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Out of the 1,677 public water supplies under the purview of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, 19 have had recent elevated detections of lead, state officials said.“Any time we have detection levels we do send our engineers out to work with the city to address any potential concerns before they do become exceedances of that safe drinking water standard,” said Shellie Chard-McClary, Water Quality Division director.In other words, lead is sometimes found in Oklahoma drinking water.Mostly it’s isolated cases, Chard-McClary said, versus a system-wide contamination seen in places like Flint, Michigan, where water is undrinkable and children have been poisoned by the lead.“I would like to think it would never happen here,” she told KOCO 5 News.DIFFERENT SAFEGUARDSOklahoma has a few things going in its favor, that would prevent such a wide-scale water crisis, she said.One is the age of the state.“We’re a relatively young state.” Chard-McClary said, “We have a lot more clay pipe, much more plastic PVC pipe, we even have some concrete pipe.”Another is the different safeguards in place, the Department of Environmental Quality said.The main source of lead in drinking water comes from untreated water corroding older lead pipes, allowing the neurotoxin to leach into the drinking water.In Oklahoma, checking water for things like pH balance allows local and state scientists to know how corrosive the water is, something that somehow wasn’t properly monitored – or responded to -- in Flint.“In Flint there were a lot of kind of perfect storm scenarios that happened,” Chard-McClary said.‘HIGH-RISK’ AREASStill, Oklahoma has issues with lead poisoning, particularly in children -- who are at an increased risk.“We know that it can affect all different parts of your body, particularly the brain and different organs,” said Susan Quigley, the program manager for the Oklahoma Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, “Children are more susceptible because they’re developing and growing.”In Flint, daily exposure came from the drinking water.Here in Oklahoma, historically, that hasn’t been the case.“The environmental investigations we’ve done, we have never found water to be the source. We’ve always found another source,” Quigley said, “Usually it’s lead-based paint.”The Oklahoma Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program created a list of high-risk target ZIP codes, areas where there have been previous cases, neighborhoods have older homes, and have a demographic make-up more statistically more like to have lead poisoning.“All of this was narrowed down from all of the ZIP-codes to come up with the 21 that fit all that criteria.” Quigley said.Almost half of the ZIP codes on the high-risk list are located in the metro.Quigley warned not just to focus on whether your home was located in the high-risk area, rather look at the particulars of your house, walls, and plumbing.PROTECTING YOUR FAMILY“There are no symptoms until a level gets very, very high,” Quigley told KOCO 5 News. “So a child who has lead poisoning or an elevated lead level is going to look just like any other child.”What happens beneath the surface in a child with elevated levels, could lead to a lifetime of developmental disabilities.“We don’t know if a child has lead unless the child is tested,” Quigley said.Forty thousand kids in Oklahoma are tested each year for elevated lead levels. The Oklahoma Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program has advocated for testing for every child, at 12-months, 24-months, and then anytime there is possible environmental exposure.Beyond testing, parents can also install filters -- either under the sink or one for a home’s entire water supply -- that can filter out lead, even for houses that may be technically below the federal level for lead.“There is no safe level,” Quigley said. “We know that damage occurs at any level that’s in the blood.”