Businesses brace for fallout from lead poisoning.

For businesses still reeling from the asbestos fallout, here comes lead.

Lead, one of the world's oldest known toxins, is shaping up to be the top environmental hazard of the 1990s, just as asbestos became the most dreaded substance of the 1980s.

It's not that the issue of lead has been ignored by lawmakers, but an increasing awareness of lead is causing a frenzy of legislative activity.

The impact on businesses is taking many forms. Fees are being assessed against businesses to pay for state-mandated screening and treatment of children exposed to lead. Pending laws and regulations include banning lead fishing sinkers, developing a lead standard to protect construction workers, certifying workers to remove lead, funding for cleaning up homes contaminated with lead and stricter lead disclosure laws.

The primary reason for the resurgence of lead-related legislation is growing concern about children's exposure to lead, and the ripple effect has been vast.

Lead poisoning can cause a wide variety of serious physical repercussions, including brain damage, kidney failure, anemia, hypertension, behavior problems, stunted growth and cerebral palsy.

Children are the most vulnerable to lead poisoning because they are still growing and are the ones most likely to inadvertently ingest lead-dust particles or play in lead-contaminated soil.

Although there is an expensive process to remove lead from the blood, called chelation, there's not much that can be done once lead has invaded a child's neurological system, said lead experts.

While officials from the U.S. Department of Health Services call lead poisoning "the most serious environmental threat to America's children," lead poisoning among workers is also getting renewed attention.

"Industrial lead poisoning is an environmental embarrassment," said Dr. Paul Papanek, chief of the Toxics Epidemiology Program in L.A. County. "Now that we understand the effects of lead, there's no excuse not to protect workers."

Papanek said the problem of lead in the workplace is huge and widely ignored by employers.

His office received a $200,000 grant in January 1992 to educate employers in L.A. County about lead. And with a staff of just two full-timers and one part-timer, they've been knocking on doors all over the county.

"Every time we go out, there's a surprise waiting for us," he said, citing one guy who was eating a donut on a table covered with lead dust.

Papanek said there probably are 10,000 to 20,000 workers in L.A. County at high risk of being exposed to lead. He called current lead standards "woefully inadequate" and likely to change.

General industry lead standards established by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1978 are outdated, Papanek said, because the maximum legal amount of lead in a person's circulatory system is known to cause reproductive harm. OSHA standards allow workers to be exposed to blood lead levels of between 40 and 50 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, but 20 to 25 micrograms is a more reasonable safety threshold, he said.

Under OSHA rules, employers are also required to test the blood lead levels of their employees twice a year if the amount of airborne lead in the workplace exceeds 30 micrograms per cubic meter of air, but not many employers undertake those tests, said Papanek. Companies that don't do the required testing can be penalized up to $7,000 per offense, after being notified of the noncompliance. Employees found with excessive blood lead levels can be removed from their work site and receive pay up to 18 months.

Some key lead-related developments that are expected to affect Southland businesses include:

Assembly Bill 383

AB 383, sponsored by Assemblywoman Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, is considered the most important piece of lead legislation before California lawmakers, according to lead experts.

The bill would bring California into compliance with federal legislation -- the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992 and Title X of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 -- requiring states to have certification programs for contractors engaged in removing lead and greater protections for construction workers who work with lead.

Lee's bill sets a deadline of Aug. 1, 1994 for the state to have a certification program. Without a certification program, California stands to lose the more than $10 million it currently receives in lead-abatement funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and it would be ineligible for millions of dollars in future federal grants.

AB 383 also sets an Aug. 1, 1994 deadline for the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration to adopt safety standards for construction workers who work around lead.

When the federal general industry standards on lead were originally developed in 1978, the construction industry was excluded because companies in that industry argued that some of their jobs required that they be around more lead, according to an OSHA spokesman.

People who do bridge maintenance, for example, are exposed to greater levels of lead paint because heavy-duty, anti-corrosive paints have high amounts of lead. Under federal requirements, construction workers were allowed to be exposed to four times the lead level in air as the general industry.

Under Title X, Congress ordered OSHA to adopt a stricter federal lead standard for the construction industry.

OSHA adopted an interim standard in May that went into effect in June, which provides the construction industry with the same protections as general industry.

Once OSHA adopts a standard, states have six months to adopt a similar rule. Cal-OSHA has been meeting with labor and industry officials for a year and a half to develop the state's standards.

Until the recent federal ruling, however, California was a little ahead of the federal government in acting to protect construction workers exposed to lead, said Len Welsh, an attorney for the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, a division of Cal-OSHA that performs inspections and proposes regulations. In California, construction workers couldn't be exposed to lead levels higher than those allowed for general industry, he said.

Pending state standards would come in line with the new federal OSHA standards by requiring that construction workers' blood be periodically tested, said Welsh. If their blood contains too much lead, then they can be removed from work and receive pay for up to 18 months or until the construction project on which they were working is completed, whichever comes first.

Other key state bills

Senate Bill 617, sponsored by state Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, would require contractors to be specially certified to remove lead from residential properties beginning July 1, 1994.

Senate Bill 1063, sponsored by state Sen. Charles Calderon, D-Whittier, would offer tax credits to people who remove lead from their houses. That bill was introduced this year, but it is not expected to come up for a vote for another year.

John Dale, a research assistant for Calderon, said SB 1063 doesn't specify where the money needed to fund the program would come from, or who would be eligible to receive that money. Dale said additional time will be needed to educate other legislators about the bill.

Funding lead abatement, he said, is a huge issue because removing lead from a single home can cost anywhere from $12,000 to $30,000.

Paint industry up in arms

California's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act of 1991 has been recently challenged by the California Paint Council, National Paint and Coatings Association and two L.A.-based paint companies: Sinclair Paint Co. in Hollywood and Smiland Co. in the City of Commerce.

The act -- which provides for early detection, screening, medical treatment and prevention services for children poisoned by lead -- is funded by fees assessed against industries which have historically contributed or currently contribute significantly to environmental lead contamination.

The formula adopted by the state Department of Health Services assessed the heaviest fees against the two industries that have historically been the heaviest lead emitters, but those industries have since dramatically reduced their lead output.

The petroleum industry was assessed about 85 percent of the total fees, and the paint industry 14 percent. Modern-day heavy lead emitters -- such as smelters, faucet makers and battery plants -- were assessed 1 percent.

Based on that formula, the state Board of Equalization assessed a total of $12 million in fees in April 1993, said Ellen Widess, director of health and safety policy for the Children's Advocacy Group, one of the key players in the state involved in protecting children from lead poisoning.

Although the board has collected more than $10 million, Widess said, many of the companies want refunds.

The paint companies filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court protesting the legality of the act. They are arguing, among other things, that the act is unconstitutional because the fees are really a tax and, therefore, need two-thirds approval of the state Legislature.

On behalf of all children in California, the court granted a large coalition of legal, health and child advocacy groups the right to intervene in the case to uphold the act, Widess said. This means that the coalition is given equal footing as the paint companies, she said.

If the act is ruled to be illegal, Widess said, the costs of not screening or treating at-risk children in the state could be several billion dollars, based on medical and special education costs. She said the state estimates that 560,000 children are at risk for lead poisoning because they live in pre-1950 homes, which are likely to contain large amounts of lead paint.