WASHINGTON (AP) — Two weeks after setting a nationwide deadline for removing lead pipes, the Biden administration is imposing strict new limits on dust from lead-based paint in older homes and child care facilities.
A final rule announced Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency sets limits for lead dust on floors and windowsills in homes and childcare facilities built before 1978 at levels so low that it cannot be detected.
Paint containing lead was banned in 1978, but more than 30 million American homes are believed to still contain it, including nearly 4 million homes where children under the age of six live. Lead paint can peel if it deteriorates or is disturbed, especially during home remodeling or renovation.
“There is no safe level of lead,” said Michal Freedhoff, EPA’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention. The new rule will bring the United States “closer to eradicating lead-based paint hazards from homes and child care facilities once and for all,” she said.
The EPA estimates that the new rule will reduce lead exposure for up to 1.2 million people per year, including 178,000 to 326,000 children under age 6.
Lead is a neurotoxin that can irreversibly damage brain development in children, lower IQ, cause behavioral problems and lead to lifelong health effects. It also affects other organs, including the liver and kidneys.
The new rule, which will take effect early next year, focuses on the amount of lead dust generated by paint. Currently, 10 micrograms per square meter is considered hazardous on floors, and a concentration ten times higher is considered hazardous on windowsills. The new rule reduces both levels to no discernible advantage.
The proposed rule would also limit the level allowed when a lead abatement contractor completes work on a property where lead has been identified as a problem. These levels would be 5 micrograms per square meter on the floor and 40 micrograms per square meter for sills.
Individuals and companies performing pest control work must be certified and follow specific work practices. Testing will then be necessary to ensure dust-lead levels are below the new standards.
Environmental justice and public health experts called the EPA rule long overdue, noting that lead poisoning disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color.
“We can all breathe a little easier now that the EPA has significantly lowered the dust lead standard to protect children,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a New York-based advocacy group.
Shepard, a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said public health experts have long understood that there is no safe level of lead in a child’s blood, yet New York state leads the way for children with elevated blood values. Black children in Harlem living below the poverty line are twice as likely to suffer from lead poisoning as poor white children, she said.
The US government has gradually lowered the standard for what counts as toxic levels of lead in children’s blood, with the most recent change coming in 2021. But the EPA rule marks an effort to take more proactive action.
“If you rely on the lead levels in children’s blood to indicate whether lead is present in the environment, we are essentially using children as canaries in the mine,” says Dr. Philip Landrigan, a biology professor at Boston College who leads the school’s research. Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good.
The National Child Care Association said when the headline rule was proposed last year that it could hurt many financially struggling child care centers — especially those in low-income neighborhoods, where facilities tend to be older. Without adequate federal funding, the rule could push small, local child care centers to close, the group said.
Earlier this month, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $420 million in grants to remove lead hazards from homes, including HUD-assisted homes. Additional HUD grants will continue to be available to help with lead paint removal, the White House said.
