As 2008 comes to an end, please consider making a tax-deductible
donation to the Alliance. Your donation of any amount will support
our efforts to ensure that housing across the United States is free from lead,
carbon monoxide, radon, pests & pesticides, allergens, and other health
hazards. We need your donation to help support our policy work and ensure we
can provide the healthy homes movement a voice on Capitol Hill and beyond. It
will also help ensure that we can continue to bring you the updates found in
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Giving to the Alliance takes just a few clicks at http://afhh.org/misc/misc_contrib.htm.
If you prefer, you may also mail gifts to the Alliance at 50 F St. NW, Suite
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to the maximum allowed by law. Thank you for your support!
Groups
End Federal Air Freshener Lawsuit and Prepare for Next Phase of Safety Campaign
Under pressure from a coalition of environment and health
groups, the seven largest air freshener manufacturers have disclosed their products’
ingredients to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The coalition of groups
dropped a legal case regarding the issue against the EPA on December 11 and
now plan to pressure the agency to evaluate the safety of the ingredients individually
and in combination with each other.
The Alliance for Healthy Homes, Sierra Club, and Natural
Resources Defense Council petitioned EPA in September 2007 to learn the risks
of air fresheners and to require that manufacturers list ingredients on labels.
In December 2007, EPA denied the petition but sent letters to the top seven
air freshener manufacturers, asking them to voluntarily submit the ingredients
in their products and the quantities used annually. The seven companies are
Blythe, Dial, Lancaster Colony, Procter & Gamble, Redkitt Benckiser, S.C.
Johnson and Shell. The petitioners sued EPA in April 2008 to help ensure that
the companies actually provided ingredient information to EPA – which
they did in two stages. In May, EPA received data about the non-fragrance ingredients
and in October the agency obtained fragrance ingredient data.
EPA now has data for all ingredients present in 0.1% concentration
or greater in air freshener products made by these seven companies. This is
the first time that EPA has known the main chemical ingredients in a wide number
of air fresheners, the function of each ingredient, and the aggregate amount
of each chemical present in the products. The agency is now in a position to
assess the risks posed by those chemicals and to take appropriate regulatory
action. The organizations will continue to request that ingredients present
below 0.1% concentration be disclosed to the agency, too.
While EPA received the complete list of ingredients, public
versions contained many redactions under company confidential business information
claims. Even with the redacted version of the data, however, several hazardous
chemicals are listed as air freshener ingredients. These chemicals include formaldehyde
(a carcinogen and irritant deliberately generated as preservative), benzene
compounds (benzene is a genotoxic carcinogen), naphthalene (a carcinogen), and
other chemicals whose safety is questionable.
Because of the redactions in the public data, only EPA
and the companies presently know what amounts of these chemicals are used. The
coalition of groups is now attempting to use the Freedom of Information Act
to challenge the companies’ confidentiality claims and hope to make more
ingredient information available publicly. Industry groups are also planning
a new ingredient disclosure program for 2010, but say they will continue to
keep many ingredients secret including those in their dyes, preservatives and
fragrances.
On December 16, the Alliance and other District of Columbia
lead poisoning prevention advocates won City Council approval of a new lead
poisoning prevention law. Resulting from a two-year campaign, the legislation
strengthens protections for children and begins to
address primary prevention in some higher risk rental housing. DC’s Mayor
Adrian Fenty has pledged to sign the ordinance that was sponsored by Council
Member Jim Graham.
Among the key provisions of the new law are:
• All housing (including common areas in multi-unit buildings) and child-occupied
facilities built prior to March 1, 1978, must be free of lead hazards.
• With some noteworthy exceptions, pre-78 rental units occupied or regularly
visited by a child younger than age six or a pregnant woman must now pass a
lead clearance test performed within 12 months before the tenancy commences.
• The City gains expanded authority to proactively look for lead hazards
in dwellings based on “reasonable belief” that a lead hazard may
exist. This could allow the City to check properties in response to tenant requests
or other known risk factors such as history of past violations or visible deterioration.
• Deteriorated paint in pre-1978 homes will be legally presumed a lead
hazard, unless proven otherwise, reducing the need for specialized inspections.
• Government-ordered repair of lead hazards also will require repair of
the underlying cause of any paint failure and clearance.
• Lead safe work practices will be required for all repairs disturbing
paint in pre-78 properties.
• Federal and local lead disclosure requirements may be enforced by the
City.
• The law creates the lead dust sampling technician discipline in DC and
allows these technicians to perform non-abatement clearance tests or identify
hazards.
Prevention advocates were disappointed that the ordinance
did not include coverage for pre-1978 rental units where no young child or pregnant
woman resides. This is a lost opportunities to bring lead-safety to thousands
of additional homes each year and may encourage increased rental discrimination
on the basis of familial status.
Due to significant loopholes, clearance will not
be required in many key situations, including units where a child is born or
adopted or where a woman becomes pregnant after the start of the tenancy. Clearance
will also not be required for units where leases began before the effective
date of the law. Advocates fought hard for an eleventh hour amendment to close
some of these loopholes, but were opposed by the Mayor and fell short on votes.
Advocates are already planning renewed efforts to build on their successes this
year to further strengthen the law in 2009.
Evaluation
of Rochester Lead Law Finds Substantial Impacts
A thorough evaluation of Rochester’s
Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention law, which went into effect in July 2006,
determined that over 3400 units were made lead safe as a direct result, while
lead poisoning rates fell more dramatically since its passage. The law, supported
by a wide range of lead poisoning prevention advocates, required visual assessments
of rental housing by city inspectors in order to receive a certificate of occupancy.
Rental units located within a high-risk “target area” also had to
pass lead dust wipe tests following the visual inspection.
The Center for Governmental Research, which conducted the
evaluation, found of the 28,000 rental units inspected by the city in the two
years covered by the evaluation, 2,338, or about 8%, failed the visual inspection
for damaged paint surfaces and were required to be repaired using lead safe
work practices. Lead dust tests were then conducted in 37% of the units that
had passed the visual. In total, 1,100 of these units, or over 11% of those
tested, failed the dust test, and were required to be repaired, cleaned, and
re-tested. This finding clearly demonstrates the importance of quantitative
dust testing.
The study also noted that two years after the law went
into effect, the rate of blood lead levels exceeding 10?g/dL in children under
six had dropped to half of what the levels were two years before the law went
into effect. Between the first and second year of the law’s enactment,
EBL rates declined by 30%, compared to a decrease of 19% before the law went
into effect. Additionally, the evaluation found a substantial reduction in the
disparity between EBL rates amongst those living in rental compared to owner-occupied
housing.
The cost of law on the city and on landlords was also measured
in the course of the evaluation. In a survey, a third of property owners spent
no money to prepare or respond to an inspection, 37% spent $1 to $1000, and
the remaining 30% spent more than a thousand dollars. The cost to clear a violation
after corrections was found to only be on average $150, less than half the amount
anticipated when the law was passed. The City of Rochester spends $600,000 annually
to implement the law.
Evaluators recommended several improvements, including
ensuring wider availability of lead safe work practices training and more enforcement
of LSWP requirements, increasing the speed at which violations are addressed
and enforced, and increased data collection.
Human
Exposure to Flame Retardants Gaining more Attention, Research
On December 4th, the EPA released a draft
version of its exposure assessment for polybrominated diphenyl
ethers (PBDEs), a class of flame retardants commonly used in consumer and building
products. The report provides information on the extent to which humans are
exposed to and have a body burden of the chemicals.
PBDEs have been associated in animal studies with liver toxicity, thyroid toxicity,
developmental and reproductive toxicity, and developmental neurotoxicity.
Although EPA’s report does not attempt to determine
if the levels identified are “safe” or are associated with any particular
health effects, it does note that American body burdens of PBDEs are higher
than in people living in other countries (mostly European). The report also
estimates exposures for different groups, estimating young children (1-5 years
old) to have higher total daily exposures than adults.
The significant exposure to children is driven to a large
extent by the presence of PBDEs in indoor dust. Like lead, PBDEs accumulate
in dust and children are exposed through hand to mouth activity. The assessment
notes that indoor dust had concentrations roughly 100 times greater than that
found in outdoor surface soil, and indoor air concentrations roughly three times
higher than outdoor air.
In another report released recently, levels of PBDEs measured
in fetus livers was found to have increased significantly from 1998 to 2006.
According to the study published Dec. 10th in Environmental
Health Perspectives, exposures likely occurred because for the
past 20 to 30 years, PBDEs have been used as additives in many plastics, foams,
and other long-lived products that have widespread commercial and home use.
The team of researchers from Health Canada and McGill University
Health Center in Montreal, Quebec concluded that while commercial production
in North America of two types of PBDEs, penta- and octa-BDEs, stopped in 2004,
products containing them will continue to release the chemicals in coming years.
As a result their concentrations in fetal liver and placentae are now greater
than the tissue burdens for the analyzed organochlorine pesticides and PCBs.
