Today, Clean Water for Carolina Kids is making critical advancements in protecting children from lead exposure. Launched in 2017 by RTI, an independent nonprofit research institute, Clean Water for Carolina Kids began as a community-based pilot study to engage and train school administrators in testing for and tracking lead contamination with a simple but groundbreaking mail-out test kit and a cloud-based enrollment and reporting portal. The study found that lead was present in water, above the American Academy of Pediatrics reference level, at 63% of the childcare centers and schools tested.
RTI is dedicated to improving the human condition through science-based solutions. Its team of nearly 6,000 experts works collaboratively with outside organizations to address complex social and scientific challenges on behalf of communities and businesses around the world.
Leveraging local connections, RTI partnered with various organizations to evaluate legal, regulatory and economic options for statewide lead testing. Together with input from outside stakeholders, RTI and its partners successfully updated North Carolina’s statewide childcare sanitation rule to require all licensed childcare centers to test for lead in water being used for drinking and food preparation.
“Clean Water for Carolina Kids is the first program to make available large-scale, yet scientifically robust, lead-in-water testing, while empowering school and childcare administrators as ‘citizen scientists,’” said Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, a senior environmental health scientist and program director at RTI International. “This year, we expanded the program throughout public schools in Georgia and with private well-owners across the U.S. We are elated that it has become a model for eliminating childhood exposure to lead and other contaminants. With federal funding, this testing is free to all participants.”