Millions Exposed to Dangerous Levels of Lead In U.S. Drinking Water, Study Reveals

A startling new report reveals that more than 18 million Americans live in communities with illegal water systems in place and the EPA, which is in charge of ensuring that those systems are safe, is aware of the problem and does little to change it.

According to the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which analyzed data from the Environment Protection Agency, each state is responsible for ensuring that safe water systems are in place, but when they fail — as was the case recently in Flint, Michigan — the EPA is supposed to step in. But all too often, the EPA fails to do so, NRDC found.

"Imagine a cop sitting, watching people run stop signs and speed at 90 miles per hour in small communities and still doing absolutely nothing about it — knowing the people who are violating the law. And doing nothing. That's unfortunately what we have now," Erik Olson, health program director at Natural Resources Defense Council, told CNN.

(MORE: How Safe Is Your Drinking Water?)

The NRDC reveals that more than 5,300 water systems in America are in violation of the EPA's lead and copper rule, which was implemented to safeguard America's drinking water from its aging infrastructure.

"Our research illustrates the extraordinary geographic scope of America’s lead crisis," reads the report. "In 2015, 18 million people were served by water systems with lead violations. These violations were recorded because the systems were not doing everything that they are required to do to protect the public from lead issues, which could include failure to treat to reduce lead levels in the water (health violations), failure to monitor the water for lead as required (monitoring violations), or failure to report lead results to the public or the government (reporting violations)."

Joel Beauvais, the associate administrator for EPA’s Office of Policy, told USA Today that over 300 million Americans depend on 152,000 public drinking water systems and collectively drink more than one billion glasses of tap water each day.

The NRDC uncovered violations that included failure to properly test water for lead, failure to report contamination to residents and failure to treat water properly to avoid lead contamination. States reportedly took action in 817 cases, while the EPA took action in just 88 cases.

'Gaming the System'

Even more startling, the NRDC found that the EPA knows that many utilities "game the system," using questionable testing methods in order to avoid detecting high levels of lead, and allegedly does nothing about it.

"Cheating became something you didn't even hide," Edwards said, adding that some of the questionable methods employed by local water utilities include testing homes that are unlikely to have high levels of lead, asking residents to "pre-flush" their taps and taking water samples "slowly," which reduces lead levels.

The U.S. Gets a 'D' For Water Quality

A similar USA Today investigation in March revealed lead contamination was found in the drinking water of nearly 2,000 water systems in all 50 states, affecting an estimated 6 million people. Additionally, the American Society of Civil Engineers said the nation’s aging infrastructure was problematic and gave the country a “D” grade for the quality of its drinking water.

"Journalists obtained data documenting any ‘action-level exceedance’ for lead," the USA Today report explained. "We captured all tests above the action level for 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. We also looked at more complete water testing data obtained from several large states, which are the original source of most of the information that feeds into the EPA's database."

The report found that some of the highest lead levels were found in schools and day care facilities.

One school in Ithaca, New York, reported lead levels as high as 5,000 parts per billion during one test within the last year. The EPA mandates lead levels rise no higher than 15 parts per billion, USA Today said.

In response to the NRDC report, the EPA told CNN it works closely with states "who are responsible for and do take the majority of the drinking water enforcement actions and are the first line of oversight of drinking water systems."

The agency added that, "it's important to note that many of the drinking water systems that NRDC cites in its analysis are already working to resolve past violations and return to compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act in consultation with state regulators or EPA."

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