{"id":2505,"date":"2024-10-25T15:10:38","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthyretirementnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/25\/epa-finalizes-stricter-rules-targeting-scourge-of-lead-paint-dust-in-homes-child-care-facilities\/"},"modified":"2024-10-25T15:10:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:10:38","slug":"epa-finalizes-stricter-rules-targeting-scourge-of-lead-paint-dust-in-homes-child-care-facilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyretirementnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/25\/epa-finalizes-stricter-rules-targeting-scourge-of-lead-paint-dust-in-homes-child-care-facilities\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA finalizes stricter rules targeting \u2018scourge\u2019 of lead paint dust in homes, child-care facilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any level of lead paint dust in is considered hazardous, according to new requirements for identifying and cleaning up the harmful dust in certain homes and child-care facilities across the country, finalized Thursday by the US Environmental Protection Agency. <\/p>\n

Even low levels of lead exposure are known to be dangerous. In children, it can hurt brain development and lead to lasting health effects. Lead has been phased out of paints in the US for decades, but it is still found in many older buildings: an estimated 31 million houses built before 1978, of which about 3.8 million are home to at least one child under the age of 6. <\/p>\n

Young children are particularly vulnerable because they crawl on floors and hang on windowsills that could be contaminated with lead-based paint dust, leading to exposure when they put their hands in their mouths. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis paint is 50 years old at this point,\u201d said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator of the EPA\u2019s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. \u201cIn some cases, it\u2019s even older than that, and it feels to me like it is time to finally rid the country of the scourge that lead paint has posed to our children\u2019s health.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lead-based paint is often identified when a child is found to have high levels of lead in their blood. In these instances, the EPA requires that the hazard be cleaned up and the area tested to ensure that levels of lead paint dust don\u2019t exceed certain limits. <\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the Biden-Harris administration is establishing a new, essentially zero-tolerance standard for the detection of lead in homes or child-care facilities,\u201d White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi said. \u201cAny level of lead detected in a home will trigger the need for action, and a certified lead abatement specialist has to come in and clean it up, and their job will not be considered done until they have reached the lowest levels of lead our labs can reliably detect.\u201d <\/p>\n

The new requirements strengthen the standards by which lead abatement is considered complete to 5 micrograms per square foot for dust on floors, 40 micrograms per square foot for windowsills and 100 micrograms per square foot for window troughs, as measured by an EPA-recognized laboratory. <\/p>\n

These revised limits are higher than what was proposed when the rule was announced last year. The difference between the proposed and finalized limits reduces the cost of compliance, Freedhoff said. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing we heard loud and clear in response to our proposed rule was that there are a very much smaller number of labs that had the technology needed to measure to the lower levels that we proposed,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat that meant is, if we had finalized the way we would have proposed, there would have been a logjam at the smaller number of labs that could actually do the work. That would ultimately mean fewer lead paint abatements would be done. It could have meant that families would have had to stay moved out of their homes for much longer because of that diminished lab capacity, and ultimately, we actually felt we would be able to reduce the risk for more children and more households by shifting to the level that New York City implemented\u201d in 2021. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really a false choice to say that kids have to choose between safe homes and having homes at all, and I don\u2019t think they have to have that choice made for them with this rule,\u201d Freedhoff said. <\/p>\n

The new regulation is expected to reduce lead exposure in up to 1.2 million people in the US each year. Zaidi noted that homes with lead-based paint tend to be in communities of color and in lower-income areas. <\/p>\n

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