EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Drinking water

Lead Pipes: EDF comments on EPA’s proposed Lead & Copper Rule Improvements

Graphic of lead service lines connected to homes

What’s New

Earlier this week EDF submitted comments that urged EPA to finalize the strongest possible improvements to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCRI). An estimated 9.2 million lead service lines (LSLs) are still connected to homes and buildings throughout the country. EPA’s proposal is a critical step to protect Americans from the harmful of effects of lead in drinking water by requiring LSL replacement.

Why It Matters

The EPA’s proposal, if finalized, would protect public health and yield huge socioeconomic benefits. This rule presents a critical opportunity to fix this longstanding environmental injustice. Read More »

Posted in Drinking water, Environmental justice, Lead, Public health / Also tagged , , , , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Eliminating lead service lines yields huge benefits for reducing premature cardiovascular deaths

What’s New?

EPA has proposed improvements to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) to reduce lead in drinking water. The proposed rule would require utilities to eliminate the nation’s roughly 9.2 million lead service lines (LSLs) at an estimated cost of $2.1 to $2.9 billion per year.1

The socioeconomic benefits from the rule vastly outweigh the cost and range from $17.3 to $34.8 billion per year2 – a whopping 8 to 12 times the annual cost of replacement. Read More »

Posted in Drinking water, Lead, Public health, Rules/Regulations / Also tagged , , , , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Lead Cables: 66,000 miles overhead or underwater

Abandoned telecom cable leaching lead into Idaho fishing waters.

Abandoned telecom cable leaching lead into Idaho fishing waters Photo: Monique Rydel-Fortner

What’s New?

A blockbuster Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation showed that lead-sheathed telecom cables are releasing toxic lead into water or surface soil. We are aware of more than 2,000 of these cables across the nation—and more than 300 of those pose a threat to community drinking water sources.

Recognizing the potential risks to public health, EDF, Clean Water Action, and Below the Blue asked EPA on July 17 to investigate potential harms and replace abandoned lead cables strung between telephone poles, as well as any that are accessible to children.

In response, AT&T reported that it has more than 66,000 miles of lead cables, most of which are the overhead type, with the balance running underwater. This is a stunning amount – enough to circle the earth 2.5 times!

Legislators are already demanding that telecom firms act, and EPA and the Department of Justice say they are reviewing the issue. In addition, New York Governor Kathy Hochul directed three key state agencies to investigate the risks. In response, the agencies sent letters to 246 telecom providers requesting their inventory of lead cables. I also appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to explain the situation, EDF’s role in the investigation, and the cables’ potential risks. Read More »

Posted in Contamination, Drinking water, Health hazards, Health policy, Regulation, Risk assessment, Risk evaluation / Also tagged , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Is it time to rethink “lead-safe” and “lead-free”?

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative, Environmental Defense Fund and Charlotte Brody, National Director, Healthy Babies Bright Futures

Key Message

The scientific consensus is that there is no known safe level of lead exposure, and that no environment or home is truly free of lead.

With a few exceptions, we think it is time to retire the terms “lead-safe” and “lead-free” from our vocabulary. It sends conflicting messages to the public, consumers, and decision-makers. And it may undermine our efforts to reduce children’s exposure to lead from any source.

Rationale

Collectively, we have dedicated over a half-century to protecting children from lead. During that time, we and other advocates have used different terms to communicate our goals. Often, we drew our terms from the federal government. For example:

  • “Lead-free” has been used by Congress since 1986 to define drinking water pipes with no more than 80,000 parts per million (ppm) of lead. It kept the term in 2014 when it changed the level from 80,000 to 2,500 ppm. Similarly, FDA issued guidance in 2010 allowing a “lead-free” label on pottery if it meets the agency’s limits on lead.
  • “Lead-safe” is in the title for HUD’s 1999 rule to reduce lead-based paint exposure in federally assisted EPA also refers to “lead-safe work practices” in its 2008 renovation, repair and painting (RRP) rule for residential property. In addition, EPA created a “lead-safe” logo in 2010 for certified RRP firms. And HUD, EPA, and CPSC use the term in their pamphlet given to millions of families renting or buying homes built before 1978.

As a result, terms like “lead-safe” and “lead-free” have been commonly used to describe community-wide initiatives, label houses on maps, describe the state of a house after remediation, and much more.

What does lead-free mean? It depends on who you’re asking and what you’re asking about. A contractor may understand the term to mean that a house meets the EPA definition of not having a lead hazard, but does the average resident understand the term the same way? Is it accurate to describe a house as lead-free if there is still lead in the drinking water? Or in the spices in the cabinets?

