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The article focuses on the regulatory controversy heading toward Susan Dudley's inbox concerning the toxic legacy of lead pollution in the U.S. The controversy highlights on the cost versus benefits in the proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientific advisers to tighten the implementation of air-quality standard for lead, lowering the permissible level from 1.5 µg/m3 to 0.2 µg/m3. The standard of lowering lead amount is proposed to cope up with the lowered intelligence quotient (IQ) among children exposed with lead. Various methods to reduce lead content in the air were considered, depicting the initiative to eliminate contaminated soil from along the road or renovate old house

This article reports that activists are criticizing a proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to speed up its regular review of air-quality standards. By law, EPA must revisit its National Ambient Air Quality Standards every 5 years. Staff scientists evaluate the latest research and propose ranges for new standards, which are then reviewed by the agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. Because EPA regularly misses its deadline and gets sued, an internal EPA committee proposed several suggestions in for speeding up the process. EPA chief scientist George Gray said that the idea behind this proposal is not to have the policy drive the science.