EPA to strengthen lead protections in drinking water after multiple crises, including Flint

FILE - A cut lead pipe is pulled from a dig site for testing at a home in Royal Oak, Mich., on Nov. 16, 2021. The Environmental Protection Agency will soon strengthen lead in drinking water regulations. About four decades ago, when the Environmental Protection Agency was first trying to figure out what to do about lead in drinking water, Ronnie Levin quantified its damage: Roughly 40 million people drank water with dangerous levels of lead, degrading the intelligence of thousands of kids.

But it's costly to send out workers to dig up the pipe, lay new ones and replant damaged landscaping. In many cities, homeowners are Some officials remain more focused on sources like paint dust, but attention to the danger in water grew after Flint. Others at EPA believed Levin’s analysis exaggerated the benefits of new regulations and some CDC officials argued that focusing on drinking water would take away from the fight against lead paint, according to a book about the science at EPA by Mark Powell.But “it was a tough fight within EPA,” Levin remembers.

The EPA rule had required utilities to measure tap water for lead in homes and notify the public if too many results are high. That notification requirement should have been triggered in 2001 in Washington, but the local utility hid some results from the EPA, making the city appear to be in compliance when it was not.

The CDC made matters worse, she said, when it published a March 2004 dispatch that said high levels of lead in drinking water in Washington did not significantly increase blood lead levels in young children.

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