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- cross-posted to:
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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.
As of 14 years ago! And Europe has a lot of former communist countries that hasn’t fully reached Western European standards yet.
At what level though and how was the lead content assessed?
High levels of lead has been illegal to use in US water systems since 1986. Regulations have gotten more and more strict since then. The EPA’s current goal is ZERO lead, but we still have too much in the water.
It just doesn’t appear to be that much better in the EU, if at all.
You obviously don’t understand, in piping led was used as in actual led, not just contaminated metals with trace amounts of led. Trace amounts too have been banned for many years in mostly anything people come into contact with. Like porcelain colors, and paints where it was used to avoid for instance mold.
Zero led has been the standard in almost anything here (Denmark) since the 70’s, and it’s been an EU standard for at least 2 decades.
I cannot take seriously that EU should not be way way ahead of USA, maybe with the exception of former Soviet block countries.
I assure you I am fully aware of the many ways lead has made its way into water in both Europe and the US including literal lead pipes. Actual lead pipes have been banned in the US since 1986 as per my link but of course many remain.
Denmark appears to be ahead of most of Europe, but it’s not just former soviet countries that struggle. England and Wales have lead pipes running to an estimated 25% of households and don’t expect that problem to be cleared up by 2040 or later.
England and Wales are no more EU though, they don’t have to follow EU regulations.
But yeah many EU countries still have some areas with lead pipes, even Germany, France and so on. It seems to be hard to track
They’re still in Europe, and I said Europe, not the EU. Also Brexit was in 2020 and I’m relatively certain those pipes were there before that.
Oh yeah I forgot UK, but to be fair it’s about 45 years since I heard they still used it, despite evidence dating back to the Roman empire that it is toxic. I got the impression UK was the only place in Europe that still used it, obviously possibly excluding the soviet block who were always way way behind on everything.
Still to claim EU isn’t ahead of USA is wrong:
https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/metals/an-update-on-the-lead-free-by-2014-mandate-europe/
Apparently Ireland had a problem too, but apart from that the problems are mostly old German buildings that have led in their plumbing.And then Italy that has led lined aqueducts that aren’t used anymore, why that’s worth mentioning in the report IDK?
So I maintain EU doesn’t have nearly the quality problems USA has with water supply, not with led and not with any other toxins. IDK why England is so backwards in this regard, but maybe it’s because they had the first industrialization in the world, and safety wasn’t as much of an issue back then.
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.