The state has begun testing for lead in the drinking water across Vermont’s schools and child care centers, and has made the results publicly available using an online dashboard created by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

A new state law, passed earlier this year, requires every tap that is used for drinking or cooking in every public and private school, as well as all child care facilities, be tested before December 2020. The effort will ultimately require testing at about 440 schools and 1,200 child care facilities.

The state has already finished testing and analyzing samples for 300 child cares and five schools. Tests at schools must be conducted during the academic year – when taps are actually in use – to ensure reliability, so testing was suspended during the summer.

Gov. Phil Scott said the vacation months gave state officials the opportunity to get a head start on testing at child care centers and building the online search tool.

“I believe we’ll be able to hit the ground running and be able to take care of a number of these in an expeditious fashion,” Scott said at a press conference Wednesday.

In 2018, 420 children under the age of 6 were poisoned by lead in Vermont, according to Health Department data from mandatory blood tests of all 1- and 2-year-olds. Lead paint in homes is often the source of exposure.

Lead is a highly toxic metal that can damage the brain, kidneys, nervous system and red blood cells. Because developing bodies absorb it more easily, young children are at highest risk of lead poisoning.

Responding to public health concerns, lawmakers passed Act 66, which advocates have said sets one of the strictest standards for led testing in the country. It requires any water source be taken out of service immediately when lead levels are detected at 4 parts per billion. Retesting must be performed after remediation to make sure lead levels have gone down before the water source is put back into use.

Each water source is tested twice. A first-draw sample test checks water that’s been sitting in the pipes for 8-18 hours undisturbed, and a flush sample tests water after a tap has been running for 30 seconds.

The testing project is led by the Health Department alongside alongside the Department for Children and Families, the Agency of Education, and DEC.

About 10% of child care centers tested so far have had at least one tap above the allowable limit, according to state officials, and every school has had one tap at or above 4 ppb. The results so far, they said, are generally in line with a testing pilot conducted at 16 schools in 2018.

Tests in a handful of buildings have already turned up alarming results: at the Barre Town elementary school, for example, the first draw and flush samples at one drinking fountain registered lead levels at 10 times the state’s allowable limit.

Legislators set aside $3 million to help school districts pay for the cost of testing and remediation. Most of the time, officials said, remediation is as simple as replacing a faucet or permanently taking a drinking fountain offline.

“In our experience so far, the fixes are relatively inexpensive and very effective at reducing lead levels,” said Health Commissioner Mark Levine.