Flint Michigan lead in drinking water

Let me go back to some other externalities. Anybody have any questions about externalities right now? We can look at some things that used to be permitted that are no longer permitted. We just had a big hullabaloo last summer about the lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. There's a professor at Virginia Tech who I know won an award because he was one of the whistleblowers. He was the whistleblower because what they found is yes, the water in Michigan was above the EPA requirement level for lead. Today it probably would have been within the level fifteen years ago, but whenever they learn to analyze for lead in water more precisely, the EPA drops the level to the new level that they can monitor. They say we don't want any lead in the water. All those mothers who say their children are not doing well in schools because they have lead poisoning — well, I don't think it really is lead poisoning, I think some of those kids just have bad genetics. But nonetheless, lead will hurt children.

Real developmental-disability outcomes from lead exposure (Trail from zinc-smelting airborne lead; Flint from drinking water). Used in tension with Tom's view that EPA limits have over-tightened.

When I bought my house, which was finished in 1938 — built during the Depression, took them about five or six years — there was a piece of lead pipe over the laundry sink and I took it out. Most of the lead pipe has been replaced; it's typically copper pipe now. But apparently in Medford, Massachusetts, forty-seven percent of the homes have lead pipe for their service water. It won't corrode for hundreds of years. But now we won't even let people use lead-tin solder on the copper pipes, because of the EPA. Every town will send you with your water bill an annual statement of how much lead and how much arsenic is in your water. As we get more and more precise in our ability to measure the amount of lead, the EPA requirements become lower and lower, because parents think their children are stupid because they're drinking the local water. And I say that's not the reason — it's genetic. It has nothing to do with the amount of lead in the water.

Mentioned in passing as current news (Spring 2016) to introduce lead as a social externality. Pivots to Tom's own house renovation to remove lead paint.

Social externalities. Lead. What do we know about lead? Flint, Michigan is in the news. My wife and I rented a house down the street ten houses down — moved in October, we'd lived in our other house for thirty-seven years. Last week they came in to start the construction. You can go through my house, see the studs, see the outside walls. I'm ripping out all the plumbing, all the wiring, in this ninety-year-old house. I wanted to get rid of the lead paint. One of these days that old house, built in the 1930s, they're going to come by and I'll never be able to sell it — it's got lead paint. Some environmentalist is going to say you can't sell a house that has lead paint. The rules were different in 1938. But there's no lead paint in that house anymore — it's all in the dumpster.

Passing reference (Holman alludes to "all the people up in arms over the lead in school drinking water") to motivate the historical lead-pipe legacy.

Another example. Professor Eagar gave me this yesterday. He's having a renovation done on his house. Have any of you ever done any soldering, either jewelry or things like that? Everyone has plumbing, and years ago all the plumbing was joined together by lead-tin solder. Over time there were environmental restraints on the lead. You've probably seen all over the news, all the people up in arms over the lead in school drinking water — that's a result of the pipes having lead joints. And they probably actually had lead in the composition of the pipes, they're so old.