The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States has tightened the quality standard for how much lead is allowed in the air by ten-fold to 0.15 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air (ug/m3). The agency said this will improve protection of public health and that of children in particular. They announced their decision on 16th October.
This is the first time for 30 years that the lead in air quality standard has changed. The last time it changed was in 1978, when the standard was set to 1.5 ug/m3. The EPA said many regions are currently within the 1978 standard.
EPA Administrator Stephen L Johnson said in a press statement that:
“America’s air is cleaner than a generation ago.”
“With these stronger standards a new generation of Americans are being protected from harmful lead emissions,” he added.
Mainly due the phase-out of lead in gasoline (petrol), lead emissions have dropped by nearly 97 per cent all over the US since 1980. But lead can also come from other sources such as smelters, the iron and steelmaking industry, and aircarft fuel.
The news has not been well received in some quarters, for instance in the lead smelting industry. A lawyer for the Association of Battery Recyclers, Robert N. Steinwurtzel, told the New York Times that the new standard “potentially threatens the viability of the lead recycling industry”. Representatives of the Association tried to make a case for a less stringent standard at the White House earlier this month, said the New York Times.
The EPA decision is the end of a process where the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee reviewed the scientific evidence, then made their recommendations, which were then put to the public for comment.
Since 1990 there have been over 6,000 published papers on the effects of lead on health and the environment, some of which linked exposure to low levels of lead to damage to children’s development, including reduction of IQ.
The EPA said that the existing lead in air monitoring systems around the country are not good enough to detect whether air quality is meeting the new standard and they will have to be redesigned.
By October 2011 the EPA will have pinpointed which areas of the country will be outside the new standard, and after that states will have 5 years to comply.
There are two ways airborne lead enters the body: from inhaling lead in the air, or from touching surfaces that airborne lead has settled on and then ingesting it.
Once in the bloodstream lead disrupts the function of organs and the development of children’s central nervous system, which includes the brain.
The EPA estimates that every year, more than 1,300 tons of lead are pumped into the air in the US.
Click here to learn more about lead in air (EPA).
Source: EPA, New York Times.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD.