GUILDERLAND — As required by the state, the Guilderland School District is working to reduce the lead found in water in many of its sinks and faucets, Supervisor of Buildings and Grounds Clifford Nooney said Tuesday.

In the fall, all seven schools in the district, including the five elementary schools, were found to have water outlets with lead exceeding 15 parts per billion, at which point the state requires action.

Among the elementary schools, Pine Bush had the highest number of unsafe outlets, 45, all of them sinks. Guilderland had 26, including nine fountains and 17 sinks. Lynnwood had a total of 22, ten fountains and 12 sinks. Westmere’s total was three sites, all of them sinks, and Altamont’s was two, both sinks.

No safe blood lead level in children has been identified, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. And effects of lead exposure cannot be corrected,” the CDC’s website says.

Before the comprehensive testing mandated for all districts by the state was done in the fall, Guilderland had gotten an early start on repairs when it did preliminary tests of 19 outlets across the district and found measurable amounts of lead contamination in five of the school kitchens, although all of those levels were below the 15 ppb threshold. The district immediately repiped all of those kitchens.

Neil Sanders, Guilderland’s assistant superintendent for business, said this week that, during the 2016-17 school year, the district spent just over $110,000 that he believes “will be aidable” by the state. He said that the district had classified a figure of “about $2,650” as non-aidable expenses.

School districts are required to rememediate each outlet with water above the action level. Fountains are considered to be more dangerous than sinks, since lead in water cannot be absorbed into the skin through hand washing or showering, but only by drinking.

Guilderland’s effort to reduce lead levels involves making initial repairs to the outlets, among those with unsafe lead levels, that the district deemed “priority one,” Nooney said: sinks in classrooms (not including lab sinks intended only for scientific work), bathroom sinks in classrooms (mainly in elementary schools), and water fountains.

The first round of comprehensive testing brought to light those sinks and fountains that needed remediation. All affected outlets were either taken off-line or marked “for hand-washing only.” In terms of repairs, the district’s five elementary schools were prioritized, he said, and the priority-one outlets at those schools were worked on first.

First, repairs were made to the priority-one outlets, Nooney said, which meant replacing the shut-off valves, hoses that run from the shut-off valves to the faucets, and faucets.

For the most part, Nooney said, the old-style white porcelain water fountains were replaced with newer, bottle-filler fountains that have both a drinking fountain and a spigot for filling bottles. “Those are more versatile,” he said, noting that the district has also added some extra fountains of that type. All of the bottle-filler fountains come already equipped with filters, he said.

Some of the newer-style stainless-steel fountains — in which the water is chilled — were left in place and outfitted with filters.

At the five elementary schools, after repairs, the outlets were retested, and then filters were installed on any priority-one outlets that still failed, Nooney said. Those filtered sinks and faucets were then retested on Sept. 21, and the results are not yet back.

Meanwhile, at the middle and high schools, the repairs to the priority-one outlets were done, and those were retested on Sept. 21. Those results are not yet back, either.

Nooney expects results at about the end of next week. The turnaround time from the lab is about two weeks, he said.

He expects the filters to work. “If those filters fail, I do not know,” he said. “If that were not to work, it would be back to the drawing board.”

“Priority twos” would be, Nooney said, “gang-bathroom sinks,” or the communal girls and boys’ bathrooms in the hallways in all seven schools. Sinks in the communal bathrooms that have elevated levels of lead remain clearly marked “for hand-washing only.”

The district has not yet started to think about whether it will repair — with new parts, filters, etc. — affected lab sinks or not, Nooney said. This will involve conversations with the New York State Department of Health and the State Education Department, he said.

The initial round of comprehensive testing that brought the problem to light — the cost of just testing, with no repairs — Nooney said, was almost $35,000.

“It truly is a work in progress,” he said. “Quite the undertaking.”