In this Section

Issues: Health

Get the Lead Out

Overview | Protect Your Children | Lead in Your Area | Take Action

The EPA's proposed standard for lead in the air ignores scientists' urgings and fails to adequately protect public health.

Zoom in on lead emitters in your area

Take Action: Tell the EPA to protect children from dangerous airborne lead

Protect Your Kids: See our guide on preventing lead poisoning

Lead is a harmful toxin that causes brain, kidney and cardiovascular damage. In children, even small amounts of lead have been proven to lower IQ levels.

More than 16,000 industrial facilities across the country, including power plants, smelters and cement kilns, emit lead into the air, where it eventually settles into soil and dust. The lead remains there indefinitely, to be tracked into homes or ingested by children as they play outdoors and put their hands in their mouths.

Today, more than 300,000 children in the United States, particularly in urban areas, suffer from lead poisoning, and uncounted more have unhealthy levels of lead in their blood.

The current lead standard -- that allows 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter in air -- was put in place almost 30 years ago, when scientists understood far less about lead than they do today. Since then, the Centers for Disease Control have twice lowered the blood lead level at which medical intervention is recommended. The EPA's independent scientific advisory committee and its own scientists have said that, to adequately protect public health, lead should not be allowed to exceed a level of 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter in air and that an even stronger standard may be appropriate. In fact, close to a hundred doctors and scientists have commented on EPA's rule and have recommended significantly stronger standards.

Yet, the EPA's proposed range of standards goes as high as 0.3 micrograms per cubic meter in air, exceeding the levels that its scientists and scientific advisors think is safe. While the EPA's proposal is an improvement over the current standard, the EPA should protect children by strengthening the standard for lead in our air to the levels that best protect public health according to the latest science.

last revised 05.23.08