A decade after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis raised alarms about the dangers of lead in tap water, President Joe Biden is setting a 10-year deadline for U.S. cities to replace lead pipes and make drinking water safe for all Americans.

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.’’

  • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • basmatii@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      1 month ago

      “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.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        1 month ago

        “relatively recently” was the fucking Roman empire.

        “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.

        • basmatii@lemm.eeEnglish
          11·
          1 month ago

          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?

          • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            1 month ago

            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.

            Just reminding you what your argument was that I objected to. :)

              • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                1 month ago

                Yes and it’s a correct statement. The reason we used lead pipes instead of steel or iron or even wood is solely due to cost and corporate lobbying downplaying the dangers we have known about for 2000.

                Ah yes, corporate lobbying in pre-market feudal Europe.

                Romans didn’t use lead for pipes, by the way, not until the very end of the empire,

                Jesus fucking Christ. It’s almost impressive how insistent you are on getting basic facts wrong.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        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.