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> Anyway, I printed out the EPA guidelines, shouted them down when they fired up the back hoe that they were in violation of federal law.

When in doubt, call up your city's code enforcement office. They love showing up to work sites and catching contractors violating code. And the contractors will listen, too.

A someone outside of the US (and who never quite understood the state/federal divide!), I'm really curious about what state regulatory enforcement is in now. It seemed [0] that the recent Republican government aimed to make as much damage as possible to these safety nets. Are they still there and functional?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Do...

The states and larger cities have their own sets of regulations and enforcement agencies so it's not a simple question, but as best I can tell COVID restrictions and hiring issues have been a bigger blow to regulatory enforcement than the past administration, any changes they made would be marginal in comparison and are likely already undone by the new administration.

It's not easy to hire good staff when budgets are cut.

> who never quite understood the state/federal divide

This is key. The states in the US hold a huge amount of the actual power. As a practical matter the EPA will never be involved with something like this. It will be the state DEQ (or equivalent agency) that really has the teeth.

The original intent of the US foundation was that state be ran like nations are ran in the EU. That is, for the most part they are independent with a federal government that makes sure everyone plays nice.

That all changed with the civil war and the 14th amendment. After that, the federal government gained a LOT of power that it didn't previously have.

However, it's not something that was universal. In the US, federal still, for the most part, only deals with things that can be conceived to effect more than one state at the same time. There is, for example, no federal murder law.

With that in mind, you have 50 states and for the most part, how the little things are handled are entirely up to each state. What a state will do in regards to regulations and safety nets is simply all over the board.

From a non american viewpoint, I find it impressive that states like Florida and Texas have been able to do away with covid restrictions independently of all other states.

It’s a double-edged sword. California or other states might have more environmentally friendly legislation or support net neutrality and such. I lived in US and Europe and it is what it is. I can see the benefits and the downsides.

Very generally, federal agencies write nation-wide minimum sets of regulations (which have to be based on laws passed by Congress, which in turn have to be grounded in allowances in the Constitution - powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the people/states [see below]). Some of these federal agencies have enforcement officers, but nowhere near enough to police everything. In the case of the EPA, the rules relate to pollution, toxic materials, etc (lead paint, asbestos, petro-chemicals, etc). FDA is about food production and drug safety. OSHA is work-place safety.

States (and cities, counties, etc) generally have their own building codes and enforcement agencies. But, the states still have to follow federal rules where they exist.

So, in this case, there are EPA rules about lead paint handling. Very likely three are also OSHA rules dealing with worker safety when dealing with lead (wearing a respirator). And while the EPA might have some enforcement officers, they won't be interested in a single house renovation (more likely interested in factories, sky-scrapers, etc). OSHA also has enforcement, but a lot of that ends up being after-the-fact (ie somebody loses a limb, OSHA gets called, and shuts down a factory until remedial action taken).

But, the local building inspectors office is able to enforce the EPA rules as well as local building codes. And there's probably a local work-place safety office as well. But, in the case of small construction jobs, local code enforcement is the easiest/fastest way to get something on-site changed.

With respect to the Trump administration, you are correct - he went out of his way to install department heads who were either incompetent or had business goals opposed to the agency they were tasked with leading.

[] - The 14th Amendment gives the federal government the power to ensure all people are protected equally under the law. Pretty darn broad power there. Similarly, the Commerce Clause in the Constitution grants the federal government the power to regulate trade between the states and other countries. Again, you can read that very widely - pretty much any serious level of commerce impacts more than one state.

> A someone outside of the US (and who never quite understood the state/federal divide!), I'm really curious about what state regulatory enforcement is in now. It seemed [0] that the recent Republican government aimed to make as much damage as possible to these safety nets. Are they still there and functional?

These are city-level regulations, and they're almost completely isolated from politicking.

Generally speaking: Most (but not all) news stories about US politics are greatly exaggerated. News media here competes for clicks, and the easiest way to get clicks is to transform every possible story into the biggest catastrophe possible.

In reality, while parts of our regulatory structure need some attention and improvement, the United States isn't really an unregulated wasteland. Just try building anything that doesn't meet code and you'll be in hot water very quickly, regardless of where you live here.

This is super common in my experience: contractors pretending to be ignorant of safety regulations to speed up work.

They just got a slap on the wrist? It seems like there should be much heavier penalties for spreading a neurotoxin ... ...

Would lead paints have a relatively unique RF refractive signature? Wondering if flying a drone with some wave guides could inventory buidlings with external lead paint, and then use the data for permitting to require additional environmental controls.

You really only need to know the age of the building to know if it has lead paint, generally.

Here's a link if you're worried:

"Lead Paint – What Years Did They Use It?":

https://buyersask.com/education-center/lead-paint-what-years...

Note that every contractor I've spoken to assumes anything built before 1978 has lead paint. My understanding is that it's probably going to be more expensive to test every spot you need to test for lead paint vs just treating it as if it is lead paint in the first place.

If it _had_ lead paint. Could have been scraped and repainted later.

Scraping and repainting alone won't remove the lead. You need to do actual remediation. In some places there would be records of permits for that.

The lead paint generally has been painted over multiple times, so the surface would be modern paint with the lead underneath.

>but his general attitude was that we were overblowing the problem.

I've had similar experience when talking with contractors about it. I've been told multiple times that unless a child eats a handful everyday its not a problem.

I'd love to see a massive project to test every child in the nation. It's hard to plan without good data. Once we know who is the worst off, we can better protect everyone. Of course, property owners have massive political clout, and they don't want to find any problems.

I'll believe that when I see it. We can't even test for a virus that's killing 400K/year. Nor can we provide safe drinking water for a city that's been stuck with crappy water for years and well publicized to boot.

Universal testing is very expensive and provides minimal additional data.

That's not an argument for no surveillance, it's an argument for reasonable surveillance.

Modern statistics is based around the principle of random sampling for very good reasons: it works. With a small but properly-conducted and truly random sample, you'll gain a tremendous level of insight over a large domain. The additional resolution increases with the square of the sample size. If you want twice the resolution you need four times the sample. Expanding a sample 10x only buys about 3.3x reduction in error. But your costs are up 10x.

In the case of environmental toxic exposure, you'd want to conduct stratified sampling that focuses on known problematic areas (high population, high exposure), but also includes areas in which exposure risk is thought to be low.

For specific treatment, you'd likely need to test individuals. That's not the same as determining where the problem is. And ultimately remediation and prevention is hugely more effective that retrospective treatment. In the case of lead, once there's been exposure, harm has already been done.

Were they wearing masks while working? Lead is dangerous, but outdoors and masked, the risk is low. I kind of doubt that there’s even a big risk to your kids if you’re in the next house over. The problem is fine particulates which don’t dissipate quickly in open air.

Thanks for standing up for your neighbors and community. We need more people like you who can sound the alarm for us who are unaware of the hazards all around us.