Chavaysha Chaney: Pittsburgh, get the lead out

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – For de­cades in our state, lead ser­vice lines have brought dan­ger­ous, lead-con­tam­i­nated drink­ing wa­ter into our homes, schools, day­cares, and work­places. In my home city of Pitts­burgh, un­safe drink­ing wa­ter from lead ser­vice lines is a con­stant threat in our neigh­bor­hoods.

Safe wa­ter is vi­tal for the health and well-be­ing of our chil­dren and fam­i­lies. It is crit­i­cal that our na­tional lead­ers take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to get the lead out of our drink­ing wa­ter.

Fol­low­ing the wa­ter cri­sis in Flint, Mich­i­gan, in­creased at­ten­tion was turned to in­dus­trial cit­ies like ours, where aging in­fra­struc­ture is a grow­ing con­cern. Pitts­burgh was quickly thrown into its own cri­sis, when the level of lead in our drink­ing wa­ter was found to be 22 parts per mil­lion in 2016, sig­nifi­cantly over the fed­eral and state lead ac­tion level of 15 parts per mil­lion.

From 2016, when lead was first de­tected, to 2020, Pitts­burgh’s lead in wa­ter lev­els ex­ceeded the fed­eral ac­tion limit dur­ing five test­ing pe­ri­ods. While the Pitts­burgh Water and Sewer Au­thor­ity agreed to re­move their lead pipes by 2026, the health risks from lead in tap wa­ter will re­main in many homes across the re­gion for some years.

Lead ex­po­sure is dan­ger­ous and can im­pact ev­ery­thing from our bones, liver, and kid­neys to our brain func­tion. Even low lev­els can lower our kids’ IQ and have lifelong im­pacts on their learn­ing by caus­ing prob­lems with at­ten­tion and be­hav­ior.

High lev­els of lead ex­po­sure can put peo­ple of all ages at risk of po­ten­tially life-threat­en­ing lead poi­son­ing. This mas­sive health bur­den falls es­pe­cially heav­ily on com­mu­ni­ties and chil­dren of color. Three-quar­ters of Black adults re­port­ing that they worry “a great deal” about pol­luted drink­ing wa­ter.

What families are doing

Imag­ine the heavy emo­tional toll on par­ents and fam­i­lies who learn that their chil­dren have been un­know­ingly drink­ing lead-con­tam­i­nated wa­ter and put­ting their fu­tures at risk. When folks fi­nally learn about this is­sue — many are still un­aware — they will do ev­ery­thing in their power to keep their fam­i­lies safe. It’s no won­der that our fam­i­lies are so con­cerned about the toll this se­ri­ous pub­lic health cri­sis and en­vi­ron­men­tal justice is­sue is tak­ing on our daily lives.

Whether they rely on bot­tled wa­ter or use at-home fil­ters, fam­i­lies are do­ing ev­ery­thing they can to keep them­selves and their chil­dren safe from the threats of lead ex­po­sure. My or­ga­ni­za­tion, Women for a Healthy En­vi­ron­ment (WHE), along with the Com­mu­nity Justice Proj­ect and Get the Lead Out, Pitts­burgh cam­paign, work with fam­i­lies that are cur­rently be­ing im­pacted by lead con­tam­i­na­tion to help them ac­cess safe drink­ing wa­ter.

But be­yond what’s be­ing done in Pitts­burgh, there’s hope for a fu­ture with­out lead in our drink­ing wa­ter.

Our state is cham­pi­on­ing the ef­fort to get the lead out of our drink­ing wa­ter as part of an ini­tia­tive launched in part­ner­ship with the EPA ear­lier this year. Under the Lead Ser­vice Line Re­place­ment Ac­cel­er­a­tors Ini­tia­tive, our state is fast-track­ing its ef­fort to be free of the lead ser­vice lines that de­liver dan­ger­ously con­tam­i­nated drink­ing wa­ter into our homes and schools.

The on­go­ing com­mit­ment of this pro­gram to pro­tect­ing Penn­syl­va­nians un­der­scores the need for the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion and EPA Ad­min­is­tra­tor Mi­chael Regan to pass strong, just rules to en­sure that com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try are pro­tected from the dan­gers of lead ex­po­sure.

Lead ser­vice lines are re­place­able — our chil­dren are not. By mak­ing a com­mit­ment to re­place all lead ser­vice lines in the na­tion by 2030, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion and the EPA can take mean­ing­ful ac­tion to en­sure that par­ents and fam­i­lies can give their chil­dren the safe, lead-free wa­ter they need to build healthy lives.

Read the full story here.