The EPA's Dangerous Lead Standard
Blake Brown
Friday, December 4, 1998
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/12/04/ED107142.DTL
THE ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency wants to lower the national
standard for lead-based paint hazards. The new standard would
have a profound negative impact on public health, especially
the health of children living in poorer neighborhoods.
The changes would allow a 2,000 parts per million residual lead
concentration in soil -- five times greater than the agency's
own current advisory action level of 400 parts per million, and
twice as high as what California considers hazardous waste.
The revised standard would apply to housing and other facilities
built before 1978. Many of these older homes and structures have
lead-based paint that is in poor condition or has been removed,
leaving significant amounts of lead in the soil or dust.
Lead is a toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage. Recent
research indicates that there is no safe level of lead in the
body.
Because children are smaller and are prone to ingesting more
soil and household dust than adults, they are the ones most at
risk when lead is present. Lead can diminish intelligence in
children at very low blood-level concentrations. Through the
``magic'' of cost-benefit analysis, the EPA has put a price tag
on this damage. The agency calculates that a lost IQ point due
to lead poisoning is worth $8,346!
By this logic, the agency arrives at the Orwellian conclusion
that it's cheaper to provide special education to brain-damaged
children than to clean up sites contaminated by less than 2,000
parts of lead per million. This would be of small comfort to
the families of children living in neighborhoods such as Hunters
Point in San Francisco and West Oakland, which would be adversely
impacted by the lower standards.
The proposed new standard would make it easier for property owners,
who must disclose any potential hazards before selling, to put
contaminated sites on the market. It would expose renters to
dangerous lead levels.
Coincidentally, the Department of Defense would be a big winner.
The Pentagon owns thousands of units of lead-contaminated residential
property which it could transfer into the private sector without
having to clean up the high levels of lead present. By lowering
the lead standard, the EPA is ignoring its own studies and pronouncements
and attempting to perpetuate environmental injustice. The agency
needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a health-based
standard, not one derived from economic cost-benefit analysis.
The public should demand that the EPA set a lead standard of
less than 200 parts of per million. This would give states and
municipalities a scientifically supported guideline for protecting
the public from lead exposure.
EPA HEARING
The Environmental Protection Agency will hold a public hearing
on the national standard for lead-based paint hazards at 3 p.m.
today, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Union Square in San Francisco.
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