National Ambient Air Quality Standard for Lead

In November 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strengthened its National Ambient Air Quality Standard for lead in response to a Missouri Coalition for the Environment lawsuit. The updated standard is ten times more protective of public health than the outdated one it replaced. However, in the final rule, the agency watered down monitoring requirements, effectively undermining the new rule's ability to protect the health of children and communities.

Write a Comment
Letter to EPA

Submit your comments today at the regulations.gov website. View a sample letter here or download a Microsoft Word version.

The November 2008 rule required monitoring near facilities that emit one ton per year of lead or more - instead of the half ton per year threshold that had been contemplated in the proposed rule that was up for public comment. Of course, this would never do.

In January 2009, the Coalition, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and Physicians for Social Responsibility submitted a petition to the EPA to reconsider the monitoring provision of its final rule. The petition notes that the EPA's decision to require monitoring at facilities emitting one ton per year or more of lead was not in the proposed rule submitted for public comment and that the one ton per year threshold is twice that supported by the technical analysis. Several documents submitted after the close of the public comment period on the proposed rule shed light on the back-door machinations and pressure the Office of Management and Budget used to wrest the one ton per year standard out of the agency.

In July, the EPA granted the petition to reconsider, and now a new proposed rule for monitoring at facilities emitting a half ton or more of airborne lead is up for public comment until February 16. Your comments and participation are critically important in ensuring the integrity of the airborne lead standard. We expect industry to lobby as they have in the past to weaken monitoring.

You can help by sending your comments, and getting your organization to submit comments or to sign on to ours.

Learn more:
Petition for Reconsideration
EPA's letter granting petition
EPA's map of sources of lead emissions
Federal Register Notice