In another setback in efforts by many jurisdictions to
hold former lead pigment makers liable for addressing lead paint problems, a
Wisconsin appeals court rejected the city of Milwaukee's lawsuit to force NL
Industries (formerly National Lead Co., maker of Dutch Boy paints) to fix lead
paint hazards in several thousand city homes. A 2-1
majority voted to uphold a lower court jury's ruling that the company should
not have to pay the city costs of cleaning up the homes. The city sought $52.6
million to cover the costs of a 1999-2006 lead hazard remediation program to
replace or repair old lead-painted windows. The Milwaukee case is one of the
few remaining lead industry lawsuits utilizing a public nuisance cause of action.
A Milwaukee County jury ruled last year the presence of
lead paint in thousands of Milwaukee homes was a public nuisance, but said NL
Industries did not “intentionally and unreasonably engage in conduct”
that caused the nuisance and therefore was not negligent. The city appealed
the verdict, raising claims of error in the jury instructions, evidence and
court procedures. The city maintained that the company
knew about the lead poisoning problem from its products but continued to sell
and promote the product anyway. The appeals court rejected the city's contention
that the company knowingly sold a dangerous product, saying dangers associated
with lead paint dust were largely unknown at the time. The lone dissenting judge
said the city deserves a new trial because of errors in the evidence and jury
instructions. The city could ask the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review the case.
Vermont’s Attorney General
William Sorrell announced on November 21 the creation of an enforcement campaign
around the State’s essential maintenance requirements for lead making
Burlington a priority focus of the State of Vermont’s lead law enforcement
efforts. “Far too many children with lead poisoning come from the Burlington
area,”
Sorrell said. “This is a serious public health problem, and yet, one that
can be avoided.”
Vermont law requires that certain essential maintenance
practices be taken to protect against the release of lead in rental housing
construction before 1978. Annual compliance reports are required.
Beginning in January, the Attorney General’s Office
will send letters to Burlington landlords whose maintenance compliance records
aren’t up to date. The letters will advise landlords to demonstrate that
their properties are in compliance with the Vermont lead laws in the following
90 days or face a State enforcement lawsuit.
The Attorney General’s Office plans on using the
model of the Burlington program in other geographic areas of the State where
large numbers of children have had elevated blood lead levels.
To understand more about Vermont’s current
lead in housing law (signed into law on May 28, 2008) see the summary
of lead provisions in the Vermont bill.
EPA
Considering Formaldehyde Regulations; Public Hearings Scheduled
On November 25th, the United States Environmental Protection
Agency published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) regarding formaldehyde
emissions from pressed wood products. This is the first step towards regulations
that would limit the off-gassing of formaldehyde from composite wood materials,
such as those responsible for the elevated levels of formaldehyde
in FEMA trailers used following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The EPA is soliciting comments, information, and data related
to formaldehyde emissions from pressed wood products. Written comments may be
submitted by February 2nd to regulations.gov using docket number EPA-HQ-OPPT-2008-0627.
Additionally, the EPA will be holding six public hearings in January in Triangle
Park, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; Chicago, Dallas, and Washington DC. Conspicuously
missing from the list of hearing locations is any gulf coast city where so many
individuals were effected by the FEMA trailers. This oversight was severely
criticized by the Sierra Club and other advocates. As a result of public pressure,
an additional hearing on the Gulf Coast is likely to be announced.
EPA’s decision is largely a response to a petition
submitted in March by the Sierra Club, dozens of other organizations including
the Alliance, and signed by approximately 5,000 individuals. The petition called
for the EPA to make the strict formaldehyde regulations established by the California
Air Resources Board nationally applicable. Formaldehyde is a probable human
carcinogen and causes airway and eye irritation.
HUD OHHLHC
Offers Guidance on Lead, Healthy Homes as Part of the Neighborhood Stabilization
Program
The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 allocated
nearly four billion dollars to be distributed to states and localities for the
purposes of redeveloping foreclosed and abandoned properties. Known as the Neighborhood
Stabilization Program (NSP), it allows localities to purchase and rehabilitate
foreclosed properties and make them available to low and moderate-income families.
Last month, HUD’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead
Hazard Control (OHHLHC) issued guidance to states and localities on how the
NSP related to lead and healthy homes efforts. As noted by OHHLHC, the NSP dollars
are subject to the requirements of HUD’s Lead Safe Housing Rule for rehabilitation,
requiring testing, use of lead safe work practices, and possible abatement of
identified lead hazards, depending upon the amount of federal assistance committed.
OHHLHC also provides guidelines for utilizing lead hazard control dollars in
conjunction with NSP dollars, which is allowable as long as the requirements
of both programs are met.
As the NSP also encourages localities to, “not only
to stabilize neighborhoods in the short-term, but to strategically incorporate
modern, green building and energy-efficiency improvements…,” there
is an additional opportunity to incorporate healthy home treatments as part
of the NSP. In their memo, OHHLHC implores localities to utilize NSP funding
to improve health conditions within housing, and outline seven areas for consideration.
