Washington News

Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency have recommended tightening air quality standards for lead.

Today the Office of Air Quality Planning at the Environmental Protection Agency released a final staff paper, Human Exposure and Health Risk Assessment (see it here), and in it they recommend EPA tighten lead standards. The staff basically says that the evidence of lead's health effects, particularly on children, "clearly calls into question the adequacy of the current standard."

The lead standard was developed in 1978. That standard helped get the lead out of gasoline, a major step forward in environmental health policy. The use of lead as a gasoline additive started in the 1920s, and went into hyperdrive in the 1940s. In spite of the 1978 standard, lead wasn't completely removed from gas until 1996. But in the 18-year period in which it was being phased out, the Centers for Disease Control reported a 90% reduction in kids' blood-lead levels. That's good news—a 90% reduction—but it isn't zero, and when it comes to lead, that's the only safe number. As the EPA staff says, "Current health-effects evidence does not indicate a level of lead exposure below which adverse health effects may not occur." They also say, according to a large and fast-growing body scientific studies, that "adverse effects in young children occur at much lower blood-lead levels than was understood when the current standard was set in 1978."

What does the lead do? Well for one thing, lead has been shown in several studies published in the last couple of years to significantly reduce IQ, depending on the dose and the timing of the exposure (high maternal lead exposures in the first trimester of pregnancy, for example, tend to have greater impact than later in pregnancy, and exposures earlier in childhood have greater affect.) It is clearly associated with other mental health problems and behavioral disorders: lead is implicated in ADHD, for example. It is also associated with infertility problems, birth defects, high blood pressure, and renal failure to name just a few of the long list of health disorders and diseases.

The EPA staff paper recommends "appreciably lowering the level of the current primary standard for lead (the current standard is 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3)." A staff recommendation does not mean that the standard will be changed, but it should fuel a dialog that really needs to happen.