The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Who's Responsibility is Lead-Tainted Water in Ontario Schools?

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Half of all water tests in at least 44 Ottawa-area high schools over five years showed traces of lead that exceeded federal standards, according to an examination by The Investigative Journalism Bureau. And concerned parents say they are not notified when tests exceed guidelines. A look at the results of the investigation, including moves by the province, school boards and parents to address the problem, on The Agenda.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Half of all water tests in at least 44 Ottawa area high schools over five years showed traces of lead that exceeded federal standards, according to an examination by the Investigative Journalism Bureau. Concerned parents say they are not notified when tests exceed guidelines. Robert Kribb is founder of the Investigative Journalism Bureau, and he joins us now to discuss his reporting on this issue. It's good to see you again. Good to see you, sir.

Thank you. Thanks for coming in. What was the inspiration for deciding to investigate this story? I've honestly been on this for about 10 years, and it started with... I was a dad. I had a young daughter. I read a short little blurb in a parenting magazine about lead and the impact of lead on kids.

And it's terrifying, you know, neurotoxin reduces IQ, cognitive development issues. And I lived in an old house in Toronto, and old houses are where this tends to show up, so I had my pipes tested, I had my water tested. What did you find? It was elevated. Not dramatically, but significantly above what it should be. So I paid you know about five thousand bucks I had my front lawn dug up and I had these pipes removed and I just thought man I had no idea

about this I don't think most people do. So I started digging in I sort of the it was journalism that flowed from life effectively and and the more I read and learned about it, the more concerning it was. And the fact that it's not on the public radar at all, nobody talks about it, I thought was interesting. And so I started doing stories about it. And here we are 10 years later.

I'm still sort of beating this drum. And would it be the case that in most of the older schools in this province, the pipes are still full of lead? Well, I mean, this is what we've been digging at. And there is data. And we've slowly gathered it all and analyzed it. And in a striking number of cases, particularly in old schools, yeah, I mean, there's very high levels of lead.

Going to give you a couple of names here. Christopher and Nicole Shadbolt, whom you met during your investigation. Why were they significant? Well, one of the things that popped out for me in the last round of reviewing this data is Ottawa. There was something strange about Ottawa. There was just so many conspicuous high levels

of lead. So we started digging in on that, and we eventually met Nicole Schabel. She's a family physician in Ottawa. She'd read one of our previous stories. She looked into her school. So we published this database, which is on our website. You can type in your kid's school or daycare, and it will provide all of the test results.

Do you have the website, URL? What's the website? ijb.utoronto.ca There we go. Okay. And so she did this after reading one of our stories, and she found that her kid's school, Maryvale High School in Ottawa, had exceeded almost 60% of the tests it exceeded. And she's a doctor.

She had concerns about it. She called pediatrician, had her son, Christopher, 13-year-old son, tested. And in fact, his very high levels of lead. He drinks a lot of water, apparently four liters a day. And so she had her pipes tested at home, nothing. No other explanation for this level of lead in his body. And so it was a very, in fact the pediatrician said he'd never seen levels this high, ever.

So you were able to conclusively determine that it probably came from the school? That's certainly her feeling, yeah. There's no other explanation. What other sources did you use in your investigation? Well, the main source is provincial data. So luckily in Ontario, there is mandatory testing and that testing is available. It's not particularly intuitive. The average person's not going to be able to understand it.

So we've created this database that makes it utterly simple and intuitive. You just type in and there's a chart. It'll tell you what percentage failed. And then we went to every expert that we can find on the planet who is specifically devoted to this area of study. And what we've learned from that is essentially

that there is no safe level of lead. So the safe level is zero. And in many cases, and the vast majority of these cases, the level is not zero. And the impacts on kids, I mean, it's kind of terrifying, actually, when you really dig into it. We're talking about young developing brains. It's a neurotoxin.

The loss of IQ is sort of the number one thing that scientists have determined. And the only real solution, according to the ones that we've talked to, is removing the lead. So there's band-aids that are typically done, flushing the pipes. If you have kids and you've taken a big dig here. I remember.

They turn the water on for half an hour before they get to school. I remember this, right? So I'd walk in and all the taps are running. And I would ask, what's that about? And he said, well, we have a lead problem, so we flush the taps. Great. That's great for like an hour or two.

By lunch, the science shows it's often back, depending on the fixtures and the specifics of that location. So it's not a solution. That's not a solution. The solution is you get to remove the lead. The problem with that is it's expensive. This is a big job. These are pipes. So tell me what happened when you go to the school, the Shadbolz kid goes to, and you say, here's what we found. You've got a problem. What do you get back to you? So Steve, this is one of those issues.

It is such an intractable problem that public officials tend not to be very willing to open up on it, because it's not an easy fix. So we've asked again and again, what about this? What are you doing? How do you fix it? And the responses are boilerplate. And effectively, well, we mitigate.

And where we find it, we fix the tap. But there's no clear, decisive response to that. And one of the complaints that Nicole Shadbolt has, and many parents have when they learn about this, is why wouldn't we be sent a memo? We get memos home from the kids every day about everything. But when there's excessive lead in the water, we don't get a proactive message.

Like, we have to go digging for it. And it's often not easy to find. And so at the very least, there should be, many parents argue, a mandatory kind of proactive informing of high lead levels to parents. Who is responsible for testing the water to see what the lead levels are? The school boards, under mandate,

under legislation from the province. So there's mandatory testing. They have to do it at a certain frequency, depending on where they are and who they are, et cetera, and all of which is great, and the fact that it's accessible is great. In many provinces, you can't know it all as a parent. There's no way to get access to that.

