MONTREAL -- The Ordre des chimistes du Québec (OCQ) is contesting data released by the Ministry of Education regarding lead in school water and is asking the government to do its homework.

According to data released late Friday afternoon by the ministry, more than a third of Quebec's public school fountains and faucets contained too much lead, and about two-thirds "respect the new Health Canada guideline of five micrograms of lead per litre of water (5 ug/L).

The release states that "all Quebec schools are safe."

But the OCQ is questioning the method used by the government and the results it obtained.

In 2019, the Quebec government asked public and private educational institutions to analyze the concentration of lead in drinking water using portable devices called "Kemio Heavy Metals."

OCQ president, Michel Alsayegh, deplored the use of this type of device, citing "a significant risk of false negatives, which is worrisome for the health of children and staff."

"As early as 2019, when we met with the office of the Minister of Education, we had expressed doubts about the reliability of the results with this type of instrument," said Alsayegh in an interview with The Canadian Press.

According to him, the "accredited, known and certified" method for analyzing metals in water consists of performing the analysis with a "laboratory instrument and sending the samples to an accredited laboratory," as the Centre de services scolaires de Montréal (CSDM) had chosen to do.

"In this case, we know the result is beyond a shadow of a doubt," said Alsayegh.

For schools that have used the government-mandated Kemio Heavy Metals device instead, Alsayegh says all tests concluding there is no lead contamination in the water should be validated in the laboratory.

"This device does not measure total lead, and its results should not be relied upon to conclude that a water source is compliant and that one can continue to drink water from that water source," Alsayegh said.

In the press release issued Friday by the government, Louis Martel, director of the Centre d'expertise en analyse environnementale du Québec, said that "the analytical method using the Kemio Heavy Metals device that the Ministry of Education has made available to the network can indeed be used to determine the concentration of lead in drinking water samples in a screening context."

However, for the president of the OCQ, "a screening test is not an accredited test" and therefore asks that "entries declared negative be condemned until an analysis in an accredited laboratory has been done."

The OCQ does not know how many schools in the province have used the device.

The Canadian Press requested an interview with the Ministry of Education on Saturday afternoon but did not receive a response in time for publication.

In February 2019, a report by the Institut national de Santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) recommended that the government draw up a comprehensive portrait of the situation in schools and early childhood services.

According to the INSPQ report, samples taken from 2013 to 2016 from 436 schools or daycare centres indicated that the limit of 10 ug/L had been exceeded in about 3% of the facilities.

In March 2019, Health Canada lowered the recommended standard from 10 to 5 ug/L.

It was in the wake of the INSPQ report and Health Canada's new recommendation that the Quebec government asked schools to test for lead in drinking water.

--This report was first published in French by The Canadian Press on Oct. 30, 2021.