Jack Pratt is Chemicals Campaign Director
You may have missed it, but early Saturday morning there was some good news in Washington. After a long delay, Congress finally passed funding to help address the public health disaster in Flint, Michigan. This is good news, but much work remains to be done, in Flint and around the country.
Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director
Housing supported by the Federal Government should not be poisoning children.
That was the simple message Congress delivered to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992. Despite some real progress since then, recent cases of lead poisoning in federally-assisted housing in Chicago and Indiana suggest there is still much work to be done.
Thanks to a strong public push to highlight these failings, HUD recently proposed changes to its “Lead Safe Housing Rule.” At the heart of these changes is lowering the level of lead in children’s blood considered “elevated,” the trigger for local housing authorities to conduct detailed inspections of a child’s home for lead. HUD has continued to use a level of 20 µg/dL set in 1999, despite a consensus that lead is harmful to children at much lower levels. HUD is on track to finalize the rule in January 2017 after sending it to the Office of Management and Budget on November 21 for final review. Jan. 13, 2017 update: HUD issued a final rule that was similar to what was proposed.
There’s a vote coming this month you should know about and it doesn’t involve Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. This month, the International Code Council (ICC) will consider a simple proposal to reduce lead exposures. This admittedly less monumental vote could nonetheless have a significant impact on public health and deserves our attention.
The proposal before the ICC would change the model building and residential codes to require that contractors present proof of lead-safe certification when they apply to do work on pre-1978 homes. Lead paint was banned in 1978, meaning homes built before that time are significantly more likely to contain lead paint. The certification itself is nothing new, it is already required at a federal level. Yet, most localities do not require any proof of certification when issuing permits to renovate these homes. Update: ICC’s code officials rejected the proposal. As of Jan. 11, 2017, vote tally is not yet available.
Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director
The tragedy in Flint, Michigan has reminded us once again how dependent we are on state and local officials to protect us from hidden threats like lead. In hindsight, anyone with a basic understanding of the role of corrosion control in keeping lead out of the water we drink knows that changing the source of that water, especially to one as corrosive as the Flint River, must be done with extreme care. Based on criminal indictments that have been handed down, the officials ignored the federal regulations designed to prevent such a tragedy.
State and local building code officials will have a chance this October to show whether they have learned from Flint. As voting members of the International Code Council (ICC), code officials will cast their ballot on a simple proposal that can significantly improve the protections for children from lead hazards. The proposal by the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) would require that any contractor seeking a building permit to conduct renovations in homes built before 1978 be properly certified to ensure that their work leaves behind no dangerous levels of lead contaminated dust. Read More
Tom Neltner, J.D., is the Chemicals Policy Director
We live in an increasingly transparent world. When it comes to the real estate market, companies are mining local government databases to let us know the size of a home, how much it’s worth, and even when the roof was last replaced.
Yet, you can’t find out if the house you might buy could poison your children with toxic lead. Federal law only requires that the seller or landlord reveal the presence of lead paint when you sign a contract to buy or rent a home.
We think that has to change.
People should be able to readily know if lead is present in the paint and water pipes where they live and work when they begin making important decisions, not when they are finalizing the deal. When shopping for a place to live, the best time to learn if there is lead at a property is when it is listed for sale or rent. Some opponents claim that revealing this information invades the resident’s privacy, but the presence of lead is not about anyone’s behavior. Rather, it’s a fact about the house, a legacy of the construction of the building. It is no different from the type of furnace or number of bedrooms.
There are signs of progress. In Washington, DC, the water utility has launched an online map that reveals information that can help improve transparency on lead pipes. Anyone can check online and see what’s known (and not known) about the presence of lead service lines that connect the drinking water main under the street to their home or business.
It’s a model other communities should follow. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made this type of transparency a priority for states and utilities. And the private sector needs to play a role, too — real estate innovators like Zillow and Redfin, who have transformed how we find homes, should include this information in their online listings.
It’s time that people begin to know the possible health impacts of their housing options when evaluating homes to buy or rent.
[pullquote]Washington, DC’s water utility launched a helpful interactive map allowing residents to see whether water pipes are lead, non-lead, or if there’s no available information for nearly every building and public water source across DC – including residences, restaurants, retailers, schools, drinking water fountains, and even the White House and Smithsonian.
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Lindsay McCormick is a Research Analyst.
When I moved to Washington, DC four years ago the phrase “lead service lines” did not roll off my tongue. That began to change as I became aware of DC’s historical lead problems – and dramatically so in the wake of the crisis in Flint, Michigan.
But I’m not alone. Even though experts estimate that up to 10 million homes across the U.S. have lead service lines – lead pipes connecting the drinking water main in the street to the home – it’s an issue that is not well understood by most Americans.
And that should come as no surprise given that few water utilities across the U.S. can even say with confidence where the lead services lines are in their systems, and fewer still proactively share what information they have with customers. Lead service lines are an aging infrastructure, typically found in communities with older housing. Local recordkeeping over the years has been inconsistent, leaving many utilities today to rely on incomplete, difficult to access, or non-electronic historical records. Many communities appear to have no documentation of when they ceased installing lead service lines altogether.