwards, an engineer at Virginia Tech who has

been honored for his work on water quality. " If a landlord doesn't tell a

tenant about lead paint in an apartment, he can go to jail. But we have no

system to make people follow the rules to keep school children safe? "

 

The contamination is most apparent at schools with wells, which represent

8 to 11 percent of the nation's schools. Roughly one of every five schools

with its own water supply violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the past

decade, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency analyzed

by the AP.

In California's farm belt, wells at some schools are so tainted with

pesticides that students have taken to stuffing their backpacks with bottled

water for fear of getting sick from the drinking fountain.

 

Experts and children's advocates complain that responsibility for drinking

water is spread among too many local, state and federal agencies, and that

risks are going unreported. Finding a solution, they say, would require a

costly new national strategy for monitoring water in schools.

 

Schools with unsafe water represent only a small percentage of the

nation's 132,500 schools. And the EPA says the number of violations spiked over

the last decade largely because the government has gradually adopted stricter

standards for contaminants such as arsenic and some disinfectants.

Many of the same toxins could also be found in water at homes, offices and

businesses. But the contaminants are especially dangerous to children, who

drink more water per pound than adults and are more vulnerable to the

effects of many hazardous substances.

 

" There's a different risk for kids, " said Cynthia Dougherty, head of the

EPA's Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water.

Still, the EPA does not have the authority to require testing for all

schools and can only provide guidance on environmental practices.

In recent years, students at a Minnesota elementary school fell ill after

drinking tainted water. A young girl in Seattle got sick, too.

The AP analyzed a database showing federal drinking water violations from

1998 to 2008 in schools with their own water supplies. The findings:

• 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.

 

The AP analysis has " clearly identified the tip of an iceberg, " said Gina

Solomon, a San Francisco physician who serves on an EPA drinking water

advisory board. " This tells me there is a widespread problem that needs to be

fixed because there are ongoing water quality problems in small and large

utilities, as well. "

 

Schools with wells are required to test their water and report any

problems to the state, which is supposed to send all violations to the federal

government.

 

But EPA officials acknowledge the agency's database of violations is

plagued with errors and omissions. And the agency does not specifically monitor

incoming state data on school water quality.

Critics say those practices prevent the government from reliably

identifying the worst offenders — and carrying out enforcement.

 

Scientists say the testing requirements fail to detect dangerous toxins

such as lead, which can wreak havoc on major organs and may retard children's

learning abilities.

 

" There is just no excuse for this. Period, " said California Sen. Barbara

Boxer, Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and

Public Works. " We want to make sure that we fix this problem in a way that it

will never happen again, and we can ensure parents that their children will

be safe. "

 

The problem goes beyond schools that use wells. Schools that draw water

from public utilities showed contamination, too, especially older buildings

where lead can concentrate at higher levels than in most homes.

In schools with lead-soldered pipes, the metal sometimes flakes off into

drinking water. Lead levels can also build up as water sits stagnant over

weekends and holidays.

 

Schools that get water from local utilities are not required to test for

toxins because the EPA already regulates water providers. That means there

is no way to ensure detection of contaminants caused by schools' own

plumbing.

 

But voluntary tests in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Seattle and

Los Angeles have found dangerous levels of lead in recent years. And experts

warn the real risk to schoolchildren is going unreported.

 

" I really suspect the level of exposure to lead and other metals at

schools is undere

stimated, " said Michael Schock, a corrosion expert with the EPA in

Cincinnati. " You just don't know what is going on in the places you don't

sample. "

 

Since 2004, the agency has been asking states to increase lead monitoring.

As of 2006, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

found nearly half of all schools nationwide do not test their water for lead.

 

Because contaminant levels in water can vary from drinking fountain to

drinking fountain, and different children drink different amounts of water,

epidemiologists often have trouble measuring the potential threats to

children's health.

 

But children have suffered health problems attributed to school water:

• In 2001, 28 children at a Worthington, Minn., elementary school

experienced severe stomach aches and nausea after drinking water tainted with

lead

and copper, the result of a poorly installed treatment system.

• In Seattle several years ago, a 6-year-old girl suffered stomach aches

and became disoriented and easily exhausted. The girl's mother asked her

daughter's school to test its water, and also tested a strand of her

daughter's hair. Tests showed high levels of copper and lead, which figured

into

state health officials' decision to phase-in rules requiring schools to test

their water for both contaminants.

Many school officials say buying bottled water is less expensive than

fixing old pipes. Baltimore, for instance, has spent more than $2.5 million on

bottled water over the last six years.

After wrestling with unsafe levels of arsenic for almost two years,

administrators in Sterling, Ohio, southeast of Cincinnati, finally bought water

coolers for elementary school students last fall. Now they plan to move

students to a new building.

In California, the Department of Public Health has given out more than $4

million in recent years to help districts overhaul their water systems.

But school administrators in the farmworker town of Cutler cannot fix

chronic water problems at Lovell High School because funding is frozen due to

the state's budget crisis.

Signs posted above the kitchen sink warn students not to drink from the

tap because the water is tainted with nitrates, a potential carcinogen, and

DBCP, a pesticide scientists say may cause male sterility.

As gym class ended one morning, thirsty basketball players crowded around

a five-gallon cooler, the only safe place to get a drink on campus.

" The teachers always remind us to go to the classroom and get a cup of

water from the cooler, " said sophomore Israel Aguila. " But the bathroom sinks

still work, so sometimes you kind of forget you can't drink out of them. "