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EPA/Enforcement 8/31/2009 4:00:18 PM EST EPA considering petition requesting ban on lead wheel weights Partner, Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley EPA has responded to a petition by the Sierra Club and Ecology Center, pursuant to TSCA, to prohibit the manufacture, processing, and distribution of lead wheel balancing weights. See 74 FR 34,342 [http://www.epa.gov/EPA-TOX/2009/July/Day-15/t16815.htm]. The petition is similar to one rejected by EPA in 2005. The Federal Register notice stated that EPA was seeking information about ways children and the environment could be exposed (e.g., dust around roadways, emissions from the smelting of the weights, emissions from the shredding of cars, and impacts on water from residues washed off of roadways).
The petitioners cited to "new information" since the rejection of the 2005 petition. The petition argued that the voluntary program which EPA launched in 2008 [see http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastemin/nlfwwi.htm] does not go far enough in that said program will eliminate no more than 1/3 of the lead wheel weight market. The petition also asserted that, since 2005, 1.6 million pounds of lead has fallen off of wheels onto streets where the wheel weights could be picked up and played with by children or ground into dust by vehicles.
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