'I was drinking from the tap,” said one woman who learned her water was contaminated after journalists ran several tests. A new investigation by a consortium of journalists found one in three test samples had levels above safe guidelines.
In this July 21, 2019 photo, Florabela Cunha fills a glass of water from her kitchen faucet in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. In previous summers she used to make iced tea for her family using water from her tap, but has since stopped citing concerns about the water quality. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians from coast to coast have been unwittingly exposed to levels of lead in their drinking water.
“I’m surprised,” said Bruce Lanphear, a leading Canadian water safety researcher who studies the impacts of lead exposure on fetuses and young children. “These are quite high given the kind of attention that has been given to Flint, Michigan, as having such extreme problems. Even when I compare this to some of the other hotspots in the United States, like Newark, like Pittsburgh, the levels here are quite high.
“I was getting poisoned for four years and did not know about it,” she said. “As a student, I think I should be told.” Canadian officials where levels were high said they were aware that lead pipes can contaminate drinking water and that they were working to replace aging infrastructure. The government’s approach to limiting lead in drinking water in Canada is starkly different from the U.S., where the Environmental Protection Agency sets legal standards under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, and every person is supposed to receive an annual Consumer Confidence Report from their water provider by July 1 detailing lead test results.
The Flint crisis sparked congressional hearings, lawsuits and scrutiny of lead testing across the country. Now officials in Newark, New Jersey, are scrambling to replace about 18,000 lead lines after repeated tests found elevated lead levels in drinking water. In Canada, where lawsuits are less frequent and provinces — not the federal government — set water safety rules, the main source of lead in drinking water is antiquated pipes. At one government hearing, an expert estimated some 500,000 lead service lines are still delivering water to people in the country.
Yet the consortium’s investigation found daycares and schools are not tested regularly. And when they are tested, those results are also not public.
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