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Strategic Planning Document -
Environment and Natural Resources
Research Successes
75% Reduction in Blood Lead Levels in Children
During the past two decades, health
assessments have demonstrated adverse effects
resulting from lower exposures to lead than
previously recognized. At high doses lead can
cause psychiatric and neurological changes,
digestive problems, kidney failure, and death. We
now know that in children much lower doses of
lead adversely affects nervous system
development, learning ability, and behavior.
In the late 1970s, 88% of American children
between the ages of one to five had blood lead
concentrations above levels that health experts
now consider safe. In the United States,
exposures to lead have resulted from flaking and
chalking lead-based paint, drinking water
contaminated by lead pipes and fixtures, and air
pollution from leaded gasoline and other sources.
Research on exposures and the effects of
lead formed the basis for government actions
such as the ban on the use of lead house paint,
lead-soldered cans, and the phasing down of lead
additives in gasoline. As a result, the amount of
lead in the average American's bloodstream fell
more than 75% over the past 15 years, and only
8.9% of American children now have blood lead
levels that are considered hazardous.
The challenge today is to address residual
lead risks for people, particularly children, who
live in low-income housing with lead paint
hazards. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Department of Health and Human
Services, National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, Department of Housing and
Urban Development, and Centers for Disease
Control have a coordinated strategy to address
these risks.
New Technologies Clean Up Hazardous Waste Faster, Cheaper
New remediation technologies can
significantly lower costs and shorten the time
for cleaning up contaminated soils and
groundwater. Previously, treatment involved
simply pumping and treating groundwater and
excavating soils. A new technology, in situ air
stripping, injects air through a horizontal well.
The diffused air contains the hazardous chemicals
and is transported to the surface via another well
in which gases are extracted. This process is now
accepted as the industry standard and is five
times more cost effective than the traditional
pump-and-treat technology.
Cooperative research between federal
research laboratories and private industry has
successfully developed other new technologies.
The Petroleum Environmental Research Forum,
for example, has demonstrated that certain
nutrients will greatly increase the breakdown of
toxic chemicals by microbes indigenous to some
soils. This research shows that the microbes
nourished in a specific area form a biological
barrier, or microbial filter, and convert
contaminants into clean water and carbon dioxide.
This technology can be used to clean up oil spills
from underground storage tanks. The breakdown
of such compounds in situ, opposed to having to
be removed from the site, provides a far more
cost-effective cleanup method.
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