EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Lead in water

Revised national standard tightens lead leaching limits for new drinking water fixtures

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: June 18, 2020

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

In September 2020, the joint committee posted an announcement on its revised NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 standard.

Effective today, the national consensus standard for plumbing devices, known as NSF/ANSI/CAN 61, was revised to require, by January 1, 2024, that manufacturers of faucets and fountains that dispense drinking water meet limits five times more protective for lead leaching than the current standard. Manufacturers have the option to have their products tested and certified to the revised standard beginning in the fall, after it is published. All states require plumbing devices comply NSF/ANSI/CAN 61.

Plumbing Manufacturers International (PMI), the trade association for the industry, tells us that its members are already gearing up to get their products certified, but that it will take time to complete the third-party review process and meet the expected demand. Consumers, retailers, and institutional buyers should begin requesting products that meet the new standard – which can be identified by the new “NSF/ANSI/CAN 61: Q ≤ 1”[1] text on the consumer-facing product label – in 2021 as the certification process ramps up.

A driving force for this change was legislation introduced by California Assembly Member Chris Holden, cosponsored by EDF and Environmental Working Group, with productive and collaborative engagement from PMI and NSF International.[2] On June 8, the Assembly unanimously passed AB 2060. It now moves to the Senate for consideration. The current version of the bill would require that all devices made or sold in California that are intended to convey or dispense drinking water meet the new NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 standard on a faster timeline – by January 1, 2021. PMI has requested an effective date of January 1, 2024 for the California requirement to provide manufacturers, third party certifiers, distributors, and retailers with adequate time to get products certified and in stock in the state. Stakeholders are considering the request but are concerned that child care facilities and schools will need the devices sooner. Because of the legislation, we expect that manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers will prioritize the California market.

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Posted in Drinking water, Lead, Public health / Also tagged , , | Comments are closed

Children’s lead exposure: Relative contributions of various sources

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: December 15, 2017

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director and Dr. Ananya Roy is Health Scientist

Last week, we noted in our blog that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dropped the statement that paint, dust and soil are the most common sources of lead in its “Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home” booklet. Property owners provide this booklet to prospective homebuyers and tenants in housing built before 1978. The change implicitly recognizes that there is no safe level of lead in the children’s blood, and we must reduce all sources of lead exposure. It also acknowledges that the relative contribution of air, water, food, soil, dust, and paint to children’s blood lead levels is complicated. Exposure varies significantly based on age of the home, the child’s race and age, the family’s income-level, and region of the country. Any simplification obscures these important differences.

EPA’s scientists made this clear in a model published earlier this year that pulled together the available data, divided children into three age categories, and assigned children in each category into ten groups based on their overall lead exposure. For each group, they estimated the relative contribution of air, water, food, and soil/dust (from paint). Not surprisingly, children living in older homes with lead-based paint hazards by far have the most exposure to lead. For 1 to 6 year olds in the top 90-100 percentile, more than 70% of the lead in their blood is from soil and dust. The contribution from food is 20% and drinking water is 10%. For infants, soil and dust contributes to 50% of the lead in blood, while 40% is from water and 10% from food.

Since there is no known safe level of lead in blood, we must do even more to reduce children’s exposure to lead-contaminated soil and dust.

However, to prioritize action at a national level, it is important to understand how different sources contribute to lead exposure in the average child as well as the most-exposed child. We used the underlying EPA data to calculate the average relative source contribution of different sources to blood lead levels for infants from birth to six months old, for toddlers 1 to 2 years old, and young children from 1 to 6 years old. The results indicate that infants have a much higher source contribution of lead from water in comparison to older children (Figure 1). For the average child 1 to 6 years old, food is the largest source of lead exposure, with 50%, followed by soil/dust then water.

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Posted in Drinking water, Emerging science, Health policy, Health science, Lead, Public health / Also tagged , , , , , | Read 1 Response