In a budget memo released in late March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed eliminating two programs that focus on limiting exposure to lead paint. The suggested proposal would eliminate as much as $16.61 million in funding and over 70 full-time staff members. While the current federal government is looking to get rid of as much federal oversight as possible by transferring powers and responsibilities back to the states, environmental and public health advocates are extremely concerned about the hazardous consequences for citizens–particularly children.

History of Lead and Lead Paint Use

Lead is a naturally-occurring metal found in the Earth’s crust. As one of the earliest discovered metals in human history, lead quickly gained popularity due to its corrosion resistance and low boiling point. In ancient times, “sugar of lead” was used by Roman winemakers as one of the first artificial sweeteners. Up until the 19th century, white lead pigments were widely utilized in paints by artists, as the durability of lead made it an ideal paint additive. Lead-based paint was also used in the U.S. in the 1920s, though several European countries had already banned the use of it.

Usage of lead-based paint started to decline in the 1940s. In 1971, the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act (LBPPPA) was passed, which aimed to phase out lead paint use in housing built with federal dollars. Lead paint was eventually banned altogether by the American government in 1978.

Lead Poisoning

Lead poisoning occurs when you absorb too much lead by breathing or swallowing it. The neurotoxic effects of lead are substantial, and children are particularly susceptible. When the LBPPPA was passed in 1971, a blood lead level of 60 micrograms per deciliter was considered safe. It wasn’t until 1991 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lowered the “acceptable” blood lead level to nine micrograms per deciliter or less. That number has since been lowered again, and there is still no known level of lead exposure that is considered safe.

“Lead Paint” Courtesy of Mike Mozart : License: (CC BY 2.0)

Lead-based paint, which also includes any lead-contaminated dust, is one of the most common causes of lead poisoning. According to a 2011 national housing survey, more than a third of housing units across the nation contain lead-based paint. Risk of exposure is particularly high in older homes with flaked or chipped paint.

Some neurological and behavioral effects of lead poisoning are considered to be irreversible, and it’s estimated that 2.6 percent of American preschool children have a blood lead concentration over 5 micrograms per deciliter–the current level at which the government recommends public health intervention. Children may experience developmental delay and learning difficulties as a result of lead exposure. Most lead poisoning in children occurs from eating chips and flakes of deteriorating lead-based paint. Children with pica, a disorder which leads to a compulsive appetite to consume non-food items, are especially at risk of ingesting lead.

Lead Paint Programs

In October 1992, Congress passed the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act (Title X of Public Law 102-550). Title X amended the Toxic Substances Control Act, and was designed to develop a national strategy to address lead-based paint risks in all housing. Congress promulgated Title X after concerns that low-lead poisoning was widespread amongst American children, particularly those under six years old and minority and low-income populations.

EPA’s Proposed Budget Cuts

On March 31, 2017, a 64-page budget memo covering the EPA’s  2018 fiscal year was released by the Washington Post. The memo showed that officials within the EPA want to eradicate two programs that reduce children’s exposure to lead paint. One of the programs at risk is the Lead Risk Reduction Program. The new budget would slash $2.56 million from its funding and lay off about 73 full-time equivalent employees. This program requires professional remodelers to participate in training to learn safe practices for stripping away lead-based paint in homes. The program was created through an EPA regulation in 2010, which mandated federal certification for renovators.

Lead-based paint programs run by the EPA are also potentially at risk of losing $14.05 million. The EPA has been offering financial assistance to states and tribal jurisdictions, under Section 404(g) of the Toxic Substances Control Act, since 1994. States and tribal programs are given federal money to address lead-based paint risks. Money is granted to develop or carry out authorized lead-based paint activities programs; authorized lead pre-renovation education programs; or authorized renovation, repair, and paint programs.

While a spokeswoman for the EPA stated that the cuts are intended to give local and state governments the authority and responsibility to fund their own entities, the vast majority of states are unable to do so. Only fourteen states are actually able to operate programs which train contractors in removing lead paint. The rest depend on the federal government to successfully run their programs.

