Research for Impact: Someone Has to Understand California Schools' Drinking Water

The Impact Series spotlights urgent questions and real-world issues that need fresh thinking—and real research. Each post breaks down a problem, explores why it matters, and reveals where curiosity can turn into action. If you’re looking for something that sparks your interest and pushes you to do more than just learn—this is where you start.

The Public Health Issue We Can't Ignore

Every school day, hundreds of thousands of students across California consume tap water that could be contaminated with dangerous amounts of lead. This lead isn’t coming from the water’s source — it’s leaching out of corroded pipes and plumbing materials, or even from the water fountains themselves.

In schools, water often sits still over weekends, holidays, and summer vacations, gradually eating away at narrow pipes and absorbing microscopic lead particles

Lead contamination in water is impossible to detect by sight, smell, or taste. 15 parts per billion (ppb) has previously been considered the maximum level for healthy adults to consume. The EPA recently lowered that number to 10 ppb.

In schools, however, that is still far too high.

Many states, including New York and Montana, have taken action about this. They have implemented strict regulations (e.g. setting an action threshold at 5 ppb, the same as the federal standard for bottled water) that apply specifically to schools. That’s because there is no known safe level of lead for children and adolescents.

Consuming even small amounts of lead can severely harm young people’s hearing, permanently damage their nervous systems, and impair the development of their brains.

For California students, this could have real implications for your long-term health. The same goes for your friends and classmates.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has been calling for over a decade for all school water fountains to be limited to 1 ppb of lead. Yet according to a 2020 analysis, 53% of California school districts were providing water containing elevated lead levels of up to 15 ppb — significantly higher than the recommended maximum. Further evidence suggests that the true numbers may be even worse. 

Until more rigorous data is collected and real action is taken across schools, simply filling up your water bottle or drinking from a fountain may still pose a daily risk.

Why This Might Not Leave You Alone

Whether or not you’re aware of it, this problem could have real consequences for you and for your community. 

First of all, we all know that staying hydrated is essential for maintaining cognitive function throughout the school day. Switching to bottled water might be a temporary solution for avoiding lead contamination, but it’s neither equitable nor sustainable. Bottled water can cost 1,000 to 2,000 more per liter than tap water. And although plastic bottles are recyclable, over half of them end up in landfills or the ocean.

At the end of the day, having access to reliable drinking water from school taps and water fountains is a baseline requirement for public health, sustainability, and effective learning.

The EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) claim to be “better protecting children at schools and child care facilities.” However, the 2024 regulations make no fundamental distinction between schools and other buildings, despite the much higher risks for students who are exposed to lead in their drinking water. 

In addition, the new regulations failed to increase the recommended 8-hour stagnation period before testing. This recommendation does not take into account the lead leeching that can occur over weekends and summer vacations, when school water fixtures (fountains and faucets) may be unused for weeks at a time.

Finally, the EPA’s regulations prioritize fixtures that are regularly used. However, experts have actually found that, in schools, “the highest concentrations of lead tend to be in fixtures that students and staff don’t regularly use, allowing the lead to build up.”

In 2023, a bill was proposed in California that would tighten testing requirements across public schools. The bill would have lowered the action level for lead in schools to 5 ppb — in line with other states — in order to reduce students’ lead consumption. However, the bill was never put into effect.

If you’re concerned that access to safe water fountains in schools isn’t being treated as a priority, pay attention to that feeling. Because there’s a lingering gap here between what feels right and what is actually being changed.

What We Actually Don't Know Yet

The reality is that we don’t know which taps are contaminated, or how severe the contamination truly is. State testing programs have studied a very limited sample of taps, and only from schools built before 2010. What’s also troubling is that in the largest recent sampling program, which took place from 2017-19, only five fixtures per school were required to be tested — and even those were only tested once.

Despite the limitations of the test, data from the California State Water Resources Control Board revealed that at least 5% of California public schools (K-12) had at least one fixture whose water was — at the moment of that singular test — above 15 ppb. Furthermore, nearly 20% had at least one between 5 and 15 ppb. Remember: only five water fixtures were required to be tested per school. To make matters worse, no immediate action or follow-up was required for readings of 14.9 and under.

Consider this: in one case, a water fountain in a California school was tested in 2019 at 2 ppb. That school then voluntarily tested the same faucet again in 2024 — just to be cautious — and the reading had increased to 930 ppb, according to an interview.

