Children protected from lead in drinking water through award-winning policy victories

This summer, more than 30,000 young North Carolinians are newly protected from lead in drinking water, and North Carolina has become first state in the South with a drinking water lead hazard level for children below 15 ppb. The Clinic’s student teams were proud to conduct research as well as policy and legal analysis to help make this victory happen and protect our state’s youngest children on behalf of our client NC Child.

Partners in the effort included RTI International, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the North Carolina Conservation Network, and Environment NC.

The new law builds on earlier victories. An initiative to protect North Carolina children from water-based lead exposure in which the Clinic was a key participant received the 2020 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership from the Environmental and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The multi-year partnership, known as the Clean Water for Carolina Kids program, spurred the adoption of new requirements for testing for and removing lead from drinking and cooking water at licensed childcare centers and pre-kindergarten programs in North Carolina, minimizing exposure to the neurotoxin for more than 230,000 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in their care. Duke students, led Clinic co-director Michelle Nowlin, and Dr. Nancy Lauer, the clinic’s science and policy fellow, devised a regulatory and fiscal framework for the rule that was adopted by the North Carolina Commission for Public Health and went into effect on Oct. 1, 2019.

The project was also recognized as a semifinalist from hundreds of entries by the Mutual of America Community Partnership Award, which recognizes programs that demonstrate measurable impact, replicability, and innovation.

The clinic’s partners in the program were its client, nonprofit policy advocate NC Child; RTI International, an independent research organization (lead partner); and the North Carolina Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, Children’s Environmental Health Section, Division of Public Health.

Both initiatives are victories in primary prevention, stopping lead poisoning before children are exposed, particularly in childcare settings.