EPA prepares to propose newer standards for lead

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected on Wednesday to release the first new lead emissions standards in nearly three decades, a regulation that health and clean air advocates fear will be too light and industry executives worry will be too tough.

The dramatic reduction of lead pollution is one of the biggest environmental triumphs of the 20th century. The ingestion or inhalation of lead by children can lead to developmental problems that include lowered IQ levels.

{mosads}Lead emissions have dropped dramatically — around 94 percent — since lead was removed from gasoline, and emissions from other sources like smelters were reduced by the Clean Air Act. But health groups, state clean air officials and environmental groups like the Sierra Club are pressing EPA to adopt even tougher standards, arguing that lead poses such a health risk that the agency should strive to reduce emissions to zero.

The current level of allowable emissions is 1.5 micrograms (µg) of lead per cubic meter. EPA has proposed to reduce that to 0.1 to 0.3 µg.  

In its comments, the Sierra Club pushed for the lower end of the scale and additional monitors in poor communities where findings have shown residents with elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream relative to those who live in more affluent neighborhoods.

“Since no lead level is safe, EPA should have built a significant margin of safety into the lead … standard,” the group said in written comments that were submitted to the agency last month.

“Although lead concentrations in ambient air are considerably lower today than they were several decades ago, the public remains very much at risk,” according to comments filed on behalf of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment and Leslie and Jack Warden, who were the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that prompted the EPA rulemaking. The Wardens were residents of Herculaneum, Mo., which had the “dubious distinction of the highest monitored airborne lead concentrations in the nation,” according to the comments.

The coalition wants the EPA to adopt a standard of 0.2 µg or below, as was recommended by an independent group of scientific advisers to the EPA.

The proposed rule attracted more than 6,000 comments from a variety of groups, with the fault lines by and large falling along the patterns set by other clean air regulations proposed by the administration.

Industry groups for the most part remain opposed to the range proposed by the EPA, arguing that the tougher standard wouldn’t do anything to address another culprit: background levels of lead. That is, the lead that’s left in soils from a legacy of use in paints and other products or from sources that aren’t targeted by the new proposed rule.

“Establishing a zero or ultra-low standard is unlikely to yield significant additional benefits due to the high background levels of lead,” ExxonMobil said in its comments, which were echoed by the National Association of Manufacturers and other groups.

A tough new rule could be counterproductive, by forcing “the transfer of industrial production to other countries where pollution controls are less stringent,” the company argued.

Several groups also touched on the question of monitoring. The Battery Council International (BCI), a trade group of lead battery manufacturers, suppliers and recyclers, urged in its comments for the EPA to direct more focus on poor communities.

“No one at BCI rejects the science that recognizes that there are health effects of lead exposure,” said Timothy Lafond, the chairman of BCI’s environment committee. “But this rule, as far as getting effective monitoring in our inner cities, falls short.”