Read More »

Posted in Contamination, FDA, Lead, Public health, Unleaded Juice / Also tagged , , , | Authors: / Read 2 Responses

EPA Should Use U.S. Chemical Safety Law to Turn Off PFAS Tap

The word

PFAS is a group of synthetic chemicals used in industrial processes and consumer products, including water-repellent clothing, such as outdoor wear, and food packaging. Once these “forever chemicals” are produced and used, they often make their way into the environment and our bodies. Many pose serious threats due to their toxic effects (often at trace levels) and their ability to build up in people, animals and the environment. Studies show that they are in almost all of us.

To make matters worse, people are exposed to multiple PFAS, not individual PFAS in isolation. Yet under the nation’s primary chemical safety law, EPA evaluates the safety of PFAS chemicals one at a time and does not consider the combined risks from exposures to multiple PFAS. Combined exposures increase the risk of harmful effects, thus magnifying the risks and the need for action.

Current Situation: All Costs, No Benefits

PFAS move easily throughout the environment and are difficult to destroy. They have contaminated drinking water, food, farms, wildlife, and the environment more broadly. At the local, state and federal levels, the U.S. is spending millions of dollars to clean up PFAS contamination. Some states, such as Michigan and Maine, are trying to recoup the costs their residents have had to bear to clean-up PFAS contamination of their water and land. The federal government is also taking action to address the widespread PFAS contamination. The costs for cleaning up PFAS contamination are imposed on society by the domestic producers, importers and users of PFAS who profit from their production and use.

Yet, despite the well-documented risks and costs to society of these chemicals, companies still continue to produce, import, and use PFAS. It is time to ban all PFAS or—if there are truly essential uses for these chemicals—limit how they are produced, imported and used so that their impact on us and the environment is minimal.

Urgent Need: Revisit, Reassess, and Regulate All PFAS

While EPA has recently tightened up approvals for new PFAS entering the market, it has yet to take significant action on those that are already on the market, which includes the hundreds of PFAS the agency approved over the past few decades. It is clear these PFAS have not been produced responsibly as demonstrated by the environmental contamination associated with many of the PFAS manufacturing facilities. And yet, many of these PFAS are still on the market. They are being produced and released into the environment, are in products we use every day, and continue to contaminate us and our environment.

Many of EPA’s approvals were made 10 to 20 years ago, before we had a full picture of the pervasiveness and degree of PFAS contamination. The data on the extent of the environmental contamination of these persistent PFAS, their ability to move through the environment, and the significant difficulty in destroying them was not as robust as it is today. Furthermore, mounting evidence shows that even trace levels of PFAS can cause developmental issues in children, reduced fertility, hormonal disruptions, and certain types of cancer.

In addition, these approvals did not consider risks to vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women and children as currently required by the law. Many communities are exposed to multiple PFAS, particularly those who live, work and play near where PFAS are made and used.

Addressing the production, import and use of PFAS would limit further pollution of our water supplies, safeguard the health of our communities, and be consistent with other strong EPA actions to address PFAS, including its recent robust proposed drinking water standards.

Effective regulation of these harmful chemicals at their source would also accelerate efforts to seek out and adopt safer alternatives. Leaving chemicals with such well-documented harms on the market makes it more difficult for innovative, safer substitutes to enter it. Failing to address these risks in effect puts a thumb on the scale in support of older harmful technologies.

Our Take

EPA should re-evaluate each of the PFAS it has approved. During that re-evaluation, EPA should use the best available science and consider the full picture of PFAS exposure. Considering each PFAS in isolation rather than the multiple PFAS people, particularly those in vulnerable groups, are exposed to will underestimate their risk.

EPA should use the Toxic Substances Control Act to take action to ban these legacy PFAS, or restrict them if the uses are truly essential, rather than continuing to allow the production, import and use of these demonstrably harmful “forever chemicals.”

Go Deeper

Learn more about EDF’s concerns about PFAS and read our follow-up blog  on how EPA can use TSCA to turn off the PFAS tap.

EPA’s information on PFAS

Posted in Chemical exposure, Chemical regulation, Contamination, Cumulative impact, Cumulative risk assessment, Emerging testing methods, Food, Food packaging, Health hazards, Health science, PFAS, Public health, Risk assessment, Risk evaluation, TSCA, Vulnerable populations / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Flaws found in EPA’s lead pipe survey of states and water utilities

Deep Dive: Read our Deep Dives blog for an in-depth analysis on the data that drove the 2023 allocation of federal funding for lead service line replacements.

What’s New: EPA recently estimated there are 9.2 million lead service lines (LSLs) in the nation’s drinking water infrastructure based on information reported by states and water utilities. This was collected as part of a survey conducted every four years to understand drinking water infrastructure needs.

The agency estimated the number of LSLs for each state. Two had surprisingly high numbers: Florida with 1.2 million LSLs and Texas with 650,000.

After reviewing data EPA used to estimate each state’s totals[1], we believe that these two may have less than 100,000 LSLs each. If true, this means the country may actually have about 1.6 million fewer LSLs than originally thought – good news overall.

Read More »

Posted in Deep Dives, Drinking water, Lead / Also tagged , , , | Authors: , / Comments are closed