Falsified New York City child-care lead-testing records

The paperwork made it look like thousands of children were being protected by routine lead testing, but a reported investigation raised a much more troubling possibility. Records allegedly showed that drinking water at New York City day care centers had been tested for lead even though, according to the report, some of those tests had never actually taken place.

The agency at the center of the allegations was the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which was responsible for inspecting roughly 11,000 licensed child care programs each year. The reporting claimed the agency had struggled so badly to keep up with the inspections that required safeguards were not consistently being carried out.

What made the situation particularly serious was the alleged discrepancy between what the records showed and what had actually happened. If official documents indicated that a safety check had been completed when no test was performed, parents and the public would have had no reliable way of knowing whether those protections were actually in place.