The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 11 announced new proposed rules for lead paint in a bid to prevent hundreds of thousands of children from being exposed to the toxic substance.
Officials predict that the rule will reduce lead exposures for 250,000 to 500,000 children younger than the age of 6 each year, the agency said in a statement. The mandate would enhance the EPA’s regulations under section 402 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, which would revise the standards for how much lead dust can be on floors, window sills, and other locations in older buildings.
“The Biden–Harris Administration is taking a whole-of-government approach to ensure that the most vulnerable among us—our children—are protected from exposure to lead,” EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe said in the statement. “This proposal to safely remove lead paint along with our other efforts to deliver clean drinking water and replace lead pipes will go a long way toward protecting the health of our next generation of leaders.”
According to the EPA, the rule would reduce the “dust-lead hazard standards” to three micrograms per square foot from 10 micrograms per square foot for floors and to 20 micrograms per square foot from 100 micrograms per square foot for window sills “to any reportable level greater than zero in recognition of the fact that there is no level of lead in dust that has been found to be safe for children.” For window troughs, the lead dust levels would be lowered to 25 micrograms per square foot from 400 micrograms under the rule.
The federal government banned lead-based paints in 1978, but it’s estimated that 31 million pre-1978 homes still have them. And 3.8 million of those homes have a child younger than the age of 6 living there, according to the EPA.
“Lead exposure can pose a significant health and safety threat to children and can cause irreversible and life-long health effects, including behavioral problems, lower IQ, slowed growth and more,” the EPA statement reads. “Young children are particularly at risk of higher exposure to ingesting lead-containing dust.”
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (pdf) released in 2019 estimated that about 15 million U.S. students were enrolled in school districts that included buildings that still had lead-based paint.
“There is no safe level of lead,” the American Association of Pediatrics website reads.
It notes that at age 2, the risk for lead exposure often peaks and that lead can interfere with critical central nervous system development, including the “brain’s volumes and alterations on its microstructure.”
Lead can also interfere with the body’s capacity to absorb iron and vitamin D and can harm the kidneys, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There have also been studies linking lead exposure to a variety of cardiovascular disorders, it noted.
Read More: Federal Rule Could Force Millions of Homes, Schools to Remove Lead Dust
