Trump’s Plan to Make America Healthy Again? Continued Exposure to Lead in Water.

For decades, scientists and medical workers have warned that even low levels of lead in human blood can have a deleterious impact on health. But that has not stopped the Trump administration from threatening to end the few measures that currently attempt to limit exposure to a wide range of toxicants, including lead.

Public health advocates nationwide collectively breathed a sigh of relief when, in the fall of 2024, the Biden-Harris administration announced a rule requiring water utilities to replace nearly all lead pipes by 2034.

But following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, his GOP allies indicated their desire to upend the effort.

They have a multipronged approach: House Republicans have introduced a joint resolution to repeal the rule. They’ve also invoked something called the Congressional Review Act, which allows Trump’s administration to disregard rules that were promulgated during the final months of the previous administration.

If the Trump administration is successful, millions of people will continue to be exposed to lead and other damaging neurotoxins.

Children — especially those under the age of 6 — will be particularly vulnerable, and likely harmed, if the government refuses to remediate their excessive exposure.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children who swallow or breathe in lead are adversely impacted, with possible health complications, including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, hearing and speech difficulties, and slowed growth and physical development.

These issues do not mysteriously vanish as kids become adolescents and then adults. In fact, lead-borne damage to a child’s central nervous system correlates with high blood pressure, anemia, headaches, cardiovascular problems and kidney disease in later life. Moreover, lead accumulates in the body over time and is stored in teeth and bones, becoming a potential source of fetal exposure during pregnancy.

We know how lead gets into our bodies. Research by environmental scientists has shown that while there are numerous sources of exposure, several particular culprits pose the greatest danger: aging and corroding lead pipes and service lines that bring tainted water into our homes, schools and workplaces; lead solder from pipe fittings; antiquated lead-containing water fixtures, sinks, faucets and bubblers; and chipping lead paint that spews dust into the air.

“The new administration says it wants to ‘make America healthy again.’ This is hard to do if you allow lead to get into children’s brains.”

Lead exposure is particularly acute in some of the U.S.’s largest cities. A study released in 2024 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that 68 percent of Chicago kids under the age of 6 live in a household with lead-tainted tap water, with a total of 2.7 million Windy City residents impacted by the poison.

Chicago is not an anomaly. Research conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund in 2024 named Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Detroit, Michigan; Indianapolis, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New York City and St. Louis, Missouri, as the cities with the most lead service lines. Moreover, a recent study in Syracuse, New York, found lead in almost all of the city’s public schools; 10 percent of the children tested showed elevated blood lead levels.

But lead is not confined to urban areas — it has also been found in rural and suburban towns of all sizes, and in all 50 states. That said, both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and environmental activists know that the toxin has a disproportionate impact on low-income children of color since they typically attend the country’s most underresourced and neglected schools and live in the most dilapidated and ill-kept housing.

Removing Lead Pipes Was a Biden-Harris Goal

All told, the EPA estimates that lead pipes still service approximately 9 million homes across the U.S. Even more concerning, no one knows how many lead pipes currently funnel contaminated water into schools and daycare centers.

But before the new administration took over, remediation was beginning.

This followed the October 2024 announcement by the Biden-Harris administration that would put an end to lead’s ubiquitous presence in water delivery systems. In fact, the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements rule had bipartisan support and updated a 1991 rule, allocating $2.6 billion to identify and replace lead pipes in every part of the country; an additional $35 million in competitive grants was also made available.

The administration touted its long-term impact.

The EPA has estimated that, if successfully implemented, the Get the Lead Out Initiative would protect 900,000 babies from being born with low birth weight and prevent 1,500 premature adult deaths from heart disease. These benefits are projected to outweigh the cost by a factor of 13 due to lowered expenditures for medical care and other support services.

There are, however, gaps in the initiative: The rule excludes drinking fountains, sinks and other fixtures that carry toxins into schools, child care centers and offices from the replacement mandate.

The rule contains other gaps as well. Although lead has been banned in gasoline and paint for decades, Tom Neltner, national director of Unleaded Kids, a national organization founded in 2023 to address the cumulative impact of lead exposure, told Truthout that because lead is not only found in water and water delivery systems, additional forms of exposure need to be addressed and remediated.

For example, he says that small-engine airplanes that use pistons are additional vectors. “These planes still use leaded fuel. As they fly, they sprinkle little bits of lead onto us. Even if the amount is small, if you’re getting lead spewed on you, it can cause problems,” he explained. “Lead is also in our soil and can get into the foods we eat.” The FDA, he continued, recently put limits on the amount of lead allowed in baby food (10 parts per billion in fruits, vegetables, yogurt and meats, and 20 parts per billion in single-ingredient root vegetables and cereals).

Lead is also present in approximately 500,000 miles of phone lines crisscrossing the nation, Neltner said, “and there are lead pipes [that once enabled phone lines to function] on the bottom of our rivers and streams. Both send lead into the air and water.”

“Clean water in schools is not negotiable even if the feds refuse to provide the funding, states and localities are not off the hook.”