The Alliance encourages local advocates to contact their
community’s agency responsible for spending NSP dollars and urge them
to include the healthy homes components suggested by HUD.
Forsyth
County Toughens Standards for Monitoring Lead Poisoning, Lowers Intervention
Level
The Forsyth County (North Carolina - Winston-Salem area)
Board of Health approved regulations early December requiring environmental
investigations for children with a Blood Lead Level of 8 mcg/dL or higher and
allows parents with children with a BLL of 5 mcg/dL or higher to request inspections.
North Carolina state law only requires such steps at a lead level of at least
20 micrograms.
The new regulations recommend creating a standard for primary-care
physicians to check on elevated levels of lead in the blood of children younger
than 6. It recommends that all children be screened for lead at age 1 and at
age 2.
Forsyth County has conducted an average of three environmental
investigations and remediations a year. Health Director Dr. Tim Monroe said
that number could rise to as many as 30 with the new standards, which take effect
January 1, 2009. Health officials warn that the challenge posed by lowering
intervention levels is coming up with the money to ensure proper adherence to
the new regulations.
Federal
Lead Disclosure Charges for Two New England Real Estate Corporations
In early November, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
brought a lead disclosure violation complaint against NRT New England LLC and
Coldwell Banker Real Estate Services LLC, the corporate owners of numerous Coldwell
Banker real estate brokerage offices in southern Connecticut, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. These firms face civil penalties of up to $11,000
per violation for 102 alleged violations of lead paint disclosure rules in 34
real estate transaction between 2005 and 2007. Federal law requires that landlords
and property owners or their agents notify prospective tenants or purchasers
about the potential for lead paint hazards in residential properties. This case
is one of the largest cases brought against a real estate company. A spokesperson
for NRT New England, said all Coldwell Banker offices would fully cooperate
with the EPA.
As announced in the November
Alliance Alert, the Alliance is now offering a two-day “Train-the-trainer”
class at locations around the country to help organizations to become accredited
trainers under EPA’s new Remodeling, Renovation and Painting (RRP) rule.
The first class will be held on January 21-22 in Trenton, NJ and then February
16-17th in Atlanta, GA (in partnership with the Neighborworks Training Institute).
Two more classes will be held in Raleigh/Durham, NC and Denver, CO late February
to early March (exact date TBA). A fifth class is scheduled for April 27th-28th
in Orlando, FL, as a pre-conference workshop at the Lead and Healthy Homes Conference.
Visit the Alliance's website for updates on the dates
and locations for these classes. To register for a class, or for
more information, contact Patrick MacRoy at pmacroy@afhh.org.
* * * * *
If you appreciate the news and information in the Alliance
Alert, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Alliance! We
rely on donations from individuals and organizations to allow us to do policy
work in Washington and across the country. You can make a one-time donation
or sign up to make a recurring monthly or quarterly donation on our website.
Thank you for your support!
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Upcoming Events
The Alliance will also be offering a two-day “Train-the-trainer”
class on how to successfully teach the RRP class and become accredited under
the RRP rule. Visit the Alliance's website for dates
and locations for these classes. For more information, contact
Patrick MacRoy at pmacroy@afhh.org.
A national conference on “Approaches to Managing
Mold in Buildings” will be held April 27-29, 2009, in Orlando, FL. Sponsored
by the University of Tulsa, the conference will cover the “latest research
and applied outcomes to use in field practice from key national and international
experts.” For more information, visit www.utulsa.edu/iaqprogram
or call 918-631-3088.
The 2009 National Lead Poisoning Prevention and Healthy
Homes Conference will occur April 28-May 1, 2009, in Orlando, FL. The conference
will provide a wealth of information and a series of panel discussions from
healthy homes professionals and advocates. For more information, see www.LeadMoldConferences.com.
Save the date for the symposium entitled “Promoting
Environmental and Policy Change to Support Healthy Aging,” to be held
Sept. 15-16, 2009, in Chapel Hill, NC. This symposium is a third in a series
funded by CDC's Healthy Aging Program. More information on this symposium can
be found at www.prc-han.org.
The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public
Health will be hosting its First Annual Minority Health in the Midwest Conference,
"Minority Health in a Global Community: Midwestern Perspectives on Health,
Poverty, and the Environment"
February 27, 2009. This conference will highlight the work of emerging scholars
and researchers. Topics should reflect minority health in the Midwest. Registration
is free. Conference and registration info is available at www.publichealthlearning.com/Public/Announcements/default.aspx#announcement203
