EPA Agency Sets New Standards for Lead
The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday set stringent new
standards for airborne lead particles, following the recommendations
of its science advisers and cutting the maximum allowable
concentrations tenfold. It was the first change in federal lead
standards in three decades.
But the clean-up of areas with excessive lead levels is not required
for more than eight years, and the system of monitors that detect the
toxic contaminant is frayed. Currently 133 monitors are in operation
nationwide, down from about 800 in 1980, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Cathy
Milbourn, said. The agency is working on rebuilding this network, to
include more than 300 monitors, Ms. Milbourn said.
The new standards set the limits for exposure at 0.15 micrograms per
deciliter of air, down from 1.5 micrograms, and well within the outer
limit of 0.2 micrograms recommended by the advisors.
The agency's administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said in a
statement, "With these stronger standards a new generation of
Americans are being protected from harmful lead emissions."
Mr. Johnson's usual critics in environmental groups offered
uncharacteristic words of praise. "This is a great step in the right
direction, " said Gina Solomon, a scientist with the Natural
Resources Defense Council.
But Robert N. Steinwurtzel, a lawyer for the Association of Battery
Recyclers — a group of six companies that use a smelting process to
disassemble and recycle as many as 115 million car batteries
annually — called the new standard problematic. "It potentially
threatens the viability of the lead recycling industry," he said.
Association officials traveled to the White House earlier this month
in an unsuccessful effort to plead their case for a less stringent
standard. Battery recyclers, along with utilities, cement kilns and
metalworking shops, are the major emitters of airborne lead.
Lead's toxicity has been recognized for more than a century; the
metal is associated with the impairment of neural development in
infants and young children, and with cardiovascular disease and
premature death in older people.
For more than 30 years, federal, state and local governments have
tried to reduce exposure, by controlling industrial emissions,
removing lead from gasoline and mounting campaigns to remove lead-
based paint from homes. Some of the highest lead levels in blood can
be found in children in older cities like Philadelphia, Providence,
R.I., and Cleveland.
Bruce P. Lanphear, a professor in the health sciences department at
Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who is an expert on lead
toxicity, welcomed the agency's decision to follow the
recommendations of its science advisers.
The new standard, he said, "will make a difference, but won't lead to
dramatic reductions" in blood lead levels of younger children, which
are now between 80 and 95 percent lower than they were in the 1970's.
Improvements in blood lead levels had "begun to plateau" in recent
years, Mr. Lanphear added, and the new standard could result in
renewed progress