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.