WASHINGTON — A new study has concluded that hundreds of young children in the Washington, DC, area experienced potentially damaging amounts of lead in their blood from their own tap water several years ago.

As a result, DC Council members asked the city’s inspector general on January 27 to investigate whether public health agencies and the water utility “negligently or intentionally” misled the public during the District of Columbia’s water crisis in 2004 and whether they should have delved deeper for a correlation between high levels of lead in the water and health risks to children, The Washington Post reported on January 27 and January 28.

The authors of the study are Virginia Tech professor and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Marc A. Edwards, Ph.D, and Dana Best, a Children’s National Medical Center pediatrician and epidemiological researcher. The peer-reviewed study, obtained by The Washington Post, is to be published soon in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Edwards and Best found that in some high-risk neighborhoods, the number of toddlers and infants with blood-lead concentrations that can cause irreversible IQ loss and developmental delays more than doubled after harmful levels of lead began leaching into the city’s drinking water in 2001.

Edwards has extensively studied lead levels in Washington tap water, which is distributed by the DC Water and Sewer Authority (WASA). He found that when the disinfectant chloramine was added to some waters, a resulting lower pH can increase lead contamination.

Edwards also found that when WASA began its lead pipe replacement program in 2004, WASA’s partial pipe replacement activities were actually making the lead situation much worse in many cases. He told Water Technology® Magazine in November, “After years of denial, and even false claims that they [WASA] were using dielectrics to stop some of the problems I was observing, a Freedom of Information Act request verified that I was correct on the key issues. After spending more than $100 million on this program over the last few years, WASA finally admitted the program was a complete failure, yielding no detectable benefit whatsoever to control lead in water. … Long-term problems from the partial pipe replacements are also certainly possible.”

According to The Washington Post, the findings from the new study raise concern about the 42,000 DC children, now ages 4 to 9, who were in the womb or younger than 2 during the water crisis. Those children might be at risk of future health and behavioral problems linked to lead, according to the report.

At the time, although officials acknowledged that the amount of lead in city water was at record-breaking levels, they repeatedly said that they found no measurable impact on the general public’s health.

“There is no doubt that many children in this city were profoundly impacted by the years of completely unnecessary exposure to high lead in the District’s water. We hope this study will stop future harm and address the misrepresentations and false statements about what really happened,” Edwards told the Post.

DC council members Jim Graham and Mary Cheh have now written to Inspector General Charles Willoughby: “Specifically, we want to know if there is a correlation between elevated lead levels and lead-poisoned children, and if so, whether District authorities negligently or intentionally misled the public.”

Residents, especially those with young children, also have expressed concern, the Post reported. According to the Post, “Several parents said yesterday that the public health agencies and water utility underestimated possible harm to avoid blame.”

Dangerous concentrations of lead began showing up in the District's drinking water in 2001 because of a change in standard water treatment chemistry to chloramines, and the issue persisted for three years until a February 2004 Post article revealed the severity of the problem.

“In 2003 and 2004, the tap water in some homes had hundreds and thousands of times the level of lead considered safe. WASA officials spotted the rising lead in 2001 but concealed it from authorities, a federal investigation found. The DC Department of Health and the EPA were made aware of the high levels in 2003 but did not warn residents of the risks or urge them to drink filtered or bottled water,” the Post reported.

“If there is a report or study today that reaches conclusions different from those of local and federal health officials four or five years ago, it should be forwarded for their review and response,” WASA General Manager Jerry Johnson told the Post.

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