CDC considers lowering threshold level for lead exposure

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lead-cdc-idUSKBN14J160

by finid • 10 years ago

98 52 10 years ago

This doesn't mean anything until there is more accountability for those responsible. Look at Flint, and now Oakland too it seems.

kiba• 10 years ago

Just because there's accountability doesn't mean that suddenly people become more competent.

ffggvv• 10 years ago

Yes it does if punishments are superior the benefits and are well known.

maxerickson2• 10 years ago

What does "those responsible" even mean?

There are a lot of people that directly share some of the responsibility for failing to properly treat the Flint River water after the switch (and for switching in the first place).

But for instance, are the people that voted to start bankrupting the city in 1985 also responsible for the crisis?

How about the people that failed to replace their lead water supply lines after it became clear how dangerous lead can be?

And on and on.

noobermin2• 10 years ago

Are you advocating that no one be held responsible? Of course things can be complicated, but in light of the evidence, it isn't as hard to disentangle as you suggest.

afarrell• 10 years ago

Do you mean accountable in the sense of the aviation industry (which hasn't had a major US airline crash in over 15 years) or the default political process?

disposablezero• 10 years ago

There are literally thousands of cities with various levels of unsafe water. I had some extended familiy members whom all stupidly lived in the same house, drank/bathed/etc using the tap water near Durango, Colorado... and they all died prematurely of various terrible diseases like numerous forms of cancer.

chrishacken• 10 years ago

Water isn't the only issue either. Our city has higher levels of lead than Flint does, but it's consumed through means other than water. http://www.pahomepage.com/news/18-pa-cities-lead-higher-lead...

creepydata• 10 years ago

Given the premise how can you you possibly come to the conclusion that the cause was the water.

stuckagain3• 10 years ago

Contamination in Oakland is primarily from its history of elevated freeways. Responsibility for that contamination is diffused. How are you going to pin it on any one party in particular?

DrScump• 10 years ago

Do you have a source? There has been no leaded fuel (for on-road use) in over 20 years.

anigbrowl• 10 years ago

No need to pin it on one party. Rather than worrying about liability, better to worry about who's bearing the cost of the externality, and what the future costs of mitigating or not would be, with expenses to be paid from a general fund. Going forward it's better to price externalities in at the early stages.

Kalium• 10 years ago

What kind of accountability are you looking for in Oakland? You're looking at a history involving a battery factory, lead paint, and freeways that stretches back 60+ years. Who is there that can be held to account today?

jwess• 10 years ago

The water contamination crisis in Flint, MI has brought attention to the dangers of lead exposure and aging infrastructure. The problems in Flint will be expensive to fix, but many people are not aware of other "low hanging fruit" in this area. For example, aviation fuel is still leaded, and the national estimate of lead emissions from the consumption of leaded AvGas was 483 tons in 2011, according to the EPA's National Emissions Inventory [0]. Furthermore, the same NEI data shows airports as the top source of lead emissions in 42 states (according to 2011 NEI data).

Leaded aviation fuel is used by planes which use internal combustion engines instead of cleaner, more powerful, and more expensive jet engines. Most of these small planes are for personal use.

I think the costs of lead abatement should be included in the price of AvGas, or its use should be discontinued entirely.

[0] U.S. EPA. Calculating Piston-Engine Aircraft Airport Inventories for Lead for the 2011 National Emissions Inventory. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA-420-B-13-040, 2013. Page 5

selectodude• 10 years ago

Leaded aviation fuel is used by planes which use internal combustion engines instead of cleaner, more powerful, and more expensive jet engines.

Single engine personal aircraft are finally starting to switch over to Jet-A, due to the extreme costs of 100LL avgas, the difficulty of procuring it (there's only one TEL factory left in the entire world) and higher energy density in kerosene. So we're on the right track.

mveety• 10 years ago

That and the higher efficiency of diesels (assuming you're talking about little planes). Still it's a really long road ahead. For GA aircraft I think a better solution right now is a drop in replacement for 100LL (which is getting worked on) or getting leased engines certified for mogas or modified to run on it.

TylerE• 10 years ago

Huh? There are very very few GA engines capable of running on kerosene.

Conversions, especially of older, lower performance aircraft, to run on 87 mogas is MUCH more common.

stuckagain3• 10 years ago

The AOPA is the NRA, essentially. They don't care about the public health problems they cause. They just want to fly around in their little WW2-technology toys.

okreallywtf2• 10 years ago

This makes me think of A Snow Mobile for George [1]. I'm not sure what the lead pollution impact of 2 stroke engines are (probably awful if you were able to find/use leaded gas) but in terms of low-hanging fruit its a perfect example of how regulation or deregulation can have a large effect on pollution.

Growing up using 2 stroke weedeaters and chainsaws I had no idea how polluting they are. Granted we were using terribly small amounts of gas compared to snowmobiles but it still made me think of the health dangers of the exhaust. I have some nostalgic feelings towards the smell of 2 stroke exhaust (diesel exhaust as well) but after seeing the documentary I wouldn't buy another 2 stroke anything.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314278/

rsync• 10 years ago

"Growing up using 2 stroke weedeaters and chainsaws I had no idea how polluting they are."

