EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Lead exposure

Household Action Level for Lead in Water: EPA Needs to Release Health-based Estimate

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: March 25, 2016

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director.

A new article in USA Today’s series on lead in drinking water shines a light on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) delays in releasing a health-based “household action level” for lead. EPA’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) recommended that the agency develop this number to help parents, in consultation with their pediatrician and public health agency, decide whether to invest in a filter for the water they use to make up their child’s infant formula.

Without a health-based number, people are mistakenly using EPA’s current “lead action level” of 15 parts per billion (ppb) as the level below which no action is needed. The problem is that this level has no relation to the health risk. It is based on a provision in the drinking water rule that requires utilities to undertake corrosion control and, potentially, lead service line replacement when at least 10% of worst-case sample results exceed that level.

A year after committing to develop a household action level, it appears tied up in the agency’s long overdue overhaul of its broken 1991 regulation designed to protect people from lead in drinking water. Communities all across the country are raising legitimate concerns about the safety of their water and need proper public health guidance. They should not have to wait on rulemaking for this important information. I know EPA is a regulatory agency that thinks in terms of rulemaking. But first and foremost EPA is a public health agency with responsibility to consumers for the safety of drinking water. Read More »

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Lead service lines must be replaced as soon as possible to protect children

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: March 16, 2016

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director.

Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked me to serve on its new multi-stakeholder workgroup to develop recommendations to improve the agency’s 1991 lead in drinking water rule. I had heard about problems with the rule but was unfamiliar with the details. My efforts to prevent lead poisoning over the past 20 years at the federal, state, and local levels focused on lead-based paint and consumer products. Lead pipes were new to me. Knowing the dangers of any lead exposure all too well, I was happy to help.

What I learned was disturbing. The rule’s shortcomings became clear when a utility representative presented a chart showing the lead levels from homeowner sampling over the years. While few in number, some lead levels in the water were literally off the scale, in the hundreds of parts per billion (ppb). And yet a utility operating a public water system would be in compliance with the rule as long as less than 90 in 100 samples were below 15 ppb. The only required action would be an alert by the utility to the homeowner. It became clear to me that lead could be found in water at extremely high levels, but these spikes—and potentially substantial public health risk—may not be investigated and corrected.

EPA’s own studies confirmed the problem. It turns out that the highest lead levels were often missed because the sampling method focused on the water in the interior plumbing and not the water sitting overnight in the lead service line – the pipe that connects the main in the street to the house. In addition, only 50 or 100 samples every three years were required; too few taken too infrequently to identify problems in a large city in a timely manner. Read More »

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