Data Analysis of Lead Contamination in New York

John Shelley, Manu S. Pillai, Sathish A. P. Kumar

Abstract: Water is one of the most precious resources on the Earth. It is shared by man, animals, and plant life. Up until the Flint Michigan water crisis in 2012, many Americans were ignorant to the legitimacy of their public water systems. As infrastructure continues to age, and with more advance mining techniques such as fracking continue to deliver unsavory elements into our water supply, it is imperative that we maintain a keen eye on our water systems. This paper looks at the lead contamination levels of schools in the state of New York. Over 43,000 pipes were flagged as having more than 15 ppb of lead contamination. 4,041 are flagged as out of service, and there exist 8,300 lead free buildings in the state. We extended the school level analysis to county level analysis to test the hypothesis to know whether there exists some factor that governed the distribution of lead levels across the counties. Results indicate that there is not any single factor, that governs the distribution of the lead across the counties. While the analysis shows improvement, however more steps need to be taken at a national level to secure the safety of our nation's water supply. Results and future actions are described in this paper.