Some great news in childhood and environmental health: A new EPA rule requiring utilities to remove all lead water pipes in 10 years
The industry says, unsurprisingly, it will cost a lot — the EPA estimates it will take about $45 billion over a decade.
For fun, let’s double that and call it about $10 billion per year. That’s less than the $12B Americans spend on Halloween annually ($3.6B just on candy), and the $11B the US oil and gas industry spent just on exploration last year (for fossil fuels that will never be used).
This is a huge societal AND economic boon. Lead poisoning, especially in kids, has severe costs — lower IQ, lost lifetime earnings, higher healthcare and education costs. Research from The Lancet shows the global economic toll of lead poisoning is in the trillions.
Cleaner air and water creates societal benefits that far outweigh the costs (I’d argue that the Clean Air Act is the most profitable law in human history).
Of course here’s the rub with environmental issues: expenses fall in one place (specific sectors with lobbying power or collective government spending) and benefits are diffuse (across everyone). So it’s hard to grasp the scale of the benefits. How do you know how much money you’ll save (or make), or how much better your life will be from suffering less from asthma or having higher IQ?!
We can’t let the upfront costs obscure the massive benefits of laws like this. But, to state the obvious, we only get these laws with the right administration in place (elections matter, a lot).
But, if and when this is implemented, we can look forward to breathing and drinking easier.
(some discussion on this post on LinkedIn here)
(Image: Tom, Pixabay)
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