The result is an incomplete picture that leaves more questions than answers.

Why This Public Health Issue Hasn't Been Solved (Yet)

This problem is messy, and it’s expensive. Most importantly, though, it just hasn’t been a priority. 

Only 11% of California schools signed up for free testing when it became available in 2019. California high school students hypothesized that this was likely because the schools knew that if they found elevated lead levels, they would be required to report and address the contamination using funds taken from their own budgets.

In response to the 2019 results, a bill was introduced to the California state legislature to implement stricter requirements, which would increase the frequency of testing and lower the threshold for action from 15 ppb to 5 ppb. However, as mentioned above, that bill was never put into effect due to the projected costs and logistical challenges associated with testing and replacing decades of plumbing.

This challenge isn’t unique to schools. In 2023, a study of California child care centers revealed that almost 1,689 licensed centers — about one in four — were above the legal maximum. This water is given daily to pre-school aged children and infants.

183 of those centers were tested at 50 ppb.

76 were using drinking water with 100 ppb of lead.

8 were above 1,000 ppb.

1 center was tested at an astounding 11,300 ppb.

This issue appears across schools and childcare facilities, and it’s not going away on its own.

The Questions That Are Still Sitting There

There are many complex problems at play here, waiting to be solved. These issues intersect with public health policy, chemistry, as well as the social sciences. Some of the key questions that currently need to be addressed are:

• Why has reducing lead contamination in schools not been considered a priority in California?

• What types of data would be necessary to demonstrate the importance of reducing lead in schools — and how could that data be collected?

• Which California schools are most affected by elevated lead levels in drinking water?

• How reliable are the current methods for testing lead contamination from drinking fountains? 

• How many dangerous fountains and taps are likely being missed or going unreported? 

• How does lead contamination from water fountains vary throughout the school day, week, or year?

• How much lead are students consuming as a result?

These are real challenges. Whether or not they are solved in the next few years could make a significant difference for students’ health going forward.

If This is The Kind of Question You'd Stick With

If you notice yourself wanting to dig for the answers to one or more of the questions above, then pause for a minute. Let that curiosity linger — it could be a genuinely useful starting point. If you’re drawn to finding solutions that could help students throughout California, this could be your chance to make real change happen.

You don’t need to be an expert to take on a piece of this challenge, or to make yourself a part of the solution.

You just need to be driven to close the gap between a) what the data shows, and b) what the people in charge are doing — or not doing — about it.

If this is the kind of question that sticks with you — the kind of problem that you keep thinking about — it could be a signal that you have a very real role to play here, if you’re up to the challenge.

This is What Acting Can Look Like

Because regulations at the federal and state levels have not prioritized student health, it’s come down to local California school districts and individual students to take up the charge.

In 2024, dozens of schools throughout Oakland Unified School District were tested at lead levels many times higher than the recommended threshold for action. Following years of inaction, high school students decided to do their own research, leading them to band together in a campaign for real and immediate change that they called “Project Nemo”.

“A big challenge,” the students found, “is that lead release is sporadic and inconsistent. You could take a sample today and get a non-detect, and you could take a sample tomorrow from the same place and get 50 parts per billion.”

As a result of the students’ research and awareness campaign, the school district organized an inter-departmental team to unilaterally improve testing and transparency. They also secured grant funding for brand new water fountains and filters. It’s not perfect, but as of 2026, nearly all of the fountains and faucets throughout Oakland’s schools are providing drinking water that is consistently below 5 ppb lead.

But that’s just one school district.

Lasting change starts with paying attention. It’s not always glamorous, and it doesn’t always lead to simple fixes. In fact, more often than not, things get more complicated before they become clearer. That’s where research comes in.

Through Polygence, you can partner with an experienced researcher who understands how these challenges work, and who knows what success might actually look like here. Working with your mentor, you could focus on reducing lead in your school district’s drinking water, coming from the angle that you are most curious and passionate about.

Your research might be the start of a long-term solution that could benefit hundreds of thousands of students across California. That’s what taking initiative and responsibility can do: build lasting impact.

The Question That's Still Open

Providing California students with reliable and safe drinking water is a persistent challenge that still hasn't been solved.

Lead contamination is putting young people at risk every day.

Your friends, classmates, and community need someone to take action.

Right now, the most pressing question of all is: could that be you?