Environmental racism and the need for private well protections

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The health effects of racism are so well established that the American Public Health Association launched a National Campaign Against Racism in 2015 (1). Racial disparities in adverse environmental exposures reflect underlying structural and institutional racism ingrained in land use patterns, development policy, facility siting, and municipal zoning decisions, which influence community proximity to environmental hazards and prevent equitable access to essential public health services including regulated public water supplies (2, 3). Childhood lead poisoning is a prominent example of racial disparities in hazardous exposures: 5.6% of non-Hispanic Black children have blood lead levels exceeding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) action limit of 5 µg/L compared to 2.4% of non-Hispanic White children (4). In PNAS, MacDonald Gibson et al. evaluated blood lead monitoring records for 59,483 children in North Carolina from 2002 to 2015 and compared blood lead concentrations for children reliant on private wells versus those reliant on regulated public water systems (5). Their primary finding—that children using private wells had significantly elevated blood lead concentrations compared to children using regulated public water systems—highlights the inadequacy of current regulatory policy to protect the most highly exposed and susceptible communities and underscores the need for immediate public health interventions to reduce water contaminant exposures for households reliant on private wells. These findings also illuminate how long-standing structural racism results in environmental disparities affecting our most susceptible populations. Although the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has regulated lead in public drinking water systems since 1991 through the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), private well owners are not subject to any EPA regulations. Over 40 million US residents using private wells are solely responsible for testing their water for an assortment of contaminants, installing appropriate treatment systems, and maintaining … [↵][1]1Email: aen2136{at}cumc.columbia.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1