"If we can keep bringing down blood-lead levels in kids, there could be considerable benefits over the years to a wide swath of our population," said Bruce Lanphear, a researcher at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, and a member of a scientific panel that urged the EPA to set tougher lead standards.
Dozens of monitors scattered across the country already check lead levels in the air, but the EPA estimated that it would take dozens more to track emissions from polluters releasing at least half a ton of lead.
Industry lobbyists waged a fierce battle against the new standard and the additional monitoring. They argued that lingering dust from leaded gasoline and lead paint are a much bigger threat to children than ongoing industrial emissions.
In written comments filed with the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget, lead battery manufacturers and recyclers said many of their facilities would fail to comply with the tougher standard. If factories had to reduce lead emissions, they said, companies would be forced to move operations to countries with lax environmental policies.
The Assn. of Battery Recyclers wrote in comments to the Office of Management and Budget that a tougher lead rule would lead to "environmental and human health risks attributable to mishandling, improper disposal and illegal export of millions of spent lead acid batteries."
A related organization, the Battery Council International, told the EPA that the more stringent monitoring standards would be "unjustifiably low."
Last month, two weeks after lobbyists from the industry met with Bush administration officials, the White House ordered the EPA to raise the monitoring threshold to a ton or more, federal records show.
An industry lawyer declined to comment, saying the publicly filed comments "speak for themselves."
EPA officials said states could add lead monitors if they thought it was necessary.
"We selected an approach that would still ensure monitoring around those sources that have the potential to contribute to a violation of the standards," Cathy Milbourn, an EPA spokeswoman, said in a statement.
