InsideSources

Millions of Americans are at risk of lead exposure from paint in their homes and in their drinking water. In New Hampshire, it’s been found that lead poisoning affects about 1,000 children under 6 years old in the state every year. The Legislature wants to allocate funding to combat the crisis, but it will prove to be difficult to settle on an appropriate cost.

Senate Bill 247 would essentially give landlords money to get rid of lead in apartments across the state. The bill doesn’t change the lead levels, 10 micrograms per deciliter, that require landlords to test for lead in their apartments with children, but it does require universal testing for children between the ages of 1 and 2 to be covered by insurance companies. The early warning level is still at 3 micrograms, the level at which landlords would be notified so they could take action before reaching the 10-microgram level.

If the test reveals that areas of the rented property contain lead, the landlord can be forced to remove the lead contamination, which is known as abatement. The rules are mostly for rented properties, but they also apply to owner-occupied homes. However, homeowners cannot be forced to carry out abatements and are only given recommendations.

The bill also contains a provision that would bar children 6 years old and younger from attending any private or public school, or child care, unless their parents can prove their kids received lead testing. Blood tests of children under 6 years old in rental properties that reveal lead levels of 10 micrograms or higher can prompt an investigation by the state Division of Public Health Services.

With more tests, it’s likely there will be more lead found in homes across the state, forcing landlords to get rid of the lead either as a requirement or a precaution if it approaches the maximum level.

To help with those costs, the bill would set aside $3 million for the next two years to reimburse landlords for 75 percent of abatement cost, and possibly the total cost if the property owner can demonstrate financial need. It would also cover the cost of a filter if there is lead in the water.

The bill passed with bipartisan support in the Senate (15-7) in March and in the House (233-109) on Thursday. It now sits in the House Finance Committee where lawmakers will decide on the ultimate cost of the bill since it uses state revenues.

Sen. Dan Feltes, D-Concord, testified before the committee on Tuesday, saying “we need to get out in front of this” because the state is “robbing children of future earnings…as a result of where they live.”

Yet, he admitted the cost of fixing the state’s lead problem could range between $3 to $100 million. This was a concern other lawmakers had, like Reps. J.R. Hoell, R-Weare, and Jim Fedolfi, R-Hillsborough.

SB247 could cost north of $100 million per Sen. Felts during finance hearing. #nhpolitics

— Rep. JR Hoell (@NH_Braveheart) May 9, 2017

Fedolfi told the House Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs earlier this month that it should be the landlord’s responsibility to pay for it and not the taxpayers. He called it a “landlord recovery bill,” allowing owners to “refurbish their apartments on the state’s dime” and a “free ticket for the landlord who is getting rich and doing well and now using our money to help them.”

Yet, this is a national problem that has received increased attention after the Flint, Mich. water crisis. About 100,000 people across the country get their drinking water from utilities that found high lead, but didn’t treat the water to remove it. Also, 4 million Americans got water from small operators who skipped required tests required by federal safe drinking water laws, according to a 2016 investigation by USA Today.

About 77 million people across all 50 states were served by water systems reporting violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2015, according to a report issued last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

While most of media reports are focused on lead in drinking water, which is still a major issue in most states, people often forget that lead paint in older homes still poses a threat to children.

“The public doesn’t hear about it because most kids have no symptoms until years later when the brain damage caused by early lead exposure appears,” wrote Amy Winslow, president and CEO of medical device company Magellan Diagnostics in a Monday op-ed in the Concord Monitor. “It shows up when kids can’t perform on grade-level reading or math tests, and can’t sit still in school, at which point no one is thinking about lead.”

The state has the oldest housing stock in the country. Approximately 68 percent of homes in the state were built before 1968, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In the bill, landlords of any property built before 1978, the year lead paint was first outlawed, would pay for repairs and would be required to conduct annual checks on the interior and exterior of their properties.

The House Finance Committee did not reach a funding agreement on Tuesday. They are scheduled to work on the bill beginning on Wednesday, but it’s expected to take some time before they come to a consensus on the cost. It would then go back to the House for a full vote.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — After the Flint, Mich. lead water crisis, cities and towns across the country are looking to replace their drinking water pipes. Many communities are looking at plastic pipes as a safe, easy, cost-effective solution. Yet, the alternatives might not be as safe as people think. Two experts detailed the possible health risks plastic pipes pose at a public meeting in Cambridge, Mass. on Tuesday.

