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.’’

  • bluGill@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • basmatii@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • localhost443@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • basmatii@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Leaded gasoline was peer reviewed and approved. Why don’t you buy some and let your kids play in the fumes?

          • Blackbeard@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Leaded gasoline was peer reviewed and approved.

            Then please provide a source. Failing that, your comment will be removed for violating rule 8.

              • Blackbeard@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                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.