These changes come after a Trump Administration order to reduce the EPA’s overall budget by 31 percent. The EPA has proposed eliminating 25 percent of its employees and scrapping 56 programs including: lead reduction programs, water runoff control, and pesticide safety.

Environmental Racism?

Between 1997 and 2001, the CDC found that 60 percent of children who were reported with confirmed high blood-lead levels were black. Children living and playing in inner cities are more likely to be exposed to lead blowing across playgrounds. A 2015 analysis by the Huffington Post uncovered a strong correlation between high percentages of black populations and high lead poisoning rates. Between 1999 and 2004, black children were 1.6 times more likely to test positive for lead in their blood than white children. In Detroit, where 84 percent of the population is black, eight percent of children tested had elevated blood-lead levels in 2013.

Low-income and minority populations are far more likely to live in neighborhoods with dilapidated homes, thereby elevating their risk of exposure to lead paint. Other legal and environmental advocates note that the cuts to these programs will set the U.S. back decades in preventing lead poisoning and only stifle revenue streams. In other words, the government is likely dooming low-income and minority citizens to toxic living conditions.

CDC Lead Poisoning Prevention

The CDC still has programs to help study and eliminate childhood lead poisoning in America. The Lead Contamination Control Act of 1988 authorized the CDC to initiate these efforts. As a result, the CDC Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was created which helps to develop policies to prevent childhood exposure and poisoning, educate the public and health care providers, provide funding to state and local health departments, and support research to determine the efficacy of prevention efforts.

To date, the CDC has funded nearly 60 childhood lead poisoning prevention programs; developed the childhood blood lead surveillance system, which allows states to report their data to the CDC; expanded public health laboratory capacity; and provided training to public health professionals. The CDC, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, EPA, and other agencies have created a federal interagency strategy to achieve the elimination of childhood lead poisoning as a public health issue by 2020.

Conclusion

While lead-based paint was banned almost forty years ago, its persistence in homes across the country is still alive and well to this day. Pre-1980 American housing contains upwards of three million tons of lead in the form of paint. If the EPA strips these lead reduction programs of funding, this nation will continue to have a high risk of lead exposure for children and adults. Since 36 states rely on federal money to keep programs running, the EPA’s proposed budget is establishing a permanent lead-based environment for the country’s most vulnerable populations.

Nicole Zub

Nicole is a third-year law student at the University of Kentucky College of Law. She graduated in 2011 from Northeastern University with Bachelor’s in Environmental Science. When she isn’t imbibing copious amounts of caffeine, you can find her with her nose in a book or experimenting in the kitchen. Contact Nicole at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Why is the Trump EPA Budget Removing Lead Paint Protection Programs? appeared first on Law Street.

Would you drink this water?

Here’s what Flint, Michigan’s poison lead water looks like. pic.twitter.com/s2g2ml8UL4

— (´・ω・｀) (@_icze4r) January 15, 2016

Many citizens of Flint, Michigan are refusing to–and for good reason. The water supplied by the city of Flint to many residents has been contaminated with poisonous amounts of lead and other toxins for over two years. The safe level for lead content in drinking water, according to the CDC, is absolutely none. That’s why the EPA’s goal for public drinking water is zero parts per billion (ppb), and why 15 ppb is listed as their action level (the concentration at which water authorities are federally required to lower contamination).

So with these regulations from the Safe Drinking Water Act, why are some families reporting 25, 100, and even 200 ppb of lead detected in the tap water from their homes? The answer is shrouded in the intricacies of municipal water supply agreements and water main construction, which are enough to make anyone’s eyes glaze over. So let’s break down just how this ‘man-made disaster‘ began: with a corner-cutting move designed to save money.

It Began With a Plan

Flint, Michigan had been getting its tap water from Detroit for over 50 years. But in 2013, the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) began constructing a new pipeline to connect water from Lake Huron to Genessee County, which contains the Flint metropolitan area. This new project would provide water to Genessee and neighboring counties no longer rely on water piped in from Detroit.