The city just across the Charles River from Boston is starting the process of replacing their old pipes, which have been around for more than 100 years. The Cambridge Water Board held an open forum at the Walter J. Sullivan Water Treatment Facility and invited Andrew Whelton, environmental engineer and professor at Purdue University, and Joan Ruderman, a biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, to discuss their research with residents.

Cambridge is looking to implement cured-in-place-pipe (CIPP) water infrastructure repair technology to replace their current pipe system. CIPP involves felt liners being injected with resin and cured inside existing pipe, essentially a pipe-within-a-pipe.

“Plastics are being used across the country for a number of different technologies,” Whelton said, and they’re commonly being used for drinking water pipes “because you don’t have to dig up and remove that pipe. You chemically manufacture a pipe within a pipe.”

The technology has existed for several years, but cities and towns have only recently started implementing CIPP in their water systems.

While there are benefits to replacing existing pipes with plastic, like an improvement in water pressure or better water clarity, it is possible for the CIPP technology to fail, leading to negative health effects. In some of his research, Whelton found that the plastic pipes, which are supposed to last between 20 to 50 years, only lasted for nine years.

“What happened was when they [piping contractors] went in to spray the plastic coating, the plastic coating basically didn’t have the strength and slumped down to the bottom of the pipe,” he said. “You’re supposed to see equal thickness of coating around the pipe.”

When that happens, Whelton said, the chemicals could leech into the drinking water that goes to businesses, schools, and households. The chemicals mixing with the water could be used by organisms to grow; it can transform into disinfected byproducts not meant for human consumption, and it can change the pH level of the water making it not safe to drink.

The material that is used to create the plastic pipe is usually an epoxy resin, which is mostly made from bisphenol A (BPA), commonly found in most household objects like eyeglasses, DVDs, and water bottles. The negative health effects of BPA on humans has been well-documented, leading many companies to create BPA-free objects.

Ruderman said BPA has the potential to mimic estrogen in women, interfere with testosterone, and lead to abnormal prostate growth or changes in mammary glands, which could lead to cancer.

“The effects of BPA on human development, fertility, cancer, and behavior are only just starting to be understood,” she said.

The problem is that there aren’t enough studies being done in the United States to seriously examine what health issues could arise due to BPA from plastic pipes leeching into drinking water.

Ruderman said there are some countries in Europe, including Germany and Sweden, that have restricted or discouraged the use of epoxy-based materials in drinking water pipes. However, they are commissioning more studies on the health effects than the United States.

“The plastic industry has done a terrible job about identifying the chemicals that leech out into the water and understanding what happens to them, at least publicly,” Whelton said.

There hasn’t been any complaints or issues of lead contamination in Cambridge’s water supply, but a Boston Globe report published on the same day as the meeting found that more than 1,000 Massachusetts schools had at least one sample showing lead levels above regulatory limits, with some cases rivaling or exceeding levels measure during the crisis in Flint. The Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group recently gave the state a “D” letter grade for its efforts to prevent lead from entering the water at schools and day-care centers.

The District of Columbia is still grappling with lead contamination in drinking water. A Flint whistleblower told InsideSources last year that D.C.’s lead water crisis between 2000 and 2004 would have a long-term impact that’s significantly worse than what happened in Michigan. Yet, lead pipes remain in the system.

If Cambridge decides to move forward with CIPP, Whelton said the city should come up with specific requirements and tests that contractors should meet in order to implement the technology. He suggested they hear bids from several companies and to push back if the contractors try to make any changes to their plans.

Residents who attended the meeting had concerns about the potential health effects of the CIPP technology, asking why the city would move forward on this even if there was just one concern about the health impacts of the plastic pipes. Others said they would be willing to pay more taxes to implement a better system that wouldn’t involve plastic.

Ann Roosevelt, president of the Cambridge Water Board, tried to assure residents that this was only the first step in a long process before the city approves of any project.

While the experts at the meeting focused on the possible health effects of CIPP technology, there was no speaker who advocated to keep the pipes the city currently uses. Plastic pipe representatives were sitting in the audience, but largely remained quiet during the whole discussion.

Attendees were able to voice their opinions during the Tuesday forum, but when someone asked if city residents would get to vote on the measure, Roosevelt said they would ultimately not get a say in the matter since the Water Board is given statutory power to make its own decisions.

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