October, 16 2008, 01:04pm EDT
New EPA Lead Standard Significantly Improved to Protect Kids' Health
But EPA Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee Member Says EPA Analysis Justified Even Better Standard
WASHINGTON
The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken a significant step
to protect the health of children by strengthening the nation's air
quality standard for lead today, according to Environmental Defense
Fund.
"While
EPA's own analysis justifies an even lower lead standard, this tenfold
reduction will go a long way to protecting children most at risk from
airborne lead," said Environmental Defense Fund Chief Health Scientist Dr. John Balbus,
a member of the EPA Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee.
"It's refreshing to see the agency follow the science and the advice of
its experts in making this decision."
The
new standard for lead in the air, 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter
(ug/m3), is a tenfold reduction from the current standard of 1.5 ug/m3
and is within the range recommended to the EPA by its science
advisors. The current standard dates back to 1978, a time when leaded
gasoline was widely used in automobiles and children's average blood
lead levels were seven times higher than today. Most importantly, in
1978, the serious effects of low level lead exposure on children were
not yet well understood.
Lead
is a potent neurotoxin that interferes with children's brain
development and worsens performance on IQ tests. EPA's analysis has
shown that to prevent a measureable decrease in IQ for the most
vulnerable children in the country, the lead standard would need to be
set as low as 0.02 ug/m3. In addition to strong evidence for harm to
children's neurological development at low levels, new science
indicates that lead exposures throughout life can increase risks of
cardiovascular illness and mortality.
Also
in this final decision, EPA has chosen lead in Total Suspended
Particulates (TSP) as the main indicator and the highest three month
rolling average over three years as the form of the standard for
monitoring and compliance. Because TSP captures more of the total
available lead in the air than the alternative indicator under
consideration, Particulate Matter less than 10 microns in diameter
(PM10), it provides greater protection for a given level of the
standard.
While
lead concentrations in the air have declined, scientific studies have
demonstrated that children's neurological development is harmed by much
lower levels of lead exposure than previously understood. Low level
lead exposure has been clearly linked to loss of IQ in performance
testing. Even an average IQ loss of 1-2 points in children has a
meaningful impact for the nation as a whole, as it would result in an
increase in children classified as mentally challenged, as well as a
proportional decrease in the number of children considered "gifted."
Since
1978, regulations and advances in technology have nearly eliminated the
use of lead in fuels and paints, resulting in significant decreases in
ambient concentrations of lead in air. For many children, lead that is
still present in house paints and urban dusts from the time when lead
was widely used is the main source of lead exposure. The current
standard will only partially address this problem of "legacy" lead;
other EPA programs need to address ongoing children's exposure from
house paint and urban dusts.
At
present, lead smelters, especially the nation's sole primary lead
smelter in Jefferson County, Missouri, are the largest sources of lead
emissions in communities. Other significant sources include airplane
fuels, military installations, mining and metal smelting, iron and
steel manufacturing, industrial boilers and process heaters, hazardous
waste incineration, and battery manufacture.
Environmental Defense Fund's mission is to preserve the natural systems on which all life depends. Guided by science and economics, we find practical and lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems. We work to solve the most critical environmental problems facing the planet. This has drawn us to areas that span the biosphere: climate, oceans, ecosystems and health. Since these topics are intertwined, our solutions take a multidisciplinary approach. We work in concert with other organizations -- as well as with business, government and communities -- and avoid duplicating work already being done effectively by others.
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Biden Signs TikTok Ban—Among the 'Stupidest and Most Authoritarian' Tech Bills
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Apr 24, 2024
Digital rights defenders on Wednesday slammed the passage of a U.S. foreign aid package containing a possible nationwide TikTok ban as unconstitutional, xenophobic, and ill-advised during an election year in which President Joe Biden desperately needs as many young votes as possible.
Biden signed the $95 billion bill late Wednesday morning after senators voted 79-18 the previous evening to approve the package, which includes tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel—which is waging a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.
One of the bill's provisions would force ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company within a year or face a federal ban. Approximately 170 million Americans use TikTok, which is especially popular among members of Gen-Z and small-to-medium-sized businesses, and contributes tens of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy annually.
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Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, called the provision "nothing more than an unconstitutional ban in disguise."
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Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said:
The First Amendment means that the government can't restrict Americans' access to ideas, information, or media from abroad without a very good reason for it—and no such reason exists here. Repackaging the government's reasons for the ban in the language of "national security" does not change the analysis. There's no national security exception to the First Amendment, and creating such an exception would make the First Amendment a dead letter.
Proponents of the possible ban attempted to spin it as something else and pointed to precedents including the 2020 forced sale of the popular LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr, formerly owned by a Chinese company.
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Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said before Tuesday's vote that "Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel."
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Greer continued:
Banning TikTok without passing real tech regulation will just further entrench monopolies like Meta and Google, without doing anything to protect Americans from data harvesting or government propaganda.
We could be months away from another Trump administration, and top Democrats are busy expanding mass surveillance authority and setting the precedent that the government can ban an entire social media app based on vague 'national security' concerns that haven't been explained to the public.
Some critics questioned the wisdom of Biden signing off on a potential ban of the most popular social media app among many young users during an election year in which many younger voters are disappointed in the president's record on climate, student debt relief, the Gaza genocide, and more.
One user of X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, said earlier this year that signing the bill would demonstrate a "comical level of political malpractice, the equivalent of seeing the rake on the ground and purposefully stepping on it."
Moments after Biden signed the bill, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew
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TikTok CEO Shou Chew responds to the bill that could ban the app: “Make no mistake, this is a ban, a ban of TikTok and a ban on you and your voice.”
“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
pic.twitter.com/qElI8JvY0D
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) April 24, 2024
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The organization expressed particular alarm over Israel's war on Gaza and the inability or unwillingness of its allies to rein in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from bombing civilian populations, displacing more than 1.9 million people, and restricting the flow of aid into the besieged Gaza Strip. This and other conflicts, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, had led to a "near breakdown of international law," Amnesty said.
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The Chamber, the largest corporate lobbying organization in the United States, signaled its intent to sue the FTC immediately after the agency finalized its new rule on Tuesday.
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While the organization claims to fight for the interests of businesses small and large, a Public Citizen report published earlier this year found that the majority of the Chamber's legal work supports big corporations.
The Chamber acknowledged in response to questioning from a pair of Democratic senators last year that its corporate members use noncompete clauses—though the group did not specify which members.
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