Some days, like when a state congressional race is determined by pulling a slip of paper from a bowl, our political system seems to be crumbling. But then there are times when our three-pronged government operates exactly as it’s supposed to. That’s what happened last week, when our judiciary took a long overdue stand for children’s health.
For 17 years the Environmental Protection Agency has neglected to update federal standards for lead exposure in children, despite new scientific research showing that lower levels of exposure can cause irreparable harm in children. Thanks to a ruling last week from the 9th circuit court of appeals, Scott Pruitt and his team are now on the clock to bring the outdated standards in line with today’s medical consensus about toxic harm to children. The case, brought by a coalition of environmental and advocacy groups, sought to force the EPA to take immediate action to revise the standards, rather than the six-year review period requested by the Trump Administration. An EPA official said the agency was still reviewing the decision by the court and had not yet made a decision on whether or not to appeal. For those keeping track at home, here’s a reminder: lead is extremely harmful, especially to children. It damages cognitive abilities, lowers IQ, harms motor functions. In addition, exposure in early childhood has been linked to increased criminality later in life. The EPA should follow the court’s orders and revise the standards immediately. Any other actions would be harmful--and shameful.
I spent years documenting lead poisoning in children when I worked as a researcher at Human Rights Watch. In Nigeria, I saw the horrific consequences of extreme lead exposure, where hundreds of children died after ingesting toxic levels of lead, residue from a nearby gold mining operation. In China, families who lived near lead smelters were arrested when they tried to get information about their children’s blood lead levels. A Kenyan activist I worked with became a government target when she tried to test the lead levels of children living mere feet away from an illegal lead smelter.
These cases may seem extreme, but they share a common theme with lead poisoning in the United States. Protecting children from lead requires political will and government action. Here in the United States the reduction in childhood lead poisoning over the last 50 years, largely attributable to the removal of lead from paint and gasoline, is praised as one of our country’s major public health achievements. The progress is dramatic, with the average lead levels in children dropping by 90% since the 1970s. And yet lead poisoning remains the greatest cause of environmental harm to children under six years old.
Lead poisoning landed back in the public consciousness with the 2014 crisis in Flint, Michigan, where thousands of children were exposed to lead from contaminated drinking water. The outcry, while wholly legitimate, belied the common belief that lead poisoning is like typhoid, an ailment of the past that in our modern times is all but obsolete. A number of recent studies show that Flint is not an outlier; rather it is one of thousands of communities in this country where children’s basic health is under threat from a well understood and preventable toxin. When millions of children are suffering from a preventable epidemic, there’s a name for it: government failure.
Last week’s ruling by the 9th circuit sent a strong signal to the EPA that the foot dragging on lead standards could no longer be tolerated. The court noted that in the years that the EPA has failed to update the standards, an unknown number of children had been poisoned by lead. The EPA has delayed in protecting children’s health long enough. Rather than putting its time into an appeal, the agency should act urgently to ensure that children are no longer senselessly harmed by lead.