Claim: Chicago residents use kits to test for lead contamination.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Kenosha/Racine Lead-Free Communities Partnership
text: from surfaces such as floors and window sills. The samples are then tested by a laboratory that participates in the Environmental Protection Agency's National Lead Laboratory Accreditation Program (NLLAP). Readings from the walls and other surfaces are collected on site with an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) device and are analyzed later. The XRF device allows the program to detect lead in coatings even if it has since been painted over. If lead hazards are found to be present in the home then the home moves into the abatement process. Once the lead and safety hazards of the home have been assessed,

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: chemistry, Edwards used a field meter to test for lead in one home's water. The meter could read values up to 140 ppb. His initial reading pegged the meter, so he diluted the sample to ten percent of its original strength. Even so, diluted, the sample still pegged the meter, indicating the water contained at least 1,250 ppb of lead. "Some of it would literally have to be classified as a hazardous waste," Edwards said. After Seema Bhat, a water quality manager at WASA, told her superiors at the agency and at the EPA about the lead levels and warned

title: H. Kramer and Company
text: H. Kramer and Company H. Kramer and Company is a brass smelting company located in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The company has come under pressure from local neighborhood residents and the Illinois EPA for lead pollution. In the March 2005, Pilsen residents began sampling the soil and found elevated levels of lead around the H. Kramer facility. EPA tests in June 2005 found lead on site at levels from 1,250 to 65,000 parts per million, and from 120 to 2,500 parts per million off site; with the highest levels more than twice the allowable level set

title: Lead poisoning
text: cheaper methods include running water in the morning to flush out the most contaminated water, or adjusting the water's chemistry to prevent corrosion of pipes. Lead testing kits are commercially available for detecting the presence of lead in the household. As hot water is more likely than cold water to contain higher amounts of lead, use only cold water from the tap for drinking, cooking, and for making baby formula. Since most of the lead in household water usually comes from plumbing in the house and not from the local water supply, using cold water can avoid lead exposure. Measures

title: Flint water crisis
text: homes had registered lead at acceptable levels." The documents falsely claimed that the city had tested tap water from homes with lead service lines, and therefore the highest lead-poisoning risks; in reality, the city does not know the locations of lead service lines, which city officials acknowledged in November 2015 after the "Flint Journal"/MLive published an article revealing the practice, using documents obtained under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. The "Journal"/MLive reported that the city had "disregarded federal rules requiring it to seek out homes with lead plumbing for testing, potentially leading the city and state to underestimate for

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: incomplete". The underreported results came from the city's health department, which had said the missing tests were omitted because some labs did not report low lead levels to the city. The health department data was also the basis for Guidotti's paper. The investigation found that the CDC knowingly used flawed data in drafting the report, leading to "scientifically indefensible" claims in the 2004 paper. It also cited the CDC for failing to publicize later research showing that the harm was more serious than the 2004 report suggested. After the investigation's findings were released, the CDC initially stood by the report's

title: Lead abatement in the United States
text: the Lead and Copper Rule's regulations. An additional 33 cities around the US have been investigated for violating EPA guidance when it comes to properly testing their water systems for lead contamination. The results of analyzing documents found that correspond to the recent water testing operations in these cities show that 23 cities were instructed to run water slowly, which reduces the amount of lead dislodged from the pipes. 7 cities were instructed to remove aerators from spouts before water was ran, which reduces lead content. 21 cities were instructed to "pre-flush" before testing done by the EPA, which influences

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: that as many as 20 states had not provided any data. On October 5, 2004, the "Washington Post" ran a front-page article reporting that cities across the United States were illegally manipulating lead testing results, such as discarding high readings or avoiding homes likely to have high readings. A former EPA official described it as "widespread fraud and manipulation" on the part of water utilities. That July, however, an EPA administrator told Congress that "we have not identified a systemic problem". Using data from the EPA, the "Post" identified 274 utilities that had reported unsafe lead levels between 2000 and

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: that no children with dangerously high blood lead levels were found, even in the homes with the worst lead levels. Officials in other cities, such as New York City and Seattle, cited the report as justification for a less-than-aggressive response to high lead levels in their own water. Water testing in the first six months of 2004 showed 90 percent of homes having 63 ppb of lead or less in the water. In October 2004, Edwards co-authored an article in the "Journal of the American Water Works Association" that linked chloramine use with greatly increased lead leaching. A report commissioned

title: Flint water crisis
text: begin using reverse 911 to advise homebound residents on how to get help. On January 10, Mayor Weaver stressed to residents that it was important to also pick up the testing kits, as the city would like to receive at least 500 water test samples per week. On January 12, officers from the Michigan State Police and Genesee County Sheriff's Department started delivering cases of water, water filters, lead testing kits and replacement cartridges to residents who needed them. The American Red Cross has also been deployed to Flint to deliver bottled water and filters to residents. On January 14,