A project like this is great news for towns like Flint, which could reduce their public water costs by procuring it locally while also creating jobs to construct and maintain the new system. So construction began on the KWA, and at this point in the story, no public officials or agencies have done anything wrong. That changes.

A Temporary Switch

You see, when this happened, Flint planned to switch to the new KWA pipelines when they finished construction in three years. But in the meantime, they still needed water, and rather than continuing to buy the Detroit water–a pre-treated and sanitary supply from Lake Huron–they switched sources to the Flint River. This switch was estimated to save about $5 million over less than two years.

The trouble was that the water sourced from the Flint River was 19 times more corrosive than the Lake Huron supply. Even after being treated and deemed acceptable, the water eroded the city’s pipes and water lines and accumulated iron, lead, and other metals from the material of the pipes.

By the time the water arrives at neighborhoods, businesses, and schools, the once-drinkable water is tinged brown from the iron, and carrying harmful levels of toxic chemicals. The most dangerous of which is lead.

Flint, Michigan, is suffering a major water crisis. Here’s how you can help. https://t.co/Z01vWiG8JLpic.twitter.com/ecJyIhEtkF

— CNN (@CNN) January 14, 2016

Permanent Health Effects

The presence of lead in drinking water is known to cause kidney problems and related issues in adults, but infants and children are subjected to the worst effects. Lead interferes with development such that children exposed to lead exhibit delays in mental and physical development are often severely impaired by the contaminant’s effects. In September 2015, according to a study performed by the Hurley Medical Center, the proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood nearly doubled since Flint switched its water source.

Given the extent of the problem, residents in Flint have very few options to stay safe. Many homeowners took to boiling large batches of water before bathing their children or giving them water to drink. While that process can help remove some impurities, it actually makes the issue of lead contamination worse. The city issued a ‘Boil Advisory‘ detailing how boiling water just increases the concentration of lead in the tap water.

The only choice left for thousands of residents is to purchase bottled water. The FDA regulates that a bottle of water can have no more than 5 ppb of lead, so bottled water is a safer option for concerned homeowners. For many, this cost is in addition to their water bill, which still may need to use for bathing, and washing dishes. Considering that Flint is often recognized for its poverty (in addition to being among the most dangerous cities in the United States), this burden is especially debilitating.

A Failed Response

After denying that the water in Flint presented a danger to its citizens for nearly two years while residents continuously complained about their water quality, Flint officials finally recognized the contamination problem. When trying to contain a public health epidemic such as this one, it’s important to know the scale of the problem. That seems like a pretty simple task– figure out which homes receive water from pipes made of lead, as those pipes are now corroded and cannot safely transmit water– but as with all things bureaucratic, it wasn’t nearly that simple.

The city government’s data on which houses are serviced by lead water lines was written down on 45,000 index cards stored in a filing cabinet in the city’s public utility building. In October of 2015, transferring this information into a digital spreadsheet was, according to Department of Public Works Director Howard Croft, “on our to-do list,” but only a quarter of the cards had been processed at that time.

Remember that $5 million number? That was the amount Flint expected to save with their water-source switch. The ultimate cost of that “money-saving” maneuver has been estimated at over $1.5 billion dollars by some, as officials evaluate the cost of completely renovating the Flint waterlines with lead-free pipes. That figure also doesn’t take into account any compensation for families and children affected by the contaminated water. The Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder has now officially appealed to President Obama for a declaration of disaster and federal aid.

Whether Snyder and the state of Michigan receive the declaration and money they are hoping for, the damage to the people of Flint has already been done. Even as the water source is relocated, the lead pipes servicing Flint will still be compromised. A careless decision by local officials snowballed into a public health crisis of unprecedented scale in the area, and the youngest residents of Flint will pay the highest price.

