San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Concerns rise over lead found at school
Board approves emergency removal of toxic soil amid uncertainty over students’ risk of exposure
Workers have begun digging up part of a courtyard and garden at a San Francisco school after high levels of lead and arsenic were found under 2 feet of soil during a routine inspection.
The school board approved the costly excavation and removal of the toxic substances as part of an emergency order, but it remains unclear whether students were ever at risk of exposure or whether they could have been in the future had the materials not been discovered.
The emergency order allowed the district to bypass the normal competitive bidding process for contractors to do the work at Buena Vista Horrace Mann, a K-8 school in the Mission District. Instead, the district will pay Capitol Environmental Services $73,000 to do the job over winter break.
In addition, the district made the rare, if not unprecedented, decision to pay for lead-level blood tests for students based on the soil samples, as well as subsequent testing of water taps, which found two faucets with slightly elevated lead levels in preliminary results.
What appear to be hypervigilant actions by the district have been embraced by many parents at the school. But the moves have raised broader questions about whether these should be standard procedures across the city’s public school sites — and whether the episode, and the district’s communications about it, have caused undue anxiety.
District officials declined to explain their decision to declare an emergency and pay for the medical tests, other than to say they wanted to rebuild trust at a school that has struggled with facilities issues in the past.
The district has focused its attention on Buena Vista Horace Mann in recent months after staff and families com
plained about problems, including rat infestations, falling ceiling tiles, uneven pavement and a reported gas leak, as well as a student experiencing an electrical shock.
A contractor discovered the arsenic and lead this fall during routine soil tests in the courtyard while preparing to do $40 million in delayed modernization work at the school. An analysis of soil, using guidelines from the California Water Boards, found high levels of lead and arsenic 2 feet under two areas of the courtyard.
The district notified families and staff and cordoned off the area on Nov. 30 to conduct tests on the topsoil, with the results showing it was safe.
Still, families in the school reacted with alarm, threatening a walkout if the district didn’t provide mobile lead-level blood testing for students.
The school board then passed the emergency resolution in midDecember to excavate the soil during the winter break rather than perform a risk assessment — a California Water Boards standard practice to determine whether they needed to dig up the arsenic and lead 2 feet below the surface or whether it was safe to leave it there since it was so far down.
District officials said they were digging up the courtyard over winter break out of “an abundance of caution.” The district has tried to be “proactive, super transparent and super responsive,” said Dawn Kamalanathan, the district’s head of facilities.
“We’re trying to respond with urgency to a site that has been deprived of one of their high-use areas,” she said, referring to the garden and courtyard. “I feel good about all the steps we’re taking.” The decisions are “coming from a place of maintaining and building trust,” she said.
Exposure to lead, even in low levels, can harm children’s health, possibly damaging the brain and nervous system, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prior to the 1980s, lead was commonly in gasoline, paint and lead-tainted food, before legislation banned it in a range of products, dramatically reducing exposure.
In 2000, about 2% of children ages 1 to 5 had levels of lead in their blood that exceeded federal guidelines, down from 88% in 1980, federal figures show.
Ross Steenson, senior engineering geologist for the San Francisco region’s Water Quality Control Board, said a risk assessment would determine if lead and arsenic buried 2 feet below the ground was a threat to children and adults.
Such an analysis would be based on the likelihood of exposure and the frequency of any potential exposure, he said. The analysis would then recalculate the recommended limit for the substances in the soil.
“Are (children and others at the school site) digging to 2 feet? How likely is that? How long are they spending there?” Steenson said. “That likelihood of exposure is something that is really key.”
Steenson said that, in theory, “for sites where the lead contamination is below the surface and people are staying at the surface, there is no exposure.” He stressed that he was referring to general guidelines, rather than the specific case at the San Francisco school.
The lead exposure levels used in the California Water Boards guidelines are not based on a short-term threat, but rather a threat if people are exposed over a long period, Steenson said, and wouldn’t generally require urgent action when found in soil.
Depending on the cost and time involved and deadline to complete a project, though, agencies and private companies sometimes choose to clean up a site, as the district is doing at Buena Vista Horace Mann, rather than perform an assessment of whether the site is safe.
Sara Mokhtari Fox, an eighthgrade
teacher at the school, said families and staff appreciated the district’s immediate response to the discovery of lead and arsenic. However, she felt officials had not adequately communicated information about the level of toxic materials discovered and the risk associated with potential exposure.
“We wouldn’t feel this way had there been clear information about the levels,” she said. “We’re not getting those answers. Had they done the messaging correctly, there wouldn’t be this panic.”
District officials said in response to questions about the emergency action that they would use the experience at Buena Vista Horace Mann “as an opportunity to re-evaluate our standard responses to these types of environmental findings.” That includes how the district responded to the water results at the school as well, they said.
In a test of 11 taps, preliminary results showed lead levels slightly exceeding the state standard of 15 parts per billion in 2. When the lead content from a tap exceeds the state limit, guidance calls for schools to take the tap offline, replace fixtures or establish a protocol to flush the taps on a regular basis.
These actions were taken at hundreds of school sites between 2017 and 2019, when a state law required all public schools to sample taps for lead, with more than 30 found to be over the state standard in San Francisco. At Malcolm X Academy Elementary School, one tap registered 333 parts per billion.
There is no new requirement to test school water taps until 2024.
District officials told the Buena Vista Horace Mann school community that the “action level” to address lead in water was 5 parts per billion — a standard that some school districts have officially adopted, but not San Francisco.
A second test done after water was flushed through the taps showed lead levels dropped dramatically, indicating the higher lead content was from water sitting stagnant in the faucet overnight or longer, experts said. Lead can leach into the water from pipes, fixtures or solder in the plumbing.
District officials declined to say whether the testing at Buena Vista Horace Mann will set a precedent or whether they will test other schools for lead in soil or water — as many families and teachers at other sites are now demanding.
They also declined to say if district coffers would cover student lead-level blood tests at schools where water taps showed high levels in the past or the future.
“The BVHM community has been dealing with troubling facilities issues for a long time, and they brought the issues to the Board’s full attention,” school board President Jenny Lam said in a written response to questions.
She declined to say whether the district would make the same decisions at other sites.
It’s possible, she said, that the district will consider “established guidance” and update policies based on the school board’s “commitment to effective governance.”
“We wouldn’t feel this way had there been clear information about the (lead) levels.
We’re not getting those answers.”
Sara Mokhtari Fox, an eighth-grade teacher at the school