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Lead pipes in Chicago

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Lead pipes were once widely used in plumbing because of the metal’s low melting point and durability.  However, lead exposure can cause developmental problems, cardiovascular issues, and organ damage.  The federal government banned new lead pipes in 1986, but millions of lead service lines remain in service to this day.

Chicago has the highest number of lead water service lines in the nation.  An estimated 412,000 out of 491,000 service lines are at least partly made of lead or contaminated with it.  Chicago has a plan to replace all its lead service lines, put in place in response to a Biden-era EPA mandate, but the work is not expected to be complete until 2076. 

The lengthy timeline will expose many more children and adults to the risk of toxic drinking water, and rising temperatures from the warming climate may exacerbate the risk by causing more lead to leach off of pipes and into water.  Lead is particularly harmful to children and experts emphasize that there is no safe level of lead exposure.

The biggest problem, of course, is financial.  The $15 billion in national lead service line replacement funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law will expire next year.

In Chicago, majority Black and Latino neighborhoods bear the biggest burden of lead pipes.  Some 90% of these areas have lead service lines.  And lead pipes are also common within homes.  Just replacing the private side of home pipes can cost tens of thousands of dollars, far outside the means of most homeowners.

Chicago’s lead pipes are a serious problem.

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Chicago Has a Huge Lead Pipe Problem—and We Mapped It

Photo, posted March 19, 2015, courtesy of Conal Gallagher via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Law To Tackle Climate Change | Earth Wise

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The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in mid-August is the most comprehensive U.S. legislation addressing climate change ever enacted.   It contains $369 billion in funding for clean energy and electric vehicle tax breaks, domestic manufacturing of batteries and solar panels, and pollution reduction.

The legislation for the most part makes use of carrots rather than sticks to coax American consumers and industry away from reliance on fossil fuels.  Rather than establishing more carbon taxes, mandates, and penalties, the law largely makes use of tax credits to provide incentives for the use of clean energy.

The law provides a large mix of tax breaks intended to bring down the costs of solar, wind, batteries, electric cars, heat pumps, and other clean technology.  For example, consumers will get a $7,500 credit for purchasing many new electric car models and about $4,000 for buying a used vehicle.

On the stick side of the ledger, oil and gas companies that emit methane above certain threshold levels will incur fees that escalate over time.  The law also increases the cost to the oil industry for extracting fossil fuels from public lands.

The act provides $60 billion for overall environmental justice priorities, including $15 billion targeted specifically for low-income and disadvantaged communities. There are many other provisions in the law addressing multiple climate-related issues.

According to three separate analyses by economic modelers, the investments from the Inflation Reduction Act are likely to cut pollution by about 40% below 2005 levels by the year 2030.

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The US finally has a law to tackle climate change

Photo, posted December 15, 2021, courtesy of Mario Duran-Ortiz via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Making Coal To Fight Climate Change

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Coal is the most harmful fossil fuel for the environment and, furthermore, for human health.  Its use has stubbornly persisted because it is so plentiful and, therefore, cheap.  As a result, a big part of efforts to fight climate change is finding a way to remove the carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere by the combustion of coal.

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia have developed a remarkable technology that in effect reverses the process that has led to soaring CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  They have found a way to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into coal, after which it can be stored cheaply and safely underground.

Most previous carbon capture and storage technologies have focused on compressing carbon dioxide gas into a liquid form and then pumping it into rock formations.  Such techniques are rather expensive, require lots of energy, and pose risks that the liquid CO2 could escape from its underground storage sites.  More recently, research on solid metal catalysts has led to the possibility of turning CO2 into solid carbon, but most of these reactions require very high temperatures and use a lot of energy.

The new technique developed at RMIT uses a new class of catalysts based on metal alloys.  With a small jolt of electricity applied at room temperature, CO2 can be converted into solid carbon – basically, coal.

If this technique can be industrialized economically, it would be like turning back the clock by taking carbon dioxide that entered the atmosphere by the combustion of coal and turning it back into coal and putting it back underground.  It seems like excellent environmental justice.

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Scientists Turn Atmospheric CO2 Into Coal

Photo, posted March 16, 2015, courtesy of Will Fisher via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)