The EPA issued a remaining rule requiring water programs to interchange all lead pipes inside 10 years. Water advocates lauded the rule as a public well being victory, however say there’s a lot work to be achieved.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
There are some 9 million houses throughout the U.S. getting water by lead pipes.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
And now the Environmental Safety Company says these pipes want to come back out.
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MICHAEL REGAN: The science has been clear for many years. There is no such thing as a secure degree of lead in our consuming water.
MARTÍNEZ: That is EPA administrator Michael Regan. He says lead is dangerous, particularly to kids.
FADEL: NPR’s Pien Huang has been following this story, and he or she joins us now. Hello, Pien.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: OK, so I acquired to confess – I used to be type of stunned this wasn’t already a rule. What’s the EPCA saying about it?
HUANG: Yeah, you’d suppose, proper? I imply, it is undoubtedly one thing…
FADEL: Yeah.
HUANG: …That water advocates have been preventing for for a lot of, a few years now. And the principle factor about this rule is that for the primary time on the federal degree, it requires most water programs to interchange all their lead pipes inside 10 years. Now, Leila, it is a downside with an extended historical past, however it acquired a variety of consideration 10 years in the past with the Flint water disaster in Michigan. And there, there was a change within the water chemistry that prompted outdated pipes to leach excessive quantities of lead into the consuming water. And since then, some cities and states have truly already been swapping out these lead pipes for copper.
FADEL: Proper. It was clear even again then that it wasn’t only a downside in Flint. Are there elements of the nation which can be extra prone to depend on lead pipes?
HUANG: Yeah, locations with houses that have been constructed earlier than 1986. That is the yr that Congress banned lead pipes, however the ones that have been already within the floor have been allowed to remain there – till now. So there are lead pipes in each state, however some have greater than others. These embody Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and New Jersey. All of these states have over half one million lead pipes.
FADEL: Wow. In order that’s a variety of pipes. They’ll have to interchange all these in 10 years?
HUANG: Yeah. It’s a variety of pipes. And for probably the most half, they must, however there are some fascinating exceptions. So Chicago, for example, has probably the most lead pipes out of any metropolis – round 400,000 in Chicago alone – and that is as a result of they really required lead pipes there till they have been banned. So when this rule was first proposed, Chicago acquired a reasonably large exemption – one thing like 40-50 years to interchange all their pipes, ‘trigger they only had too a lot of them. And a variety of advocates pushed again on that. They stated it is approach too lengthy. That is generations extra folks rising up with lead pipes. So within the remaining rule, the EPA has tightened that up. Now, as an alternative of 40 years, they’ve extra like 20-25. I talked with Brenda Santoyo, and he or she’s a water justice advocate in Chicago.
BRENDA SANTOYO: It is undoubtedly progress. I feel that, like, town, the state, ought to take, like, their very own measures to attempt to velocity up that course of as a lot as they’ll. We additionally don’t need our water programs to be arrange for failure, for them to take shortcuts.
HUANG: Yeah. she says that the timeline appears cheap, as long as households are in a position to shield themselves within the meantime.
FADEL: Yeah. I imply, even 10 extra years looks like a very long time to be consuming water that may have lead in it. So what can households do to guard themselves?
HUANG: Yeah. Effectively, the first step is determining whether or not they have a lead service line. The service line is the pipe that brings faucet water into your home, and that may be the almost certainly perpetrator. Should you can see that line, you may scratch it with a coin, attempt a magnet on it. There’s some steering on-line that may assist you determine if it is fabricated from lead, copper or coated metal. And in case you are questioning – if it is simple to scratch and a magnet doesn’t keep on with it, these are a number of the indicators that it may very well be lead. They will additionally check their water for lead. There are some water districts on the market that provide free water testing, to allow them to verify for that. And here is the factor – even when there may be lead within the water, widespread residence filters can take them out, so pitcher filters, faucet filters which can be licensed to take away lead. All these are actually nice options till the lead pipes themselves get eradicated.
FADEL: That is NPR well being correspondent Pien Huang. Thanks.
HUANG: Thanks.
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