Providing Students with Adequate School Drinking Water Access in an Era of Aging Infrastructure: A Mixed Methods Investigation

Abstract

Ensuring students’ access to safe drinking water at school is essential. However, many schools struggle with aging infrastructure and subsequent water safety problems and have turned to bottled water delivery systems. Little is known about whether such systems are feasible and effective in providing adequate student water access. This study was a mixed-methods investigation among six schools in an urban district in the U.S. with two types of water delivery systems: (1) tap water infrastructure, with updated water fountains and bottle fillers, and (2) bottled water coolers. We measured students’ water consumption and collected qualitative data from students and teachers about their perceptions of school drinking water. Student water consumption was low—between 2.0 (SD: 1.4) ounces per student and 2.4 (SD: 1.1) ounces per student during lunch. Students and teachers reported substantial operational hurdles for relying on bottled water as a school’s primary source of drinking water, including difficulties in stocking, cleaning, and maintaining the units. While students and teachers perceived newer bottle filler units positively, they also reported a distrust of tap water. Bottled water delivery systems may not be effective long-term solutions for providing adequate school drinking water access and robust efforts are needed to restore trust in tap water.

Exposing the myths of household water insecurity in the global north: A critical review

“…Despite high levels of public confidence in water quality, there are at least three emerging areas of concern with respect to “clean” water. First, aging water infrastructure increasingly fails to provide the kind of clean water people have come to expect (Allaire, Wu, & Lall, 2018; Grigg, 2019; Kenney et al, 2019). For example, the 1993 outbreak of Cryptosporidium in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin public water supply (the largest waterborne disease outbreak in U.S. history that sickened over 400,000 people and killed over 100) was caused by contamination of a 1962‐era water purification plant that was unable to provide adequate disinfection (MacKenzie et al, 1994).…”

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Behaviours, and the Oral Health Status of School- Going Adolescent Boys and Young Men in Kampala, Uganda

“…It is likely that students including ABYM are restricted from accessing water especially when they are attending classes which prompts them to carry their own from home to drink at school. Available evidence also indicates that students, teachers and some members of the public believe that some water sources in schools could be unsafe (Long et al, 2018, Kenney et al, 2020. This may have prompted some ABYM to carry water from home to drink while at school.…”

Water Fountain Access on University Campuses

“…7 When tap water infrastructure is found to be contaminated, such as by lead, universities implement bottled water coolers or vending machines instead of fixing the tap water issue. 5,15 Installing bottled water is a short-term solution and cannot be sustainable long-term due to consistently stocking cooler units, maintaining the units' cleanliness, and producing plastic and pollution. 5 When universities are challenged with providing adequate drinking water access because of aging physical infrastructure, Saylor et al 7 suggest that substantial investment is needed to improve plumbing infrastructure such as shutting off taps, boarding up fountains, and installing bottled water coolers.…”

“…Students from elementary school to higher education spend numerous hours per day in an academic environment and exhibit high rates of inadequate fluid intake because of the lack of access to public drinking fountains. [4][5][6][7] The Institute of Medicine established that adequate water intake for the average male is 3.7 L/d, and that for the average female is 2.7 L/d. 8,9 Increasing awareness regarding these recommendations is seen in the pediatric population at elementary schools.…”

“…Unfortunately, those most in need of proper fluid intake, such as students, are limited by water availability. Students from elementary school to higher education spend numerous hours per day in an academic environment and exhibit high rates of inadequate fluid intake because of the lack of access to public drinking fountains 4–7 …”