Sean Simon

Sean Simon is an Editorial News Senior Fellow at Law Street, and a senior at The George Washington University, studying Communications and Psychology. In his spare time, he loves exploring D.C. restaurants, solving crossword puzzles, and watching sad foreign films. Contact Sean at SSimon@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post A Call for Help in Flint’s Toxic Water Emergency appeared first on Law Street.

Could your surroundings impact your health as much as your diet, genetics, and lifestyle? The field of environmental health seeks to understand how the natural and manmade elements of our homes, work, and leisure environments impact health. To understand environmental impacts on health, experts examine a tremendous range of factors from community noise levels to the availability of public parks; some even look at dust.

I know that seems strange, because when you look at dust, I’m sure you probably see nothing but unsightly grime that makes you sneeze. But when researchers at the California Department of Toxic Substances Control look at dust, they see a possible indicator of chemicals people might be exposed to from various synthetic materials commonly found in homes.

Dust holds clues to multiple facets of your domestic life. Companies use an array of chemicals, including flame retardants, to manufacture your appliances, furniture, and even curtains. Your appliances, furniture, and curtains also contribute to the powdery detritus obscuring your coffee table. Dust offers researchers a way to investigate the holistic chemical composition of the average home atmosphere, all from the contents of a vacuum cleaner.

So why do we spend time studying dust and hundreds of other tiny environmental factors? Well, the experts in the University of Michigan video below estimate that 25-33 percent of disease globally stems from our environments. If we understood what specifically caused that percentage, we could take the first steps toward developing interventions.

With so many aspects to consider, it’s hard to make a solid connection between one environmental factor and a health outcome. But solid connections do make for golden evidence in influencing policy decisions that promote better health outcomes. A relatively new science called biomonitoring could help environmental health scientists make those golden connections by linking a pollutant directly to a health problem.

What is biomonitoring?

Biomonitoring quantifies bodily absorption of pollutants by measuring chemical amounts in human specimens like blood or urine. In the dust example mentioned above, researchers could incorporate biomonitoring by comparing the chemical composition of dust samples with the chemical levels present in residents’ blood or urine samples. This would allow them to look beyond what chemicals are present and find out if people are actually absorbing them, since atmospheric presence doesn’t automatically indicate absorption.

For example, an elemental mercury spill in a Massachusetts school caused panic when air samples revealed high mercury vapor air levels after the initial clean up. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health responded to the panic by offering urine tests. It turned out they had nothing to worry about–none of the samples indicated elevated urine mercury levels.

We worry about chemical levels in the environment because of what they might be doing to human health, but they need to be absorbed in order to cause harm. Environmental health scientists can bypass the need to study the presence of environmental pollutants one by one, by using biomonitoring to directly assess human impact. Outside of individual cases, cross-population biomonitoring data could reveal locations with disproportionate chemical exposures, a red flag that something fishy is going on.

According to the Association of Public Health Laboratories, manufacturers in the United States use more than 100,000 chemicals, yet we don’t understand what they could all do to human health. Combine this uncertainty with the rise of chronic diseases and you have a concerned public that demands many answers. Biomonitoring strives to find out which of these 100,000 chemicals make it into our bodies so we can figure out what to do about it.

How can biomonitoring affect health policy?

In the 1970s when researchers discovered that lead exposure could cause serious health problems, the U.S. implemented laws to bar it from many products like food cans, paint, and gasoline. Biomonitoring through blood testing has confirmed decreased blood lead levels since the laws were enacted, but also pointed out that low income and minority children still have levels above the CDC safe reference value, with lead in housing being the major source. After hearing these results, officials looked to housing policies as a way to decrease the problem:

• The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) required landlords to disclose lead hazards in all residences built before 1978.
• HUD made lead safety mandatory for federally funded housing and created grants for removing lead hazards from current buildings.
• The EPA began regulating painting and repair practices in all residences built before 1978.

These efforts achieved lower levels of lead hazards in government-funded housing, but did little to decrease levels in low-income or non-assisted housing.

At the state level, officials focused on finding children with elevated blood lead levels and then tried to remove lead from their environments. Some states, including Maryland, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, implemented more prevention-based laws, but many still struggle with compliance.

To respond to a high concentration of children with elevated blood lead levels, Philadelphia officials combined public health with law in the Philadelphia Lead Court. The court was designed to increase compliance of city health codes related to lead hazards. If the court hears of a lead hazard, it issues an order to the property owner to remedy the situation. If they don’t complete hazard control activities, they’re sent to the Lead Court.

Before the court, property owners complied with lead regulations seven percent of the time. After the court was established, the compliance rate spiked to 77 percent.

These intervention successes were made possible through biomonitoring, and the connections between health and a contaminant that it revealed.

Biomonitoring and Fracking

Hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), a new and unconventional method for extracting natural gas, poses a possible health hazard to the people who live closest to fracking wells. Self reports show a disproportionate amount of respiratory problems like itchy eyes, coughing, and nose bleeds among people living near fracking wells.

Read More: Fracking is Short-Sighted in Light of Temporary U.S. Oil Boom

In this New Haven Register article, researcher Dr. Peter Rabinowitz summarizes the limitations of this self-reported data:

It’s more of an association than a causation. We want to make sure people know it’s a preliminary study. … To me it strongly indicates the need to further investigate the situation and not ignore it.

Use of biomonitoring in this instance could provide more clarity on which chemicals are present and could be causing health problems in the residents. A doctor from Aspen Integrative Health in Colorado has already tested some people who live close to drilling sites for chemical exposures. His results showed some elevated levels, but didn’t provide any conclusive links. The results could serve as a baseline comparison for other communities wishing to test residents.

The new federal rules on fracking don’t include any biomonitoring measures, but they take small steps toward understanding the possible health effects of fracking by requiring more care and accountability from drilling companies. Per the new rules, government workers can inspect fracking wells for safety, companies will have to tell the public what chemicals they use in their extraction processes, and companies will have to abide by new rules on chemical storage and disposal of flowback water.

Making Connections

The future of our health depends on our ability to make connections as we constantly introduce new chemicals into our lives through food, construction, manufacturing, and more. Environmental health scientists, supplemented by biomonitoring, work to make those connections in the hope that their findings will result in legal and policy decisions that keep people healthy.

Daunting as achieving these connections may be, daily advances, like this new University of Miami instrument to detect atmospheric mercury, bring us closer to understanding the interaction of our environment and our health. If we encourage advances in biomonitoring and other new technologies, all the vague correlations of the past could become solid connections.

Resources

 Primary

Environmental Health Perspectives: Proximity to Natural Gas Wells and Reported Health Status: Results of a Household Survey in Washington County, Pennsylvania

The Network for Public Health Law: Environmental Public Health

Additional

Association of Public Health Laboratories: Biomonitoring: Analysis of Human Exposure to Chemicals

Association of Public Health Laboratories: Measuring For Potentially Dangerous Chemicals

Public Health Law Research: Local Housing Policy Approaches to Preventing Childhood Lead Poisoning

Public Health Law Research: Public Health and Law Collaboration: The Philadelphia Lead Court Study

Public Health Law Research: Philadelphia’s Lead Court is Making a Difference

Association of Public Health Laboratories Blog: Biomonitoring and the Public Health Laboratory: Everything You Want to Know

Association of Public Health Laboratories: Biomonitoring: An Integral Component of Public Health Practice

EurekAlert: Researchers Develop New Instrument to Monitor Atmospheric Mercury

The New York Times: New Federal Rules Are Set For Fracking

Washington Post: Obama Administration Tightens Federal Rules on Oil and Gas Fracking

NPR: Interior Department Issues New Federal Rules On ‘Fracking’

The Network for Public Health Law: Environmental Public Health

Ashley Bell

Ashley Bell communicates about health and wellness every day as a non-profit Program Manager. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics from the College of William and Mary, and loves to investigate what changes in healthy policy and research might mean for the future. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Biomonitoring: A New Way to Look at Health Policy appeared first on Law Street.