title: Lead-based paint in the United States
text: using equipment such as the Olympus Innov-X LBP4000, RMD LPA-1, or the Thermo Scientific's Niton. XRF is the preferred method because it is not destructive and a reading is usually obtained in about 4–8 seconds with a 95% accuracy at the 2-sigma level. Instruments of this sort have an inconclusive range, and when a reading falls in this range (range is different for each instrument and model), a paint chip may be taken and sent for laboratory analysis. Testing for lead in dust, water, and air also require laboratory analysis. Commercially available lead test kits are often used to test

title: Kenosha/Racine Lead-Free Communities Partnership
text: income level. Both the owner and occupants must agree to participate in the program. Upon completion of the initial paperwork, a risk assessment team tests the home for the presence of lead. Because lead is such a pervasive presence in some of these houses (and present in many surfaces), specific emphasis is on replacing high friction surfaces such as windows or doors. Walls that have significant amounts of lead and are damaged are also eligible for repair. Lead is most commonly found in one of two ways: Lead dust is detected by taking samples in the form of dust wipes

title: Flint water crisis
text: lead reading of 13.9 ppb, just below the federal action level of 15 ppb. However, Pieper acknowledged the sampling, which was conducted by volunteer residents, does not fulfill the testing requirements of the federal Lead and Copper Rule. State testing of the most-recent six month monitoring period, which began January 1 and complied with Lead and Copper Rule regulations, showed a 90th percentile lead reading of 20 ppb, which exceeds the federal action level. Roughly 93 percent of samples from the third round of expanded state sentinel site testing showed results below the lead action level. Dr. Edwards called the

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: 2004. Out of 51 homes tested, only four had readings above 15 ppb; ten of those homes were above the 15-ppb standard the previous year, but fell below it in this test. WASA also noted that the Army Corps of Engineers would continue using chloramine throughout the year to keep the water chemistry stable. By May 10, 2005, the company was announcing that its tests were "below the '90th percentile lead action level.'" As of January 2006, WASA said that about 29 percent of its customers had chosen to replace the lead service lines within the customer's property. In a

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: implement plans to replace lead service lines in key areas of the municipal water system. The first media attention came in late 2002, when the "Washington City Paper" ran an article about a resident of American University Park whose water tested six to 18 times the EPA Lead and Copper Rule's action level. WASA found that homes in its service area with lead service lines averaged five times the EPA limit for lead during a year-long period. The results were unexpected; the EPA scientist overseeing DC's water suggested that drought conditions might have raised the alkalinity levels of the Potomac

title: Flint water crisis
text: months the extent of toxic lead leaching into Flint's tap water." In a new report released March 1, 2016, 37 of the 423 recently tested sentinel sites had results above the 15 ppb limit. Eight of the samples exceeded 100 ppb. A recent study however showed that significantly more samples exceeded the 15 ppb limit in the voluntary or homeowner-driven sampling program whereby concerned citizens decided to acquire a testing kit and conduct sampling on their own (non-sentinel sites). "See Education and research section for later studies." On September 24, 2015, Hurley Medical Center in Flint released a study, led

title: Flint water crisis
text: outreach and field questions from the residents about the problems caused by the crisis. The State Emergency Operations Center recommended that all Flint children under six years old get tested for lead levels as soon as possible, either by a primary care physician or the Genesee County Health Department. The state has set up water resource sites at several public buildings around Flint where residents can pick up bottled water, water filters, replacement cartridges, and home water testing kits. They also advised residents to call the United Way to receive additional help if needed. On January 11, Snyder signed an

title: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
text: require utilities to give test results directly to homeowners, and to notify state and federal regulators before changing water-treatment methods. Critics, such as Clean Water Action, called the changes "revisions at the margins". Rick Maas, co-director of the Environmental Quality Institute at the University of North Carolina, said the revisions would "solve maybe 5 to 10 percent of the problem" with the Rule. Trade organizations, such as the American Water Works Association, found the changes "basically reasonable". That month, WASA said that recent tests showed encouraging declines in lead levels, which it attributed to the orthophosphate treatments started in August

title: Water testing
text: "residues from drugs or pesticides". In March 2013, almost 200 water fountains in Jersey City public schools were found to contain lead above regulatory standards, where one of the water fountains had lead contamination at levels more than 800 times the EPA's standard. The situation warrants concern because exposure to lead in water could lead to mental retardation for children. In March 2013, a defense lawyer asked a federal judge to dismiss charges against the owner of Mississippi Environmental Analytical Laboratories Inc. accused of falsifying records on industrial waste water samples. According to the indictment, Borg Warner Emissions Systems Inc.

title: East Chicago, Indiana
text: designated the USS Lead Superfund Site. The site is divided into three zones, with public housing and residential properties. Residents' decades-long concerns about lead contamination were confirmed in 2016 via EPA testing, especially affecting over 270 families in the West Calumet Housing Complex. As Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence declined to declare the Superfund site a state emergency; his successor Governor Eric Holcomb has issued Executive Order 17-13, declaring a disaster emergency in East Chicago. According to the 2010 census, East Chicago has a total area of , of which (or 87.22%) is land and (or 12.78%) is water. As