This dataset includes nearly 80 components of ordinances that govern the maintenance and inspection of existing housing, including provisions for habitability, injury, mold and pest prevention, air quality and lead and other toxins, including tobacco smoke, in the home. The ordinances presented here cover unincorporated King County, and all 39 municipalities therein.
This comparative dataset focuses on some of the most important law for controlling VOCs, HAPs, and methane, and only examines laws pertaining to air quality for operations and equipment on the well pad site.
University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law
Regulators are implementing new programs that require manufacturers of products containing certain chemicals of concern to identify, evaluate, and adopt viable, safer alternatives. Such programs raise the difficult question for policymakers and regulated businesses of which alternatives are “viable” and “safer.” To address that question, these programs use “alternatives analysis,” an emerging methodology that integrates issues of human health and environmental effects with technical feasibility and economic impact.
University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law
Emerging "prevention-based" approaches to chemical regulation seek to minimize the use of toxic chemicals by mandating or directly incentivizing the adoption of viable safer alternative chemicals or processes. California and Maine are beginning to implement such programs, requiring manufacturers of consumer products containing certain chemicals of concern to identify and evaluate potential safer alternatives. This article identifies an integrated set of design principles for regulatory alternatives analysis, and illustrates the application of those principles.
Childhood lead poisoning is widely recognized as one of the most significant environmental health problems impacting children in the United States, as well as many other countries. Lead is one of the longest-known, best-understood, and most well-monitored environmental toxins. Most (but not all) children with elevated blood lead levels are exposed to lead through lead hazards in older housing. Local policy approaches aim to reduce childhood lead poisoning by reducing the prevalence of lead hazards in high-risk housing, and do so by improving maintenance practices and controlling lead hazards.
Increased exposure to lead-contaminated drinking water in Washington, DC, is a possible cause for a sharp increase in fetal deaths and somewhat lower birth rates in the region in 2000 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2009, according to a new study published online by the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
The study attributes the spike in fetal deaths from 2001-2003 to a switch in drinking water disinfectant from chlorine to chloramine, which caused an unintended release of lead from plumbing material into drinking water.
Two galvanic pipe-loop couples (lead-copper and lead-bronze) were exposed to controlled changes in water quality (disinfectant, pH, alkalinity, and phosphate) and monitored for changes in lead and copper release. In addition, open circuit potential profiles were measured along the junction of dissimilar metals to determine the extent of the zone affected by galvanic coupling.
This study considers mandates requiring the partial replacement of lead pipes and the potential impact on rates of lead in the water.
The cumulative mass of lead release indicated that a typical partial replacement configuration did not provide a net reduction in lead when compared to 100 percent lead pipe. The partially replaced service line configuration also had a much greater likelihood of producing water with "spikes" of lead particulates at higher flow rates, while tending to produce lower levels of lead at very low flow rates.
It has recently been proposed that lead contamination of drinking water arising from galvanic corrosion of lead and copper pipe will be minimized if the lead and copper pipes are brought into direct contact when compared to pipe separations of 1 cm to 15 cm and external electrical contact via a grounding strap. A direct, four month test of this hypothesis was conducted with measurement of galvanic current and lead release to water.
