What New York publishes about lead testing in its schools’ drinking water, what those numbers cover, and how we checked it. One row of a 51-jurisdiction survey, verified jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than compiled from a single list.
New YorkPublishes results, breadth not yet rated
Published action level, as verified in 2026: 5 ppb
The results below are counted against that level, which the source records as set in statute.
Action levels are not comparable between jurisdictions: across the 51 we surveyed they run from 1 ppb to 20 ppb, so a share of results above “the action level” measures the threshold as much as it measures the water. We never rank states on it. Where a jurisdiction explains how its own level was set, the verified research note at the foot of this page records the explanation verbatim.
The source publishes one row per school, carrying that school's count of outlets above the action level and its count at or below it, so every figure below counts schools rather than individual outlets. A school is counted above the action level here when at least one of its outlets came back above 5 ppb.
4,479 with a published result + 10 filed with no result = 4,489 school reports filed
36.0% (1,615 of 4,489 school reports filed) — schools at or above 5 ppb, the state's action level
36.1% (1,615 of 4,479 schools with a published result) — schools at or above 5 ppb, the state's action level
Both figures count the same 1,615 results at or above 5 ppb. They differ only in what that count is divided by, and dropping the rows with no measured value can only raise the rate — for a state reporting mostly non-detects it raises it by more than an order of magnitude. So we publish both denominators, and neither figure is ever shown alone.
The source publishes no usable sample dates for this dataset, so this page states no sampling period. We do not infer one.
Testing is required by New York Public Health Law 1110, revised effective 2022-12-22 to a 5 ppb action level with a triennial testing cycle and no lead-free building exemption.
Every row behind the figures above, exactly as the source published it — the verbatim result string alongside the normalised value, the non-detect flag, the state’s own action level on every row, and the sample date with no window applied.
New York results (CSV) · 4,489 rows · CC BY 4.0
This page names no schools. Named readings live on the lookup, where the state’s remediation note is rendered beside every one of them.
The baseline is the National Association of State Boards of Education’s 2021 survey. Every 2026 value below was re-checked for this survey; a value that did not move is a finding too.
Changed since the 2021 baseline: action level.
Our field note for New York, published verbatim rather than summarised. Where it quotes a figure from a source, that is the source’s own number reproduced as we recorded it, not a rate we computed — everything we compute states its denominator and its unit.
CHANGED since NASBE: 15->5 ppb effective 2022-12-22 (Public Health Law 1110 revisions). Lead-free building exemption removed; triennial testing cycle. Six Socrata datasets spanning 2016-2026. Column names outlets_gt_5ppb/outlets_lteq_5ppb confirm the 5 ppb level at source.
TapWaterData Editorial. "School drinking water lead testing: New York." TapWaterData national school drinking-water lead testing database. Last updated 2026-08-09. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://www.tapwaterdata.com/school-lead-testing/new-york
@misc{tapwaterdata_school_lead_2026,
author = {TapWaterData Editorial},
title = {School drinking water lead testing: New York},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://www.tapwaterdata.com/school-lead-testing/new-york}},
note = {Last updated 2026-08-09. Licensed under CC BY 4.0}
}Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence — free to republish, chart or build on with attribution. Last updated .
All 51 jurisdictions — the national scorecard, the tier map, and the methodology behind every rating on this page.
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