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Beasley Lead Levels High As Many South Lakefront Schools Still Untested

By Sam Cholke | June 21, 2016 5:32am
 Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2015 visited Beasley Elementary School, which has the second highest levels for lead of any school tested so far.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2015 visited Beasley Elementary School, which has the second highest levels for lead of any school tested so far.
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DNAinfo/Sam Cholke

HYDE PARK — Two schools on the south lakefront have shown high levels of lead in their water, with Beasley Elementary School showing some of the highest levels of any school tested so far.

Beasley, 5255 S. State St., and Tanner Elementary School, 7350 S. Evans Ave., have shown levels of lead above the acceptable amount allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the schools’ water, as a Chicago Public Schools’ meeting on the testing approaches on Thursday.

Beasley returned 11 tests far above the the EPA standards of 15-parts-per-billion, which CPS has said would result in the water being shut off immediately from that source in the school.

Two tests from a sink in room 234 twice found extremely high lead levels compared to other schools, 965 and 950 parts per billion respectively. Beasley has the second highest contamination of lead in any school tested so far, exceeded only by Blair Early Childhood Center in Clearing, which tests returned lead at 1,100 parts per billion.

So far eight schools on the south lakefront have been tested for lead as CPS goes through its initial phase of doing testing at the 294 school campuses built prior to 1986.

CPS has finished tests at 93 of the 294 schools built prior to 1986, but only eight on the south lakefront have been tested as a CPS meeting on lead contamination approaches at 4 p.m. Thursday at Hyde Park Academy High School, 6220 S. Stony Island Ave.

At Tanner, six tests returned high levels of lead, the highest was 114 parts-per-billion in the hallway outside of room 302.

As of Monday, three schools, South Shore Fine Arts Academy, 1450 E. 70th St., Revere Elementary School, 1010 E. 72nd St., and Fiske Elementary School, 6020 S. Langley Ave. have been completely cleared with no lead found in water from multiple sources across the school.

Four other schools have been found to have some lead in the water in parts of the school, but so far it is below the standards requiring action.

An EPA spokesman told DNAinfo there is no safe level of lead in drinking water, but the agency’s rules don’t require action until that threshold is exceeded.

Kozminski, Ray and Thomas elementary schools were all found to have some lead contamination, but the highest level was 7.85 parts-per-billion on May 24 at Ray on the second floor outside of room 202.

Tests are still outstanding for 201 schools.

CPS will start an additional 146 schools built before 1986 in September with a final group of 59 schools built after 1986 starting later in the fall.

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