A decade after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis raised alarms about the continuing dangers of lead in tap water, President Joe Biden is setting a 10-year deadline for cities across the nation to replace their lead pipes, finalizing an aggressive approach aimed at ensuring that drinking water is safe for all Americans.
Biden is expected to announce the final Environmental Protection Agency rule Tuesday in the swing state of Wisconsin during the final month of a tight presidential campaign. The announcement highlights an issue — safe drinking water — that Kamala Harris has prioritized as vice president and during her presidential campaign. The new rule supplants a looser standard set by former President Donald Trump’s administration that did not include a universal requirement to replace lead pipes.
Biden and Harris believe it’s “a moral imperative” to ensure that everyone has access to clean drinking water, EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters Monday. “We know that over 9 million legacy lead pipes continue to deliver water to homes across our country. But the science has been clear for decades: There is no safe level of lead in our drinking water.’’
Because our country has always been ruled by corporations and at one point we had a bunch of lead that companies couldn’t sell at a high enough price so the pushed it in all sorts of applications it should have never been in. It’s the same reason we add fluoride to drinking water.
Lead has many amazing properteis in metalurgy.
floride is NOT toxic in normal quantities. That is a myth you hear from the same people who spread anti vax garbage.
I never said fluoride was toxic in normal quantities, but the reason we put fluoride in drinking water is because of lobbying. Fluoride was and is primarily an industrial waste product that was thrown out for decades, until several mining and material refinement companies lobbied the federal government along side state and local governments to legally dump the waste in drinking water, using the new at the time research that fluoride can help tooth health as an excuse.
This is despite the fact fluoride has no effect on tooth health when consumed, and there are not high enough levels in drinking water to have a topical effect like in toothpaste. We’re quite literally just lucky it’s not toxic until you get to really high levels.
You are so confident in refuting so much peer reviewed research that disproves what you’re saying. I’m all for ‘fuck the corporations’ on most things, but this is Facebook level nonsense.
Leaded gasoline was peer reviewed and approved. Why don’t you buy some and let your kids play in the fumes?
Then please provide a source. Failing that, your comment will be removed for violating rule 8.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004896979090318O
I can’t believe we’re at the point where users of the Internet are so incredibly young they have no concept of the failures of the scientific community and government.
I hope your studies go well.
A link to a historical analysis of lead is insufficient for substantiating an assertion that peer reviewed studies confirmed its safety a priori. It was “approved” by fossil fuel companies insofar as it was useful in providing anti-knocking protection in primitive internal combustion engines, but the dangers of tetra-ethyl lead were known within years of its widespread introduction into gasoline. Ergo it was not “peer reviewed and approved” in the sense you’re suggesting.
Your comment wasn’t removed before, but it is now.
That’s so fucked up.
Now I’m kinda curious what happens to all the arsenic you usually get from gold mines. Do you still make skincare products with it?
Lead is traditionally used in piping, it was only relatively recently that health concerns over lead became major. Not some “CORPORATIONS WERE PUSHING BIG LEAD” conspiracy.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-lead-pipes-20160204-story.html
You’ll notice that it says “to keep using” lead in plumbing and like applications, and that the early date cited for corporate pushback against health concerns for lead is 1923. Both of those back my assertion that the root cause of lead pipes is their traditional use, and that only relatively recently did health concerns over lead become major.
“relatively recently” was the fucking Roman empire.
Lead should have never been used near water, we’ve known the negative health effects since before any current country existed. We knew lead pipes were not safe going into the era of modern indoor plumbing. It was cheaper than the alternatives though, so it got installed.
And to your conspiracy point, we used to put lead in gasoline despite knowing it was poisoning of people and crops, and there was a conspiracy to keep it in gasoline.
“that health concerns over lead became major”
But thanks for acknowledging that the use of lead in piping is ancient and has nothing to do with some glut of lead that the big mean corporations decided to poison Our Innocent Society™ with.
Reread, try again. More importantly, yes corporations are out to fuck you over, fuck society over, just to make money regardless of what damage it does. Smoking tobacco is an ancient practice that was known to be harmful too, are you saying we should trust the peer reviewed science sponsored by Philip Morris and accepted as sworn testimony by Congress that smoking is completely safe and not habit forming?
Just reminding you what your argument was that I objected to. :)