And they do it, they actually do the testing. Yeah, they do the testing. And they make the results public? Well, they make it public in a way, not in a way that you're gonna understand necessarily. It's a big database that you'd have to decipher but yeah, it's it's accessible What levels are and I know you said zero before is what obviously is the ideal? But that's not what the federal or provincial guidelines are for that matter, right?

No, zero is is of course the goal long term, but the very interesting thing in Ontario is We have a standard a safety guideline. It's 10 parts per billion. Five years ago, Health Canada, the federal government, that was the level. They cut it in half. It's five parts per billion now. The reason they did that is to reflect the very serious health issues.

As science evolves, it's become very clear that 10 parts per billion does not provide the level of safety that is required. So the federal government cuts it in half. That's the standard nationally. Still today, in Ontario, five years after that, we still continue to use this outdated safety guideline, which provides a false sense of security.

That means half of these tests are passing at the provincial level, but failing at the federal level. Who's in charge? The province. So the province's number is the one that's operative here? Yeah. So if we only get to 10 parts per billion of lead in the water, they think they're doing their job. It's a pass. Everything's fine.

Nothing to worry about. Except that that's not true. Can you just go into a little more detail of what happens to a child's health, particularly during the formative years, where as you point out, the brain is still growing, if there is excess exposure to lead in that child's drinking water? Yeah. So the data that we have on that is population level data, right? So it's very difficult to determine this

on an individual basis. You'd have to be testing constantly. So the biggest concern, and the one that comes up again and again when you talk to experts about this, is cognitive development. So it's the brain for children. And there's been very clear science showing impact on IQ levels, right? cognitive development. So it's the brain for children. And there's been very clear science showing impact on IQ levels.

This is terrifying for parents to think that the consumption of water at school, where they spend most of their day learning, literally learning, the very place that they go to be enriched and nourished intellectually is a place where they're consuming water that can actually undermine that. So that's the number one thing. But it's not it's an issue for adults as well cardiovascular issues, kidney issues, hypertension. It's ugly right? This is the reason we banned lead. There's no lead paint anymore. Like we went through this process and tried to remove lead as much as we can and we've've done so effectively through public policy and legislation.

And yet here we are. It's in drinking water in schools. And yet what percentage of Ontarians are aware of that? I would argue it's tiny. It's miniscule. How does the lead get into the water in the first place? So great question. There's a couple of answers to that.

If it's old lead pipes, so literally pipes buried in the ground or inside the walls or floors of buildings, that's obviously the source. But it's also the fixtures themselves. So it could be the water tap, the faucet, etc. They can also have lead. Got it. Now you told us earlier it is the school board's responsibility to test the lead levels in the water Whose responsibility is it if they discover that the levels are too high whose responsibility is it to fix this problem? the school boards themselves under advisement and monitoring from the province public health Municipal public health agencies are also become aware of this and have oversight over it. So there is a mechanism in place.

There is regulation and there is oversight of it. The questions emerge as, what's the right number that they're testing for, where there's a clear consensus among experts that it's just too high. We're being far too permissive in this province with the numbers that we're agreeing are fine. And then what happens with oversight? So you can test today a tap in your kids' school.

It can exceed. You can fix it. There's no guarantee that there isn't other problems in that school. There's no guarantee that the problem's been fixed, because the lead has not been fully removed. Now we gave stats off the top that we're all based in the city of Ottawa

and the schools there. Do you have any reason to believe that schools in the rest of the province are any different? No, no, no, we've dug deep into the whole province. The Ottawa story is obviously unique and it's conspicuous, but these issues are across the province. So 2,300 schools we identified as having exceedances over the last four years.

We looked at schools across the province, Toronto. I was, of course, fascinated to figure out what's happening in the school where my kid went. And there were some problems there that have since been addressed. But yeah, no, there's nothing unique in terms of the findings that we found in Ottawa. It's just that there was such a cluster, a concerted number of them there. Our school board officials seized of the significance of this story.

Well let me give you my opinion on that. Officially on the record, no. Flat out. Officially on the record? No. Flat out. Officially on the record? No. They're not interested? Well, because they're not answering the questions. I mean, one would think if they were seized of this issue and concerned about it, there would be a vigorous exchange

of information and ideas about it. The responses we get are tepid and boilerplate and tend to be very defensive. And I would say that for the province, too. So we've gone to them a number of times and said, why do you maintain a safety guideline twice the level of the federal government? What is the justification for that?

And the response to that question repeatedly is silence. to that question repeatedly is silence. Not a single justification, rationalization, scientific study, not a single shred of evidence to suggest that this is a responsible piece of public policy. Now, you do this work, obviously, in hopes of presenting information to decision makers who can then take it and fix it.

Is there any indication that that's happening or could happen? None. It has been a total failure. This journalism has been a total failure. If your measurement of success is affecting change, it is totally failed. So how do we get success out of failure?

You come on the agenda and you try and raise it. You try to embarrass them out of it? Yeah, you try and amplify it. You try and ultimately, listen, no politician is going to change public policy because a reporter is doing stories about it. Ultimately, the only thing that causes that kind of change is the public, its parents, its voters. And there has been no real mobilization of concern that is sufficient

to bubble up to Queens Park. Can you tell me about it we got 20 seconds here you would think parents would be outraged by this why are they not making a stink? It's interesting when they become aware of it they do Nicole Shadbolt there you go raising this issue there's parents groups that are chatting online about it. So there is mobilization. But it's an interesting problem. I don't know why. I don't know why there isn't more vigorous, vociferous protest about it.

It's a very Canadian reaction. Well, maybe you've made a bit of a stink here tonight on TVO, and that'll lead to something, God willing. I hope so. Robert Cribb, Investigative Journalism Bureau. And we thank stink here tonight on TVO, and that'll lead to something, God willing. I hope so. Robert Cribb, Investigative Journalism Bureau, and we thank you for coming into TVO tonight. Thanks for doing it.