In 2024, a Mid-Missouri school district found out its drinking water has harmful chemicals in it. It told parents and began installing new water filters a year later.
Forever chemicals, or PFAS, are a type of man-made chemical that doesn’t break down for a long time. Because of a growing body of scientific evidence on the health effects of these chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency placed regulations on some PFAS, which is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Water systems have until 2031 to remove certain PFAS from their water, which can cause reproductive effects in pregnant women, developmental delays in children, and increased risk of some cancers.
Some in Missouri, including the South Callaway R-II school district, are starting early. The school district participated in a voluntary program to test its water system last year.
Two 2024 tests found high levels of forever chemicals. Only one, taken in February, found levels of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, at levels higher than the legal limit that will be enforced by 2031. It also found high levels of perfluorohexanesulfonic acid, or PFHxS, which has similar regulations that the Trump Administration plans to rescind.
“We always try to take the proactive approach,” Superintendent Corey Pontius said. “Knowing this was coming, we wanted to get a head start on it, so did it before we needed to do it.”
Delayed Notification
After receiving the results, the district took more than a year to alert parents.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources sent the district the results in March of last year, along with information about PFAS and a voluntary public notification template.
More than a year later, KBIA noticed the results on Missouri’s PFAS viewer and contacted the school for comment on July 24, 2025.
One week later, the district sent a notice to parents about the PFAS results and responded to KBIA’s inquiry the following day. Pontius said the inquiry didn’t influence their timeline.
“We were aware of the results,” Pontius said. “We were not aware of what they meant.”
“I will tell you that we were not aware that it was even on [the PFAS viewer], so [KBIA] had helped us identify that,” he added.
In its notice to parents, district officials said water filters were being installed to remove PFAS.
“[The water fountains] have been replaced,” Maintenance Director Chad Mealy said. “We have replaced even the ice machines.”
The district is also planning to contract a professional engineering firm to conduct a long-term water quality study to evaluate how to meet the EPA’s deadline.
Officials said it took time to fully understand the situation, verify the results and figure out how to respond. Also, Mealy added they didn’t want to take action if regulations changed, which they did for one of the chemicals the district found.
“Everything was changing to the point where now we even have a new (federal) administration, and now they're going back to maybe even changing levels again,” Mealy said. “More or less, didn't want to treat for something that wasn't going to be good.”
That means students drank water that the district knew had PFAS for a full school year. But school officials say they’re not too concerned about the health impacts.
“We're talking about long-term exposure, a lot of exposure over a long term,” Director of Curriculum and Instruction Mary Van Orden said, referring to health risks associated with PFAS exposure. “When kids are at school, they're not necessarily drinking huge amounts of our water.”
“Are we going to hurt somebody by having them take one sip of water out of one water fountain occasionally when they're in that area, when … most of the kids bring filtered water bottles?” she added.
Risks to Teens
Research on the effect of PFAS exposure to human health is ongoing and some studies have found negative health impacts to teens specifically.
“Your teenage years are defined by this critical period of growth and development,” said Brittney Baumert, a researcher at the University of Southern California who studies the impacts of environmental exposures on human health. “Adolescence is when risk factors for obesity and diabetes often first emerge, and so it's a really formative stage for kind of longer life or big picture chronic disease risk later in life.”
A study she authored found teens with higher blood levels of PFAS gained more weight after bariatric surgery compared to teens with lower levels.
“There's been other studies that have linked PFAS exposure to delayed pubertal milestones, as well as other studies that have looked at adiposity, liver health, neurocognitive behavior and even more endocrine function related to thyroid health,” she said. “So there has been really emerging evidence that PFAS have really abundant health effects in adolescents.”
Baumert added she’s glad the district is being responsive and that as a parent, she would have wanted to know immediately about the PFAS findings.
“I think that this would be a wonderful opportunity to do an exposure assessment, specifically in the school, and create an actual study,” she said.
