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NRDC's EARTH ACTION:
The Bulletin for Environmental Activists

January 23, 2007
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In This Issue:

--Action Alerts--

1. Tell the EPA not to allow more dangerous lead in our air

2. Get involved with next week's Campus Climate Challenge

--Updates on Previous Alerts--

Energy legislation

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You will also find these alerts in NRDC'S Earth Action Center, which includes tools for taking action easily online, at http://www.nrdc.org/action

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Action Alerts

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1. Tell the EPA not to allow more dangerous lead in our air

Lead is a potent toxin that can cause brain and kidney damage, cardiovascular injury, miscarriages and other harms. Children and fetuses are particularly sensitive because lead irreversibly damages a child's developing brain, even at the lowest levels.

The Environmental Protection Agency set a maximum allowable level of lead in our air almost 30 years ago, when scientists knew far less about lead than they do today. Since then, the Centers for Disease Control has twice lowered the blood lead level at which medical intervention is recommended, and has not lowered that level further only because it has concluded that no level is safe. The EPA, however, has done nothing to improve its three-decades-old standard, so in 2005 a federal court ordered the agency to review that standard in light of current science.

Alarmingly, the EPA recently announced that it is contemplating eliminating rather than strengthening the lead standard, claiming that the standard may no longer be necessary because, over the past decades, average blood lead levels have dropped. But this is a bit like saying we do not need laws against robbing banks because bank robbery is less common today than it was during the Wild West era. Violations of the existing lead standard continue and in some areas of the country -- including near some major lead polluters -- blood lead levels remain high. The EPA is accepting comments on this issue through February 5th.

== What to do ==

Send a message, before the February 5th comment deadline, urging the EPA to strengthen, not eliminate or weaken, the standard for air lead levels.

== Contact information ==

You can send an official comment to the EPA directly from NRDC's Earth Action Center at http://www.nrdc.org/action/ Or use the contact information and sample letter below to send your own message.

Administrator Stephen Johnson

Environmental Protection Agency

1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW - Mailcode 6102T

Washington, DC 20460-0001

Fax: 202-566-1741

Email: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov

== Sample letter ==

Subject: Re: Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2006-0735

Dear Administrator Johnson,

Lead is a potent neurotoxin that causes brain and kidney damage, miscarriages and cardiovascular injury. Particularly for children, there is no known "safe" level of lead. In recent decades, the Centers for Disease Control has twice lowered the action level for lead in children, and recently concluded that "there is no evidence of a threshold below which adverse effects are not experienced." It is time for the EPA to strengthen its air quality standard for lead, which was set almost 30 years ago.

A strong, effectively enforced lead standard is vital to the health of our children and our communities. I am therefore extremely disturbed to learn that the EPA is considering eliminating this standard. We may have made progress in reducing lead levels, but that is no reason to remove existing protections. The question the EPA must ask is not whether progress has been made, but by how much the existing standard must be strengthened in order to protect all of our children from the tragic, lifelong effects of exposure to lead.I urge you to reverse any plan you have to eliminate the lead standard, and instead to strengthen the standard by testing compliance monthly instead of quarterly, and reducing the
current standard by at least one-third.

Sincerely,