This city told residents their water was safe from lead. Now, officials say testing was flawed.
After assuring residents here for months that their tap water is safe to drink despite earlier tests showing high lead levels, city officials announced Thursday that some of their earlier assessments were done improperly. The news in Syracuse — the latest U.S. city grappling with a crisis over contaminated drinking water — comes after officials first disclosed in August that samples collected in the spring found that dozens of homes had dangerous levels of lead exposure. The city said 10 percent of the homes it surveyed had levels more than four times the Environmental Protection Agency threshold that triggers government enforcement, or more than twice what officials found during the Flint, Michigan, water crisis a decade ago.
Other water quality and contamination articles:
- The Guardian: Decontamination of landfill waste leads to increase in toxic chemicals, says study
- Mexico News Daily: What’s polluting Mexico’s groundwater?