Then there’s our housing stock. Neltner explained that homes built before 1940 typically contain lead paint and “every time a cabinet or window is opened or closed, small amounts of dust enter the atmosphere.” Lastly, he says, electric vehicles use lead-acid batteries. “When these batteries are recycled, they release lead.” The same, he says, is true of recycled steel.

“The new administration says it wants to ‘make America healthy again,’” he adds. “This is hard to do if you allow lead to get into children’s brains.”

As Trump Pushes Back on Environmental Rules, What Can Cities and States Do?

Mandy M. Gunasekara, director of the right-wing Independent Women’s Forum Center on Energy and Conservation, and an author of Project 2025’s recommendations for environmental policy, has urged the Trump administration to eviscerate “costly, job-killing regulations” and “liberty-crushing” rules while making the EPA more “cooperative” to the business community. Defunding research into the impact of toxic chemical exposure — including lead — is high on the agenda.

Despite these threats, attorney John Rumpler, director of Environment America’s Clean Water Program, told Truthout that even if the Trump administration overturns environmental protection policies, there is still a lot that cities and states can do to ensure that people have access to clean water.

Some localities, he says, have already passed measures to require filters on all taps in schools, child care centers and public parks. “Milwaukee public schools have installed more than 3,200 water bottle-filling stations in schools to replace lead-laced fountains,” he said. Likewise, Washington, D.C. and Detroit have raised money to replace contaminated water sources.

“Of course, schools should not have to go hat in hand to funders, but they may have to,” Rumpler says. “Clean water in schools is not negotiable. It has to get done. Our preference is for the federal government to ensure that we get the lead out. Absolutely. But even if the feds refuse to provide the funding, states and localities are not off the hook.”

“Seventy-four million people voted for Trump and we have to talk to them about the things they likely care about, including access to clean, safe water for drinking, cooking and bathing,” Rumpler says. “We need to argue about the importance of funding a wide array of environmental policies, things like stopping sewage overflow and runoff so that we can all swim in the water at our beaches. These are things we should be able to agree on.” What’s more, he adds, getting the lead out of our air, soil and water supply should also be a baseline goal and entry point for organizing; not surprisingly, a recent survey by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that removing lead pipes was supported by nearly 90 percent of U.S. residents.

Cori Bell, senior attorney at the NRDC, agrees, but told Truthout that even during more environmentally friendly administrations, turf battles often meant that little to nothing got done to remove lead from the water consumed by the nation’s students.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for making sure there is potable water for school meal provision, the EPA and state governments all point fingers at each other” regarding who is responsible for what, Bell said.

Nonetheless, like Rumpler, she applauds the efforts of those schools that have installed filters on all water sources. She further notes that because water testing is variable — and can show different results at different times of day, at different room temperatures, and when water has been sitting in pipes for an extended period — the NRDC is taking a “filter first” approach.

“You can’t perfect testing,” Bell said. “Filters have been tested over time and offer more health protections than anything else. Adding filters and maintaining and upgrading them is also less time-consuming than figuring out which sections of pipe contain lead. Lead is a massive problem. Our goal is making sure kids are protected from it.”

A number of education unions and social justice organizations, including the National Education Association, the Waterkeeper Alliance and the Environmental Defense Fund, share these goals. They also support more robust protections to curtail the presence of chemicals in our air and water.

This may be an uphill battle since there are already clear signs of intended rollbacks.

Chelsea McDonald, manager of the Waterkeeper Alliance’s Clean Water Defense campaign, told Truthout that the Toxic Substances Control Act, first promulgated in 1976 to allow the EPA to require chemical companies to test product safety, came under fire at the first hearing of the House Committee on the Environment in January. “They discussed rolling back TSCA so chemical companies can produce more chemicals and put them out faster,” she said.

Preserving the minimal protections that currently exist, she says, has become imperative, even as activists continue to fight climate change and advocate for water safety, clean air and protection of natural resources.

Also on the agenda is community care.

Michelle Mabson is co-founder of Black Millennials for Flint (since renamed Young, Gifted and Green) and a senior staff scientist at Earthjustice. She told Truthout that in addition to advocating necessary environmental protections, environmental activists need to pay close attention to the children impacted by the lead crisis to ensure that they get the attention and early intervention services they’re eligible for. Although nothing can undo the damage caused by lead, she says that “the way we treat each person matters. We also need to support universal lead testing for every child.”

Furthermore, Mabson urges environmental justice activists to demand reparations for the people of Flint, Michigan, who continue to suffer from health problems. After the city decided to pipe river water “awash with chloride from road salt runoff” into the city in 2014, more than 10,000 people, including scores of young children, began having health problems.

Despite a $626 million settlement that was approved in 2021, Mabson reports that none of the victims have received a dime of compensation. The only beneficiaries have been the lawyers who represented the residents.

But the fact that lead pipes are still in use in all 50 states should be enough to keep a spotlight on the lead exposure in our homes, schools and workplaces.

As Cori Bell of the NRDC told Truthout, “Given how long we’ve known that lead is bad for children and adults, you’d think we’d have made more progress on getting rid of it. I don’t know what we’re waiting for.”