What Virginia 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.
VirginiaPublishes for some schools
Published action level, as verified in 2026: 15 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 sample taken at a fixture, so every figure below counts fixture samples. A sample is counted above the action level here when its measured value is at or above 15 ppb.
13,906 readings published = 13,906 samples collected
Three-quarters of the readings Virginia publishes — 10,529 of 13,906 — are exactly 2 ppb, and after October 2024 the data contains no value below 2 at all. Before that month the same dashboard published values below 2, including 55 zeros and 27 negative numbers down to −0.03 ppb, which are instrument responses below a detection limit rather than concentrations. Read together, that is consistent with non-detects being recorded at a laboratory reporting limit rather than flagged as non-detects. VDH does not publish that limit — its FAQ names EPA Method 200.8, states no limit of its own, and leaves the choice of certified laboratory to each division — so we do not state one, we do not say which readings are non-detects, and we do not compute a measured-only rate for Virginia. That inference is ours, not the state's. The share of all samples collected at or above the action level is not affected by it: that denominator is every sample Virginia published, however those readings are classified.
1.2% (164 of 13,906 samples collected) — fixtures at or above 15 ppb, the state's action level
10.3% (87 of 844 schools with published results) — schools at or above 15 ppb, the state's action level
The two rates above count fixture samples; this one counts schools with at least one sample at or above the level. The gap between them is itself informative, and the two units must never be mixed inside one comparison.
Sampling period: 2024-01-25 to 2026-07-10.
3 dated rows fall outside the plausible window — 2000-01-01 through the day the data was retrieved (2026-08-09) — and are excluded from the range above: the latest date it publishes is 2508-08-11. Those rows are still counted in every total on this page, and every date survives verbatim in the CSV below.
These figures come from a voluntary testing programme. A school missing from that data has had no test reported for it — that is not evidence its water is safe. Schools that test are self-selected, and schools that both test and report are doubly so, which makes a voluntary dataset a floor and never a prevalence estimate.
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.
Virginia results (CSV) · 13,906 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, publishes results.
Our field note for Virginia, 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.
RESOLVES a NASBE Unknown to Yes, and fills NASBE's N/A action level with 15 ppb. VDH Office of Drinking Water runs an EPA-funded statewide VOLUNTARY sampling program for public PreK-12 schools and licensed child care centers, with a Public Transparency Dashboard (built with 120Water) reporting all sampling results and remediation measures. Separately, Virginia code as amended April 2020 REQUIRES local school boards and licensed child day programs to submit testing plans and results to VDH and to notify parents above 15 ppb -- so the mandate and the published dashboard are two different things, and the dashboard covers only grant-funded projects. Coverage partial for that reason. Environment America graded Virginia a D.
TapWaterData Editorial. "School drinking water lead testing: Virginia." 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/virginia
@misc{tapwaterdata_school_lead_2026,
author = {TapWaterData Editorial},
title = {School drinking water lead testing: Virginia},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://www.tapwaterdata.com/school-lead-testing/virginia}},
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 .
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