The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.
“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.
https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/668177/-/comment/3862164
In short:
since 2013 EU has 10 ug/L limit. since 2020 a goal was set for 5 ug/L to be achieved until 2036.
EPA current limit is 15 ug/L. Yes, they have set a 0 goal, but with apparently no timeline, so until than there will still be many areas with 15 ug/L. Bidens proposal would probably set this 0 goal into a 10 year timeframe, making it much better than the EU goal.
It should be noted that 0 is probably not realistic at all because even bottled water is allowed to have 5. His plan is to replace the service lines, but people in older houses can still have internal lead piping. This is mostly the issue with the UK’s water. There’s pretty much no lead (<2, which is background levels tbh) going to people’s houses, but because we’ve got a load of 100+ year old houses all over the place, they will still have more lead than people in newer homes.
But I don’t think the level is really the issue. <15 is probably fine.
The issue is that a bunch of poor people get a lot more than that and nobody has done anything about it. This plan should have been announced in 2014 when the problem first occurred at Flint.