Terribly polluting. However, my understanding is that there is no potential for "fixing" chainsaws since a 4 stroke engine cannot run upside down - which is a requirement for a chainsaw.

Am I mistaken ?

Luckily we're starting to see a lot of battery operated chainsaws come onto the market with higher density Li-ion batteries. We're demoing a dewalt[1] chainsaw at my fire department and I have been using a Bosch reciprocating saw with a brush blade for light tree work for two years now ... but this is all light duty stuff and cannot replace large chainsaws...

[1] http://www.dewalt.com/products/power-tools/outdoor-power-equ...

Terr_• 10 years ago

This makes me think of A Snow Mobile for George

For some reason my immediate impression from the title was: "Like Flowers For Algernon, but with lead poisoning."

DoodleBuggy2• 10 years ago

Until the nation decides to pay the enormous costs associated with updating ancient and dangerous infrastructure, does it even matter?

okreallywtf2• 10 years ago

This is a way to encourage that. How would you make the case for massive public spending on infrastructure when lead limits are within those allowed by the EPA? Not only that, but in an era of concerns over employment (whether real or imagined), public spending can provide an economic boost as well [1].

http://www.epi.org/publication/impact-of-infrastructure-inve...

DoodleBuggy2• 10 years ago

Can you imagine congress passing a meaningful infrastructure bill?

glbrew• 10 years ago

Yeah, they should lower the threshold from Detroit to Cleveland.

ern4• 10 years ago

I make sure my own children do things like wash their hands before eating to limit their lead exposure, but I've also been reading up on this issue and keep finding this sort of equivocation:

This does not mean that children at this level are poisoned,” Dietrich says. “There are very few studies of low-level lead exposure, but there is nothing in the data that suggests that children will have negative impacts of short-term low-level exposure” over their lives. In fact, he notes, the 5 μg/dL figure was set because 97.5 percent of young children fall below it, not because blood lead levels at that threshold result in permanent harm

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brains-of-fli...

The evidence about low-level lead exposure and IQ seems far from definitive, and seems (to my amateur eye) to be full of unadjusted confounding, but I could be missing something.

nonbel• 10 years ago

"the 5 μg/dL figure was set because 97.5 percent of young children fall below it, not because blood lead levels at that threshold result in permanent harm"

What is the point of such definitions, and why does the medical community keep doing this type of thing? Using their method, 2.5% of young children will always be "exposed", no matter what is done. It is an automatically moving goalpost.

ern4• 10 years ago

Indeed. I know the lead industry used to manipulate scientific research, in much the same way that the sugar industry has done in recent times, but that's no excuse for throwing scientific rigor away.

AbrahamParangi2• 10 years ago

Such definitions are useful because they result in useful safety factors when testing to find the actual threshold values is either impractical, immoral, or impossible. Consider:

1) Most children do not appear to suffer from lead-associated brain damage

2) Most children's lead levels fall below 5 μg/dL

Therefore, while I do not know the level at which lead exposure results in brain damage, I can be safe in assuming that it is higher than 5 μg/dL. Moreover, since I know that most children fall below this level, it is not an overly difficult bar to achieve.

So now we've got a regulation which we know is:

1) very achievable (in fact most of the population is already there)

2) almost certain to be on the safe side

If you can recommend a better strategy, I'd like to hear it.

mrfusion• 10 years ago

Why wash their hands? Where would they be coming into contact with lead?

dajohnson89• 10 years ago

Honest question for anyone with knowledge about lead and health: I just moved into an apartment that the city has cited for lead-based paint. How soon will I die?

I asked the landlord, and he said don't worry about it (of course). He said the risk is mainly for children, and that the lead is only kicked up when the paint is scraped during remodeling or whatever.

bsder• 10 years ago

You probably won't unless you are eating the paint off the wall or the paint is disintegrating and turning into dust.

Quite often the most effective way to deal with lead paint is to leave it alone.

mirimir2• 10 years ago

Well, the lead-containing paint is probably under several layers of lead-free paint. Just don't mess with it. If there's any cracking or peeling, move.

mirimir2• 10 years ago

And get your blood lead checked now, and then every few months. There might be dust from prior renovation. Also, environmental testing kits are available. They're not very sensitive, however, and there's the risk of false positives.

BurningFrog• 10 years ago

You won't die, but your children will be stupid and violent.

pauldw• 10 years ago

You should get some of these LeadCheck swabs and test the dust and painted surfaces in your environment: https://www.amazon.com/3M-717834209102DUPE-LeadCheck-Swabs-8... .

MR4D• 10 years ago

The dumb thought rolling around my head is, "Why? They can't even meet the current limits!"

It worries me when regulators focus on moving the bar than meeting the bar. Irrespective of whether the limit is right or not.

e2kp• 10 years ago

This is one of those reasons I decide to drink from water bottles.

Yes, there may be traces of antimony in it, but tap water, usually well controlled at the reservoire, presents too high a risk of exposure to various metals and bioforms due to decaying infrastructure.

CDC considers lowering threshold level for lead exposure

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