The Impacts of Changes to Regulatory and Risk Values for Lead

Introduction:

Across the United States, lead contamination continues to pose significant environmental and public health challenges—particularly due to its persistence and widespread presence in various forms of media, such as soil, water, air, and dust. Recent scientific advances and evolving health risk data have driven changes in the regulatory landscape for lead, prompting federal agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen screening levels and action limits across several regulatory frameworks. These changes, including updates to soil screening levels, lead action levels for drinking water systems, and dust-lead clearance standards, reflect an urgent need to reduce lead exposure, particularly in vulnerable populations such as children.

This paper examines the risk and regulatory changes concerning lead. It provides a short history of how lead regulatory levels have evolved and explores how recent lead risk values and exposure limits have sparked more stringent cleanup requirements for contaminated sites. Furthermore, by synthesizing recent scientific data and regulatory changes, this paper comprehensively analyzes the evolving landscape of lead regulation.

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Authors: Mark McDaniel, CPSC, and Jonathan Dziekan, EIT, AlterEcho