#lead exposure

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Growing up in Chicago, Chakena D. Perry knew not to trust the water coming out of her tap.

“It was just one of these unspoken truths within households like mine—low-income, Black households—that there was some sort of distrust with the water,” said Perry, who later learned that Chicago is the city with the most lead service lines in the country. “No one really talked about it, but we never used our tap for just regular drinking.”

Now, as a senior policy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Perry is part of a coalition that fought for stricter rules to force cities like Chicago to remove their toxic lead pipes faster. Last year, advocates celebrated a big win: The Biden-era U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandated that water systems across the country replace all their lead service lines. Under the new rule, most water systems will have 10 years to complete replacements, while Chicago will likely get just over 20, starting in 2027, when that requirement kicks in.

But the city’s replacement plan, submitted to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in April per state law and obtained through a public records request, puts it 30 years behind that timeline. 

Chicago’s plan adheres to state law and an outdated EPA rule from the first Trump administration. It aims to replace the city’s estimated 412,000 lead service lines by 2076—completing 8,300 replacements annually for 50 years, starting in 2027.

The latest federal rule requires Chicago to replace nearly 20,000 pipes per year beginning in 2027—more than double the speed of the city’s current plan. Documents show city officials are aware of the new requirements, but have not yet updated their plans. 

A delayed timeline will expose many more children and adults to the risk of toxic drinking water, and rising temperatures from climate change may exacerbate the risk by causing more lead to leach off pipes and into water. 

For Perry, even 20 more years of lead pipes was a compromise.

In recent decades, drinking water crises in Washington, D.C., and Flint, Michigan, put the public health threat of lead on the national map. Lead pipes are a danger across the country, where about 9 million lead service lines need to be replaced to adhere to the new requirements. About a million of those are in Illinois—the most of any state in the country. Among the five U.S. cities estimated to have the most lead pipes—Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit and Milwaukee—only Chicago has yet to adopt the latest federal deadline. The rest plan to replace their lead pipes within a decade of 2027. 

Lead can damage the human brain and nervous system, kidney function and reproductive health, and it’s also an underappreciated cause of cardiovascular problems. 

Lead is particularly harmful to children: It can hamper brain development and cause permanent intellectual disabilities, fatigue, convulsions, comas or even death. Lead exposure during pregnancy can also cause low birth weight or preterm birth. 

Risk of lead exposure linked to decreased brain volume in adolescents

Using evidence found in teeth from two Neanderthals from southeastern France, researchers from the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report the earliest evidence of lead exposure in an extinct human-like species from 250,000 years ago.

This study is the first to report lead exposure in Neanderthal and is the first to use teeth to reconstruct climate during and timing of key developmental events including weaning and nursing duration— key determinants of population growth. Results of the study will be published online in Science Advances on October 31st.

Federal officials say $15 million is going to provide health and social services for people who have had or are at risk for lead exposure stemming from the Flint water crisis.

“We understand the urgency of the situation, and this funding will help connect affected and at-risk Flint residents to comprehensive health and social services proven to mitigate the effects of lead exposure,” says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

The funding announced Friday is previously authorized under a law providing $170 million to deal with drinking water safety issues. The $15 million goes to the Genesee County Health Department's Healthy Start Program.

Officials say the money aims to help residents with health issues linked to exposure to the water supply. Lead exposure can cause miscarriage, developmental delays and other problems.

Is there a link between lifetime lead exposure and dementia?