1021
submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.

“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Cylusthevirus@kbin.social 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Here you go.

"An initial estimate is that 25% of domestic dwellings in the EU have a lead pipe, either as a connection to the water main, or as part of the internal plumbing, or both, potentially putting 120 million people at risk from lead in drinking water within the EU. "

[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

As of 14 years ago! And Europe has a lot of former communist countries that hasn't fully reached Western European standards yet.
Led has been illegal to use in many contexts for decades in EU, including water pipes, and for instance electrical wiring and soldering.

[-] Cylusthevirus@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago

At what level though and how was the lead content assessed?

High levels of lead has been illegal to use in US water systems since 1986. Regulations have gotten more and more strict since then. The EPA's current goal is ZERO lead, but we still have too much in the water.

It just doesn't appear to be that much better in the EU, if at all.

[-] JanoRis@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/668177/-/comment/3862164

In short:
since 2013 EU has 10 ug/L limit. since 2020 a goal was set for 5 ug/L to be achieved until 2036.

EPA current limit is 15 ug/L. Yes, they have set a 0 goal, but with apparently no timeline, so until than there will still be many areas with 15 ug/L. Bidens proposal would probably set this 0 goal into a 10 year timeframe, making it much better than the EU goal.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 points 11 months ago

It should be noted that 0 is probably not realistic at all because even bottled water is allowed to have 5. His plan is to replace the service lines, but people in older houses can still have internal lead piping. This is mostly the issue with the UK's water. There's pretty much no lead (<2, which is background levels tbh) going to people's houses, but because we've got a load of 100+ year old houses all over the place, they will still have more lead than people in newer homes.

But I don't think the level is really the issue. <15 is probably fine.

The issue is that a bunch of poor people get a lot more than that and nobody has done anything about it. This plan should have been announced in 2014 when the problem first occurred at Flint.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
1021 points (99.0% liked)

News

23275 readers
1340 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS