The FAA prohibits Boulder from imposing any restrictions on aviation operations, which means we can’t ban leaded fuel or regulate noise. Voluntary measures to curb noise and lead pollution are ineffective. Airports like Reid-Hillview in California are in the vanguard of defying FAA mandates for the sake of public health. 
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The FAA message to Boulder is that we are not allowed to impose any restrictions on airport operations. This includes prohibiting us from banning leaded aviation fuel or regulating noise levels.   

Boulder has accepted millions of dollars in FAA grants over the years. We continue to seek and accept on average $250,000 per year in FAA grants for capital improvement projects such as repaving runways. These grants come with strings attached including giving up local control. The FAA demands include: airports must be open to take-offs and landings 24/7; we may not ban any type of aircraft operations; we must continue to sell leaded aviation fuel, even if unleaded fuel is also offered at the airport; and we cannot do anything to regulate aviation noise. The FAA only allows voluntary measures, and these voluntary measures have proven to be entirely ineffective.

Other airports are experimenting with defying these FAA mandates. So far, these airports have not had to deal with litigation or fines as a result of their actions, though there is a non-zero risk. 


Watch the video of our webinar with Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez and Dr. Bruce Lamphear as they discuss the dangers of leaded aviation fuel and their experience with stopping the sale of leaded aviation fuel at Reid-Hillview Airport, despite FAA mandates. Key take-aways and full transcript are below. 

Get the Lead Out webinar video

Get the Lead Out webinar key take-aways

June 12, 2024

1. Reid-Hillview Airport is a general aviation airport with similar characteristics to BDU. It encompasses about 200 acres, has been in existence since before World War II, is owned and operated by Santa Clara County, and is surrounded by schools, businesses, recreational areas, and homes including some of the area’s least wealthy and most ethnically diverse families. Community members have been concerned about noise, pollution, and the danger of plane crashes for decades.

2. In 2018, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors (equivalent to Colorado County Commissioners) took 11 actions to plan for the site if the airport were to close. These included declining to accept any more FAA funding and commissioning a study of blood lead levels in children who live near the airport. Planning for repurposing the Reid-Hillview site is proceeding with potential for closure in 2031.

3. Children in California who live in certain ZIP codes are routinely tested for lead by their pediatricians. Santa Clara County obtained access to 10 years of data for over 13,000 children for a study led by Dr. Sammy Zahran from Colorado State University. Dr. Zahran has published 19 studies on environmental lead exposure including examining Flint, Michigan’s water supply.

4. The Reid-Hillview study found that children living in proximity to and downwind of the airport had increases in their blood lead levels comparable to blood lead levels found in children in Flint, Michigan during the peak of their water crisis. The study controlled for non- aviation lead exposures such as old pipes, paint, and other factors.

5. Very small amounts of lead are highly consequential and no amount of lead in blood is considered safe. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention has stated that even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. Lead exposure has also been linked to premature birth, ADHD, and coronary disease including heart attacks and strokes, among other health risks.

6. The primary pathway for lead uptake by humans is through inhalation. Small children absorb lead more readily than older children and adults. Toddlers are also succeptible to picking up lead that settles out in homes and is ingested through normal mouthing behaviors or while eating.

7. In the United States today, 70% of airborne lead comes from leaded aviation fuel. Lead particles from aircraft exhaust are much smaller than the lead particles in paint. The finer the particles, the more readily they can get into the lungs and into the blood system to the brain.

8. After the Reid-Hillview lead study came out, the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to become the first airports in the country to refuse to sell leaded aviation fuel at Reid-Hillview and the other airport they operate, San Martin.

9. In response to this action by Santa Clara County, complaints were filed by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the General Aviation Manufacturing Association, the National Air Transportation Association, and the National Business Aviation Association. Complaints included Part 13 and Part 16, which are complaints made to the FAA regarding alleged non-compliance with grant agreements, for the FAA’s investigation. The FAA issued an informal investigation in December of 2021 and subsequently suspended the investigation in February of 2022 pursuant to an MOU with Santa Clara County. In the MOU, the County agreed to consider participation in a “demonstration project” with the FAA for communities seeking to transition to all-unleaded aviation fuel. However, the FAA has since ceased to communicate with Santa Clara County about the parameters of the demonstration project. No litigation has been filed, no fines have been incurred, and Santa Clara County has been subject to no other sanctions or consequences from their decision to stop selling leaded aviation fuel. The status of the FAA’s investigations remains unclear. Concurrently, Santa Clara County had been speaking with the EPA and their members of Congress. Congressmember Ro Khanna pulled a hearing together at the federal level in the middle of all of this activity. The FAA did not attend the hearing.

10. Dr. Lanphear emphasized that every jurisdiction should not need to perform their own study. There are now four highly credible studies that all point to the same conclusion that chronic exposure to lead pollution due to living in proximity to general aviation airports is elevating blood lead levels in children. These studies were done in Michigan, North Carolina, California, and Colorado, based on thousands of children. The evidence is clear and compelling from the existing studies and from the EPA endangerment finding that included examining these studies. Demanding local studies can be used as a delay tactic.

11. Dr. Lanphear stated that studies that sample lead concentrations in soil or air are inadequate because they do not measure the impacts of chronic exposure. Blood lead level tests show the impacts of chronic exposure on a population level.

12. The amount of lead in blood that it takes to qualify as lead poisoned according to the CDC definition, for an adult, is about the weight of 3 paper clips (500 miligrams). When the EPA did a study in 2008, they found that Reid-Hillview put more than 1200 pounds of lead into the environment annually. This lead pollution impacts not only humans but also wildlife.

13. Santa Clara County is actively sharing their lead study nationwide to help empower other communities to prioritize public health and cease selling leaded aviation fuel. However, Supervisor Chavez and Dr. Lanphear emphasized that just having the scientific evidence is not enough to build the political will to create change. It takes educating the public, community organizing, and supporting politicians who are doing hard things.

Get the Lead Out webinar transcript 

Get the Lead Out: How Santa Clara County Banned Leaded Aviation Fuel at Reid-Hillview Airport, and Why Boulder Should Do the Same
June 12, 2024
Note: Some non-substantive chatter has been omitted 

00:00:01 Hep Ingham: So, as part of my own personal battle of getting bombarded with noise, from the airplanes refusing to follow the path they're supposed to fly on. And then, that was 4 years ago. And then 2 years ago, I found out they were burning leaded fuel. And I said, well, this has gotta stop. And so I just did some a quick look on the Internet, and I found that Supe Chavez in Santa Clara County had led the fight and got leaded fuel banned at Reid Hillview Airport. And now, Cindy is part of the national effort to ban this dangerous pollutant, which is looking at the statistics and the blood levels in children, this is just as serious as the Flint, Michigan water escapade. And so, you know, as part of our effort to make this a safer community around here, we've been reaching out to government over and over, and we're hitting a brick wall. And I could see that Santa Clara County broke through, and that's what Supe Chavez and Prof Lanphear are here tonight to kinda let us know how you did it and hopefully give the technique and the courage to our elected officials here both in the city and the county.

00:01:30 Hep Ingham Because the airport's in the city, but it mainly flies over the county. And I also want to mention that, my colleague, Laura Kaplan here, she helped us organize along with a big team, and we've been collecting signatures to get closing the airport on the ballot. And so we're just finding out whether we made it or not, and so that's going to be coming out in the next couple days. So that's where we are right now, and that's what I wanted to get through tonight is just how dangerous leaded aviation fuel is and what governments can do about it. So I just wanted, that so I guess we did have a little outline from Laura. So I want to I hand it over to Supervisor Chavez to kinda maybe give us a quick review on how you guys did it, what the battles were, and how you ended up here.

00:02:38 Supervisor Chavez So first of all, let me just say thank you, Hep and Laura. We're so excited to be here. Matt Wilson is on my team and is going to help us do some slides if that's okay. And I'm really excited to have Dr. Lanphear here. He was just invaluable in helping us talk to the community locally in Santa Clara County. So I'm looking forward to hearing from him, and I'm going to, if you don't mind, Dr. Lanphear, what I'm going to  do is I'm going to  roll through this, but I may just tap you on a couple of areas just to talk about the results of the study. I'll talk about how we got there. Is that okay? Okay. Excellent. So, Matt, do you mind if we do some slides? Can you do that? Okay. Great.

00:03:21 Supervisor Chavez And, colleagues, part of the reason I'm doing this is just it was easier for me to understand if I'm seeing pictures instead of having just someone yap at me. So we'll let this ah, perfect. And can you see it okay, everyone? Okay.

00:03:35 Laura Kaplan We can see it very well. And I also want to  just point out to folks that Hep has put Bios for both Supervisor Chavez and Professor Lanphear into the chat. It's in the chat for folks if you want to see the bios of our speakers tonight. And I'm going to  go ahead and go off camera. 

00: 04:02 Supervisor Chavez Me too, just to make it easier for people to see. Alright. So, I'm so excited to be here, and I'm just going to  give you a quick history of the area that I represent because it might make this more clear about how we got into this. So I am a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. In Santa Clara County, we are 2,000,000 people. So I represent about 400,000 people, and my district, includes the east side of San Jose and the downtown, which and the east side is primarily the poorest, area in the community, and it's very, very ethnically diverse. Today, the east side is home to a large numbers of Latino and Asian immigrants and folks from all over. And then and many, speak in English I mean, a language other than English at home.

00:04:50 Supervisor Chavez It's also the location of Reid-Hillview Airport. It’s a general aviation airport similar to Boulder’s that the County of Santa Clara owns and operates. So I'm going to  give you a quick history of Reid-Hillview. It's been in existence since before World War II and has been owned by the county here since 1961. It encompasses almost 200 acres and is surrounded by single family homes, schools, childcare facilities, parks. Immediately adjacent to part of its runway are businesses, a shopping mall, parks, major water park highways and public transportation hubs. And for decades, the community has been complaining about noise, pollution, and fear of plane crashes in our community.

00:05:40 Supervisor Chavez  The most recent quest and let me just say, people wanted to close the airport at different times, and it's been an ongoing struggle, especially as the community built up closer and closer around it. But the most recent effort to close the airport and the work taken to ban leaded fuel really began in earnest in 2018. At that time, myself and my colleagues on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors took 11 actions to plan for the site if the airport were to close. A critical action was for us to decline FAA funding so we could potentially close the airport as early as 2031.

00:06:20 Supervisor Chavez We also called for a preliminary community outreach to hear from residents what they wanted to see if the airport ever did close. The other action was to order a study to determine whether or not airborne lead emissions from Reid- Hillview Airport resulted in elevated blood lead levels for children who live in and around the airport. And this really played a critical role, people understanding the impact of lead. The 2018 actions came literally after decades and decades of community consternation about the airport's continuing presence. So in 2021, the board of supervisors commissioned a study, a scientific study, to determine if the leaded aviation fuel used by the vast majority of the planes at Reid Hillview Airport was impacting the health of our residents.

00:7:12 Supervisor Chavez And I'm sure everyone here is well aware that there is no safe level of lead in our blood, in human blood, especially in children whose bodies and brains are still developing. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention put it succinctly, even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. Now we chose to focus on children, not only because there are 21 schools alone within the 1.5 radius of the airport, but, also, we have a lot of information about blood lead levels because we test children in California. The study was led by Dr. Sammy Zahran from Colorado State University, and he published a number of studies on lead exposure through various pathways, including 19 studies on environmental lead exposure, including examining Flint, Michigan's water supply a decade ago. Our study involved a comprehensive and controlled review of 10 years of data, blood lead levels for over 13,000 children.

00:8:21 Supervisor Chavez It was peer reviewed by none other than Dr.  Lanphear was one of those peer reviewers, so he can talk more about that. And it controlled for non aviation lead, such as old pipes, paint, and other factors. What it found was that children living downwind of the airport had a higher blood lead level with increases of 0.40 micrograms per deciliter over children living upwind from the airport. And for context, the lead levels detected during the peak of the Flint, Michigan water crisis were between 0.35 and 0.45 micrograms per deciliter. Now when this was released, the study was released, it really, really unleashed concerns from all over our community, not just those directly impacted, but others in our community as well.

00:9:13 Supervisor Chavez What that led to was the board of supervisors directing county staff to find ways to reduce leaded gas emissions at the airport. And I will just let me just say this, especially for those of you who can see this, and we'll make the slides available to all of you. But I do want to  just make this point that the board the reason we looked at lead levels is that the EPA had done a study previously that demonstrated that there was a significant amount of lead, you know, for communities living around airports. But a number of people in our community said that can't be true. And so if there's lead in our community, it's because of other factors, and that ultimately was why we did this study.

00:10:00 Supervisor Chavez  But more importantly, once the study came to fruition, everybody on the board, irrespective of how they feel about closing the airport, Reid Hillview specifically, agreed that we should not sell any leaded aviation gas at our airports. And that action actually came from another colleague who was so disturbed by what he read that he said, we shouldn't do it for any airport, which is why we became the 1st airports in the country not to sell leaded fuel was really from the unanimity of the board. And I think what's important to understand about that is the scientific research and work done by Dr.  Zahran and the peer reviewed study really helped people understand that the risks were real. So that that led directly to what I just said about us being the first, but it also meant that the unleaded fuel that we make available at Reid Hillview today and at San Martin, which is our the other airport that we own and operate, is 94 octane and is FAA certified as safe for use and for approximately 68 of the piston powered aircraft of the type used at Reid-Hillview and San Martin.

00:11:14 Supervisor Chavez And moreover, just to be clear, we haven't banned leaded fuel. We will not sell it at our airports, but here's what we observed. Year over year, we're selling about the same amount of fuel now year over year, which means that a majority of a super majority of the aircraft can actually use it, or we would have seen a drop in the purchase of fuel. I think most of us would agree that transitioning away from leaded fuel is the right thing to do, but it's not entirely easy and it's not entirely a clear process. And we got a lot of pushback from and resistance from pilots and the fuel industry.

00:11:54 Supervisor Chavez And there are a number of FAA regulations that have to be followed when you make this kind of transition, and there are financial, staffing, and equipment and training considerations that come with fuel switches at the airport. In the case of Santa Clara County, we own and operate the airport. So we had to look at every single lease and every single contract to make sure we had the power to be able to sell that unleaded avgas at our airports. Our journey to eliminating leaded avgas sales from our 2 airports was complex. And I will tell you, we didn't follow a point by point script because there wasn't one.

00:12:32 Supervisor Chavez  And I will tell you that all of your airports are structured - and in Boulder, they're probably structured - slightly differently. But what we did do is we got the most willing bright people we could, our county staff, our in-house attorneys, outside organizations that offered insight. And our actions in 2021 and 2022, as you probably know, drew attention from communities like yours from all over the country. As you may know, the EPA in October of 2023 issued an endangerment finding that emissions of leaded aviation gasoline from piston engine aircraft engines is a public health hazard. And this finding is an important step toward desperately needed changes to regulate the industry, especially, the avgas industry.

0013:29 Supervisor Chavez  Santa Clara County along with environmental groups, including Earth Justice, and a nationwide coalition of community groups really worked tirelessly, to push the EPA to issue the endangerment finding, and we're only months away from our presidential election, as you know. So it's critical that we get this information out as quickly as possible. The EPA did not issue an endangerment finding regarding leaded aviation fuel during either the Obama or Clinton administrations, let alone any Republican administration in the last 50 years. And I hope all of you in Colorado who care about banning leaded fuel and protecting children's health and frankly, all of our health, are thinking about that, not only as we get into the elections, but as we think about the leaders of our local governments as well. So if you don't mind, I do want to just ask, Dr. Lanphear if he could give just a little more perspective as we wrap up on the importance of the action that was taken and how that might impact all of you. And so, Matt, if you could remove that screen, then I'd love to turn it over to Dr. Lanphear. Thank you. Thank you very much.

00:14:39 Dr. Lanphear I'll go ahead and share my screen. And what I'd like to do is provide a little background just very quickly on this study to show what the impact is from this aircraft emissions and then talk a little bit about what we know about low level lead poisoning and why this is so important. So first, the study. What I want to show you here is what happens as the amount of air traffic increases.

00:15:11 Dr. Lanphear And first, the first line you'll see is, the predicted blood levels of children who live within a half a mile of the airport. And as traffic increases, so does their blood lead level. In contrast, for those kids who live further away, the increase is less steep. It's not 0, but it's less steep. And this is almost you can almost think about this like a randomized controlled trial, like a drug trial. What this basically says is this is showing us that for children who live near the airport, their blood levels are increasing exactly as we would predict. Further away, we don't see it. And that speaks to this, being a critical exposure for these children.

00:16:00 Dr. Lanphear The other way I want to frame this is to look at what happens as you increase the number of risk factors for children. And I'm going to put it in context of the current definition of what you might call an elevated blood lead level, or you could call it lead poisoning, low level lead poisoning. And that is having a blood lead level in excess of 3.5 microgram per deciliter. That's the CDC's definition of, an unacceptably high level. 3.5 microgram per deciliter, that's equivalent to 35 parts per billion of lead circulating in children's blood. Now one part per billion is equivalent to 1 tablespoon of sugar in an Olympic sized swimming pool. So it's a very small amount, but it's quite consequential. Lead is a strong neurotoxicant, and as I show you, it does other things as well.

00:17:05 Dr. Lanphear So if we look at a typical toddler, 1 or 2 year old child living in this area, their blood lead level was about 1.8 microgram per deciliter. For kids who lived near to the airport, it increased to 2.5. Those during maximum traffic living near the airport to 3.3. If they lived east or downwind, it increased to 3.5. And then if they were lower SES, 3.7. But I really like to focus more on the percent of kids who were lead poisoned based upon the CDC's definition. And you can see it goes, 5.7 to 7 to 10.5, and almost 14% of kids exceed that level. And this is from the airport emissions.

00:18:00 Dr. Lanphear Another way to look at this is the EPA scientists have published this study showing that beginning at the lowest measurable level as the amount of lead in air increases, children's blood levels increase quite sharply beginning at the lowest measurable levels. That's really important. There's not a line where you don't see any increase in blood lead and then it increases. It increases beginning at the lowest measurable levels. For young children, they're going to be exposed through inhalation and through ingestion. Air lead will settle out in their homes, and they'll pick it up through normal mouthing behaviors or through eating their food. And toddlers will absorb lead more readily than older children and adults. 70% of airborne lead in the United States is from leaded aviation fuel. 70%. That's today. Of course, 50 years ago, it was mostly from automobiles. But today, 70% of airborne lead is from leaded aviation fuel.

00:19:13 Dr. Lanphear And 16,000,000 Americans, live within 1 kilometer of one of these general airports. About 3,000,000 of those are children. This is showing that the lead in paints, that's what the one on the right, tend to be much larger than the lead particles in aircraft exhaust. And that's important for a couple reasons. The finer or the smaller the particles are, the more readily they can get into the lungs, the more readily they can get into the blood system. And we also know that metals like lead can go directly up the olfactory nerve. There are metal transporters in the olfactory nerve directly into the brain. So the smaller size of these lead particles from aircraft exhaust make these more hazardous than larger particles.

00:20:16 Dr. Lanphear We finished a study just last year that showed extraordinarily small increases in the amount of lead - increases that most people think of as innocuous or safe – a small increase of 10 part per billion of lead in the blood of pregnant women led to a 50% increase in premature birth. 50% increase in premature birth. We also found that for women who were low in vitamin d, it's about 15% of women in our cohort, and that's probably a low estimate for many communities in America. A 10 part per billion increase in pregnant women with low vitamin d levels was associated with almost a 3 fold increase in premature birth, which is huge. We also know, and this is something that most of you are familiar with, as blood lead levels increase, beginning at the lowest measurable levels, we see a steep drop off in children's reading abilities. And we see the same thing with children's intellectual abilities. Again, very steep at the lowest levels.

00:21:28 Dr. Lanphear And let me just show you what that looks like when you look at a bell curve, the distribution of kids. Most of us have IQ scores that fall somewhere between 85 and 115 points. Only 2 and a half percent of children have an IQ above a 130, which is considered gifted. There are about 6,000,000 children in this group. On the other end of the curve, another 2.5% of children have an IQ below 70, which is considered challenged. The impact of exposure to a toxin like lead causes a 5 point drop in IQ across a population. This shift results in a 57% increase in the number of children who are challenged from 6,000,000 to 9,400,000. There is a corresponding decrease in the number of children that are gifted from 6000000 to 2,400,000. Little shifts matter. The impact of exposure to another toxin, like flame retardants, results in a further increase in the number of children who are challenged from 9,400,000 to over 11,000,000. There is a further decrease in the number of gifted children. So that represents what happens when you see a 5 point drop in IQ in a population of kids. Could be from lead. It could be from anything. You may not see it quite this large, in a community around the airport, but the same principle holds that you're shifting the curve, increasing the number of children who will be challenged and diminishing the number of children who are gifted.

00:23:00 Dr. Lanphear So what all of these studies suggest that there really is no safe level that can be identified for lead. We've seen blood levels and lead poisoning rates come down over the past 50 years, but our blood lead levels today, yours, mine, our children, are still 10 to a 100 times more, higher than our pre industrial ancestors. So they're still quite high on an evolutionary scale. This is showing another national study in the United States where we saw an increase in blood lead level from the lowest third to the highest third was associated with a doubling of ADHD in children. We found that 600,000, about one of every 5 cases of ADHD, could be attributed back to lead exposure in the United States.

00:23:54 Dr. Lanphear There's been a lot more attention focused on lead as a risk factor for chronic heart disease, coronary heart disease, in particular, and heart attacks. So these are a variety of risk factors, but what we've learned over the past 10 years is that lead is one of the most important risk factors for heart attacks. And this is a meta analysis basically showing whether you're talking about cardiovascular disease more broadly that includes heart attacks and strokes, whether you're talking about coronary heart disease or heart attacks specifically, or whether you're talking about strokes. Lead is a risk factor for all of those. And the evidence would suggest that what's happening is that lead creates tears on the inside of the arterial lining, which then allows for lipids and cholesterol and other gradu to get in there, and that ultimately forms a plaque. And then when that plaque ruptures that’s when you have a heart attack.

00:24:51 Dr. Lanphear Let me just show you another quick slide of what we found in terms of the impact of lead exposure on heart attacks in the United States. Lead is a risk factor for coronary heart disease. That's when your heart is slowly or suddenly suffocated by an obstruction of the arteries feeding the heart. In a national study, we found that deaths increased sharply at blood levels below 50 parts per billion, the level considered safe. There was no threshold or safe level. If we let the narrowing of this coronary artery represent the risk of dying from heart disease, you can see that most of the narrowing occurs below 50 parts per billion. We found that lead accounts for about 185,000 deaths every year. That makes lead the leading cause of fatal heart attacks in the United States.

00:25:45 Dr. Lanphear So these are some steps that we can take today, to protect children and the rest of us from lead poisoning. 1st, to set a national goal. No child with a blood lead level greater than 1 microgram per deciliter, which is equivalent to 10 parts per billion, by 2030. Now that's ambitious, but it's doable. We know what the major sources of lead are. We need to expand the national air led monitoring network, including having networks around airports. Right now, because we don't have those monitors, we're relying on using children as biological indicators of lead emissions from these airports. We need to continue to mitigate lead hazards in houses and soils, use certified filters to reduce lead until lead service lines are replaced, continuing to reduce allowable levels of lead in food. You'll all have heard occasional reports of lead in baby food, for example. To eliminate lead in aviation fuel by 2025 or earlier. Again, it's aspirational, but it's doable. And finally, until then, you may want to consider using HEPA air cleaners in your home, like an air purifier, more wet mopping, and HEPA vacuuming. It may reduce exposure. That's not been proven, but those are steps that you may want to consider. And I'll stop there. So thank you.

00:27:21 Hep Ingham Yeah. Thank you, Professor Lanphear. That's pretty devastating, the facts of these peer reviewed studies. And like I mentioned, Robert Boutelle's study that he gave something very similar, in February, to the city of Westminster just dealing with the airport RMMA. So, yeah, it's a widespread issue around here. As Laura mentioned, we've got 3 other airports nearby and every single aviation group there is downplaying the effects of lead. And, you know, some to serious degrees, but, you know, that's kind of what we're up against. And I'm so I'm hoping that we can talk about maybe, you know, how you were able to fight back. I know the FAA came at you and said, yeah, we're going to have to stop this, we need a response. And, but let me hand this over to Laura. She had a bunch of nice questions lined up and, but I did want to say, you know, when I was out gathering signatures, I was at the Whole Foods. This guy from Denmark showed up. You know, I won't try to reproduce his accent, but he's like, you know, we don't have this problem over in Denmark because the airplanes don't burn leaded fuel. They all have mufflers, and they're not allowed to fly low over people's houses. So we've reduced our blood lead exposure, but also the noise exposure. And, yeah, all of Europe is like that with the, you know, the Swiss-made and the German-made mufflers and then the unleaded fuel. But, Laura, can you help me?

00:29:14 Laura Kaplan : Yes, Hep, thank you so much, and thank you, Supervisor Chavez and Dr.  Lanphear, for those presentations. Educational, horrifying in some respects, but very uplifting to hear about what you have been able to do in Santa Clara County to reduce the impacts to your folks who live around those airports and blaze a trail for others who might be interested. We do have some questions that were submitted ahead of the webinar. I also want to take this opportunity to invite everybody who is participating in the webinar tonight to submit your questions via the q and a function. I'll read out people's questions. And then also, like I said, we have a queue of questions that were developed before, ahead of time. So, I'll start with the questions that are already in the q and a. So we have one here, for kids or big people that are adversely affected by elevated blood lead levels, are there any ways to help remove the existing lead from the body safely? I think that would be for you, Dr.  Lanphear.

00:30:24 Dr. Lanphear There's some evidence, but it's not as reassuring as we'd like. For children, there are chelation drugs that can be used when the kids have very high blood levels and they will keep children from dying. That's not the kind of exposures, thankfully, we're having around airports. At lower levels, chelation doesn't appear to benefit kids. It doesn't reverse damage that appears to have happened. There's some evidence for adults who have chronic kidney disease, which is one of the consequences of lead exposure, that you can slow the progression to chronic renal failure. And there's some evidence in a new study that'll come out soon that you can also reduce heart attacks in people who've already had a heart attack. That's, again, perhaps not as great as we hope in terms of the reduction, but all of it still clearly for me points to the fact that we need to reduce exposure in the first place rather than rely on chelation, except in those cases where we failed to protect kids and the rest of us.

00:31:43 Laura Kaplan : Thank you, Dr.  Lanphear. And I do think I saw somebody suggesting that perhaps donating blood can help lower blood lead levels in the body. Is that something that is recommended in any way? One does worry about the people who might receive that blood. But, is that anything that you have heard about?

00:32:01 Dr. Lanphear I haven't seen studies that have actually tested that. In theory, yes. It should. We've done that study to look at forever chemicals, PFAS chemicals, and show that you can reduce your exposures quite a bit. Firefighters in an Australian study. It would make sense and it may in fact be part of the reason, this is speculation, but part of the reason that women have lower rates of coronary heart disease is up until about menarche, puberty, boys and girls have blood lead levels that are comparable. Around puberty, it starts to drop off by about 20%, and it stays lower until menopause, at which point it spikes up again and so does coronary heart disease rate. So, coronary heart disease in menopausal and postmenopausal women are comparable with men, but throughout the reproductive period, it's lower. It might be part of the reason it's lower.

00:32:54 Laura Kaplan:  Very interesting. We have one more question about health impacts here. It sounds like the primary pathways that that lead gets into the body are through inhalation, or you mentioned also, like, for kids especially, it can be taken up by the hands, and then they eat. When they eat with their hands, they, but not so much absorption through the skin. But we do have a question about, you know, if you buy food that is from a garden that might be under the pathway of airplanes, is that lead dust being uptaken by the plants so that when you eat the food, you eat plants with a bunch of lead?

00:33:37 Dr. Lanphear If you have lead settle out from airborne lead onto the plants itself, like on leafy vegetables, you very may very well get some of that. Trying to quantify that and say how much is probably a little challenging. I don't know that I've come up with a specific amount, but you're going to get some. And if it settles into the soil, some plants and vegetables will take some of that up. Things like mustard seed, for example, seem to preferentially take up lead and concentrate it, and sometimes that's being used to try to remediate contaminated soils. So it can get taken up. It probably is going to be more for air emissions. It's going to be some degree of ventilation and, again, especially for kids, ingestion.

00:34:29 Laura Kaplan:  Thank you. We have a question here. This one's probably more for supervisor Chavez. What was the FAA's response to the banning of leaded fuel at Hillview?

00:34:42 Supervisor Chavez So they were unhappy. I mean, that might be a little bit of an understatement. And, what happened was that there were 2 kinds of responses. 1 was from the FAA directly, and they were unhappy and they were concerned. And then they said, well, look, maybe we can work with you to better understand how to make this transition. And so they offered to do a demonstration project with us so that we could use the evidence presumably from what we were experiencing to help them understand how to help airports across the country transition. What happened is that we were working on an MOU to discuss this with them. And over the last year, they've gone a little bit quiet on the demonstration project. In the meantime, there were complaints filed by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the General Aviation Manufacturing Association, the National Air Transportation Association, and the National Business Aviation Association for a Part 13 investigation and complaint.

00:35:49 Supervisor Chavez And, I'm reading these notes because I want to  make sure I get this right. The FAA issued an informal investigation in December of 2021, and then they suspended it in February of 22, pursuant to an MOU between the county and the FA. And as part of the MOU, the county agreed to consider participation in this demonstration project, but we haven't, you know, the FAA has not come back and said, here are the parameters of that project. And that was something similar, with the part 16 investigations that were raised by, you know, a subset of the other industry organizations. So, you know, we are in communication with the FAA, but I would say they're not robustly moving on the demonstration project at this time. So we're a little bit in limbo, but they weren't happy.

00:36:47 Laura Kaplan So if I could try to summarize, when you say they're not happy, what kind of communication were you getting from them? Let me ask that question before I try to summarize.

00:36:57 Supervisor Chavez Well and maybe I can be more helpful. They raised concerns about access for pilots of fuel, both leaded….really leaded fuel at the airports. And then concurrent to that, these complaints were filed, which then forced them into this investigation track. Both those investigations were halted as they were considering doing a demonstration project with us on how airports could transition from leaded avgas to unleaded avgas, and that's where it stands today. And the reason the…how displeasure was shared was very direct, you know, that there was a high level of interest in us being collaborative. And we had been speaking out with the EPA and a number of congress members, including Congressmember Ro Khanna pulled a hearing together at the federal level so that we could explain the problem in the middle of all of this activity, and the FAA did not attend the hearing.

00:38:17 Laura Kaplan Thank you for that. So would it be accurate to say no lawsuit has been filed against you? You haven't been sued in court?

00:38:24 Supervisor Chavez That's correct.

00:38:26 Laura Kaplan And the FAA has not levied any fines against you for violating your grant agreements.

00:38:32 Supervisor Chavez That's correct.

00:38:34 Laura They did express displeasure. There were Part 16 complaints filed by

00:38:41 Supervisor Chavez And Part 13.

00:38:42 Laura Kaplan And Part 13 filed by outside parties, which is a complaint with the FAA basically saying that you have done something wrong. And they want the FAA to investigate. But the FAA suspended those investigations, and they basically haven't pursued any penalties or…have there been any other consequences that you have suffered as a result of stopping selling leaded fuel?

00:39:47 Supervisor Chavez We are in communication with the FAA over any number of concerns that they have about the condition of the airports and other issues that they've raised. And I will just stop there to say, I think that we have their attention, which is why they wanted to do a demonstration project. It's unclear to me why that's been halted, and it's unclear to me what the status of the investigations are at this time.

00:39:42 Laura Kaplan Okay. Thank you so much, Supervisor.

00:39:45 Supervisor Chavez No. And thanks for saying it back to me. That was helpful.

00:39:47 Laura Kaplan I just know that there are some folks here who have a very broad base of knowledge about how the FAA works and what is a part 16 complaint and what is a part 13 complaint and whether that's litigation or not. So just wanted to make sure that everybody here has an understanding that you haven't been sued. You haven't been fined. It sounds like the FAA is trying to be collaborative and figure out a path forward using you as a demonstration project, but that has sort of been put on hold, and you haven't heard much about it.

00:40:22 Supervisor Chavez Well and I would say that for a time, they were trying to be collaborative, and it's unclear to me what they're thinking right now. We've had a long relationship with the FAA because we've had an airport for a long time. So I'm kind of dissecting one component of that partnership.

00:40:43 Laura Kaplan Yes. And I think a lot of people are surprised that it's not always clear cut, and it's not always fast when you're working with a federal agency. And they may send you a communication, and things may evolve and change. And it's not always clear exactly where things stand. So thank you for helping us clarify the mud. So I'm looking at our questions here. You know, one of the questions that we got was if you have recommendations for communities that might be considering pursuing a similar action in terms of stopping selling leaded aviation fuel. Like, let's say, for example, that a city council from an unnamed city that might or might not be paying attention to this webinar might want to follow in your footsteps and stop selling leaded aviation fuel. Would you have any advice for that jurisdiction, you know, in particular with regard to any considerations around legal liability or the things that you thought about before you did it?

00:41:44 Supervisor Chavez The first thing I would say is that, every action that we took at the board, we rallied hundreds of people to come out and speak. And there's nothing that gets around good old fashioned organizing. And, and that's really important to understand because the base of people who are engaged in this issue has to be broad and energetic, and these are long fights. Right? The horizon's long. So one I would say, is organizing. And the second thing is that, you know, one of the challenges with legal counsel is that their job is to make sure that they protect the institution, the fiduciary, the responsibility of the institution is of high value and that you don't break any rules. But when you're trying to change rules, what you need are leadership from your staff and your attorneys that help you understand how to move from point a to point b. And so we engaged our really savvy staff, our county council's office, and we hired outside counsel of Kaplan and Kirsch. And there might be a third partner there, but we hired outside counsel. Now what I will say is in order to get your staff to move in a particular direction, you have to have a majority of your board. And the only way to get a majority of your board is through really thoughtful organizing and helping them, all of your council or your board, understand the implications of the problem in front of you.

00:43:18 Supervisor Chavez Now Reid Hillview is a little unique in that we have 2 airports, as I said. In San Martin Airport, we're not we're not pursuing closure for that airport. That airport, in the same 1.5 mile radius, we have 50,000 people that live within 1.5 miles of Reid Hillview. The other airport has about 13,000 people. And so we're pursuing the closure of one airport. So we're selling only unleaded fuel at both airports, and we're pursuing closure of Reid Hillview in 2031. That time horizon was set because we do not receive airport improvement grants. And anytime you take a grant from the federal government for the airport, it adds 20 years life to the airport, or did at the time we were taking these actions. We stopped accepting airport improvement grants in 2011. When I got on the board, we took a formal action to not accept them, and that gives us the flexibility to close the airport in 2031. But organizing, organizing, organizing what you're doing right now, Educate people, excite them, engage them, and then, you know, have a game plan that helps people see where the end is, is near. Or, yeah, I mean, what the end goal is and how close you can pull it to your current date.

00:44:42 Laura Kaplan: Thank you so much. Let's bounce back to another couple of questions about the lead study. So I think one thing that people are curious about is how did you get the children's blood lead samples? Is that something that California just does and then anybody who's a researcher can have access to? Or was there any kind…what did you have to do to get access to those samples to be able to do the statistical study that you did?

00:45:09 Supervisor Chavez So in California, if you live within certain ZIP codes, your pediatrician is required to sample blood for lead. And, in this area, it's a very low income area. And so I imagine that most of the ZIP codes were included. It is not easy to get this information and one of the things that took a while before we were able to move this study was we had to get an memorandum of understanding with the California Department of Public Health. We had to assure that we were going to anonymize the data and a number of other agreements that we had to make to access that. And I think, you know, maybe, Dr.  Lanphear, you might have, another, a tip you want to throw in here, but for us, having access to that over an extended period of time really allowed for more validity in terms of the study. And what's more interesting, and I want to say this again, when we brought this issue to the board, we were using the EPA's study that was a national study, and it was actually the pilots who said “that is not true, you're wrong”. And it was in response to the pilot saying that the study wasn't correct, that we actually invested in the ultimate study that we did, which I think is really important to know because even though they were asking the question when the study came back and said, no, no, no, we do have a lead problem, they still didn't believe it. So I say that because the EPA has done some research that you might already be able to use. But Dr.  Lanphear, I'd be curious if I misspoke or if there's anything you could add to that.

00:46:41 Dr. Lanphear The main thing I'd like to add, Cindy, is that not every city or county should need to do a study like that. We now have 3 studies. One that looked at, that Sammy did across all of Michigan, another study in North Carolina, and now this study around Reid-Hillview and even the study by the Colorado Department of Public Health, all of them showing the same pattern. Now the Colorado Department of Public Health was not as nuanced as the Reid-Hillview Airport was, but they all confirm the same thing that children who live around…children are just sentinel chickens, right? All of us are exposed, but children, because you're being blood tested regularly, were able to be used as monitors, because we're not using air monitors, and because it's done regularly. We should not have to do studies around every airport to prove to the pilots or the naysayers. The evidence is clear and compelling from the existing studies, from the EPA's own work. We know enough. We don't need to do studies around every airport. There's nothing wrong with it. But if it's being used as a delay tactic, if people are refuting the evidence, we don't need to do it.

00:48:29 Laura Kaplan Thank you, Dr.  Lanphear, for bringing up that when these studies come out, there is often opposition or people saying the study wasn't adequate. We did actually have a study in our area where lead was looked at in concentration in soil samples and in air samples. And it's being touted as proof that we do not have a lead problem. And I don't know if you are familiar with those studies that were done in our area or if  you have any thoughts about whether looking at soil samples and air concentrations is an adequate way to gauge whether we have a lead problem.

00:49:02 Dr. Lanphear Yeah. I'm not familiar with those specific studies. I'm familiar with other studies like that done around Reid-Hillview and other places. The problem with those is they're looking at, typically, short term measurements of exposure. When we looked at children over this 8 year period in Reid Hillview, what we're looking at is chronic exposures. And so if I went and stood half a mile away from the airport for one hour or one day or three days, and then you tested my blood, you're not going to  pick that up. If I went and lived there and certainly if my granddaughter went and lived there, for 6 months, a year, you're absolutely going to  pick it up on a population level. And so one of the problems with those is they're looking at short term exposures, and those will often, or not invariably, fail to detect the problem when one exists.

00:50:06 Hep Ingham I just wanted to bring up my neighbor across the street. They've got a 4 year old daughter, and they're redoing their house, so they're not living right there. But, you know, we live at the end of the runway, you know, in a place that in houses that were built 60 years before the airport was built. And I gotta say the naysayers about toxicity from lead have come out pretty heavy, especially in the popular literature where the, the CDOT, study and they were crowing about the Pinion Engineering soil sample results. But, you know, it's kinda like I told them I don't think they should move back because, you know, their daughter's 4. She's already lived there for 3 years, and, you know, the planes come over at less than 500 feet over their house on takeoff. And these are, mostly the tow pilots. So they're old, heavy airplanes that are, they're Pawnee crop dusters, and they're pulling a glider. And, you know, I just think there's gotta be some other mechanism here. You know? I mean, it sounds like you guys are very organized, but, you know, I'm just wondering, does it make sense for the city just to say, alright. We're going to  do what's right and not worry about the yeah. We're going to  have to deal with the consequences, but shouldn't they just do what's right and protect the people that are out here in the county that are taking the main hammering from this from the noise and the leaded avgas. I mean, isn't there a way for them to just stand up to the FAA and just take it? I mean, isn't that did you have to do that a little bit?

00:51:41 Supervisor Chavez So, I just wanted to say how wise, Dr.  Lanphear is that we have been sharing our study across the country so people don't have to do an updated study. Now one challenge we had is that the study from EPA was a little older, and so that was part of what people were grousing about. But nonetheless, I just love your point, Bruce [Dr. Lanphear] about don't let people delay you. The pilots are the, here’s the reality of it, the reality is that we had to build enough community excitement so that you change the dynamic and the discussion. We had hundreds of people come out and say, I don't want, lead in my, in my family or my body or my family's body. You know? And we got lots of emails from people who'd lived there years before, who'd had miscarriages or other issues, send me notes saying, could this have been the reason that I, that this happened to me or that I've had this health condition? And, you know, not being a doctor I didn't respond to it that way, but only to say that that it does take a lot of energy, to stand up and to push back. Now one of the reasons this was so compelling to the county is, counties across the country, we're in the business of protecting human health. We have public health departments. Some large cities do, too, but we're in the public health business. That's our whole goal. We have hospitals. I don't want, you know, to have the county do things that are so contradictory. And I think the board really understood that and really desired to, you know, to take the next steps. But is it challenging? Yes. It's very challenging.

00:53:30 Supervisor Chavez And I was looking just at one of the questions in the chat. I thought this was an interesting one about how confident am I in the FAA EAGLE initiative given that the co chairs, and the presidents of these organizations are the ones that are pursuing us in the Part 13 investigation. And the fact is that it is a politically charged environment. And if we lean in together, it is going to be easier to make the changes we want to see, but it requires us recruiting many, many people, educating many, many people, and helping people see a vision for how our communities can be healthier.

00:54:11 Laura Kaplan Thank you so much. I'm going to move on to another question that we have here. But I think, you know, I think what I'm hearing is, if folks, if a community wants to make a change, you don't necessarily need to do another study. The evidence is there. The evidence is clear. The different studies all concur with each other. You're just going to find the same thing if you do another study, and a study can be used as a delay tactic. And that what it takes is for people to stand up and organize and, and call for change, as a community and get the political will built. We had a question about airport closure. Is Reid Hillview still on schedule to close? Has that decision been made, or it's just something that is an option that you have on the table as an option? But if you are going to close, can you say more about that? And then, how does that impact your other airport, or what is the future of your other airport?

00:55:08 Supervisor Chavez So we're only pursuing the closure of one airport, and that's Reid-Hillview. And we are not pursuing the closure of San Martin in part because of the smaller number of people who live in and around the airport, but also because that part of our county is, the business there is largely agricultural, and a lot of the people who live around that community want the airport because they use it to be able to travel from, here to other places in the state to look at crops. Not so much to move anything, but just to use it as transportation. The county has not accepted airport improvement grants since 2011 which gives the board the opportunity to close the airport in 2031. We're beginning a second phase of study on what are all the different land uses that the Reid-Hillview Airport can be used for. And we broke ground about a week ago on a light rail system that will come right past this property, which will allow for it to be developed into any number of things and be able to access this public transportation hub that will, that we hope will be developed on the east side. The investment of light rail and the investment, in part, comes because there's a strong belief that eventually this property will be redeveloped. And I hope stay in county ownership so that the uses there are uses that are good for the entire community.

00:56:40 Laura Kaplan Okay. So it sounds like there hasn't been one vision developed for what the future of that property is, but there is a sort of an expectation or a desire that it will eventually be redeveloped, for community use.

00:56:54 Supervisor Chavez And the planning is happening now. We just got funding for the planning, the second phase of planning, in this budget cycle.

00:57:01 Laura Kaplan Great. Thank you for that. So we have some questions in the chat from some of our folks who are very sophisticated and have some pretty detailed questions. So, I'm going to  go ahead and read some of them out, and you may or may not be the appropriate people to answer them. But let's give it a shot. So, has anyone considered pursuing the avenue of toxic trespass for lead particles by property owners surrounding airports? Do you know anything about that? Toxic trespass for lead particles?

00:57:35 Supervisor Chavez Thought it was intriguing. You'll laugh. It's in my notes now. I'm going to have to go think about whether or not that's an opportunity or an option. So thank you.

00:57:01 Laura Kaplan Okay. Okay. We're planting some seeds here, potentially. Do you know when the EPA CASAC will make an announcement about whether they recommend lowering the NAAQS, and I don't know what any of those acronyms mean.

00:58:00 Dr. Lanphear Yes. So this is the lead national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS), and that's the allowable levels of lead in the air. The EPA, I'm on this lead NAAQS panel. We've gone through the ISA and reviewed the evidence, the new evidence that's come out since the last time it was reviewed. My guess, and I can only guess, is that probably it will be sometime in 2025, that a decision will be made based upon the recommendation of the panel that ultimately goes to the EPA administrator, and the administrator makes the final decision.

00:58:42 Laura Kaplan Okay. So sometime in the next couple years, there might be different ambient air quality standards for lead? Yes. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Do we know whether someone has responsibility to have soils tested annually near airports and make those results available publicly, especially if it might impact agricultural production or food?

00:59:04 Supervisor Chavez I wouldn't know that nationally. I would be interested, Bruce, if you know something specific. We don't, to my knowledge, there's nobody whose job that is, if there is anybody's job. I will say the way we have handled that as a county is that we have - and I don't know, I think they're all over - but there are air quality districts. So our air quality districts put up some ambient air testing around the airports. So there is that, but not soil to my knowledge. And, so I don't know the answer to that. 

00:59:42 Dr. Lanphear I'm not familiar with soil requirements either. I know when I was on the lead NAAQS panel in 2006 to 2008, we recommended dramatically ramping up the number of air monitors around the country for measuring lead. That wasn't done. We have 3,000, I think, for PM 2.5 and 100 - maybe closer to 200 - for lead. And those could be used for 2 things. Primarily, today, they're being used to monitor those areas where the EPA thinks there's a chance of exceeding the existing levels. From my perspective, it's as important, maybe more important to use these monitors, and that's why we need to increase the number around the country, to make sure that we're adequately protecting people from airborne lead. My estimate from the evidence out there today, we're not. But it's hard to know because we haven't had those monitors out there, and that's why we've had to rely on using children as monitors.

00:59:42 Laura Kaplan Which, again, seems very dystopian that that's the way that we know we have a problem is because these children who don't get a second chance, they don't get a second childhood, have unacceptable levels of lead in their blood. Well, one thing that has come up a bunch when we talk about closing our airport is if we closed the airport, would we have to do some kind of remediation for fuel spills or for just the impacts of airborne lead settling onto the airport soil. Is that something that you folks have considered or are thinking about in your planning? Have you done testing to see whether remediation might be necessary and think about what that might cost?

01:01:32 Supervisor Chavez You know, I would love to have Bruce, can you talk just a little bit about lead accumulation in soil? Because I will share one thing we're learning, but I'd be curious about if you could talk because it's come up in the chat a couple times, and Laura's question's a good one.

01:01:52 Dr. Lanphear So I haven't actually studied soil around airports. Particularly, I've studied soil around houses, in several cities, and that can be a problem both from fallout of lead and gasoline when it hits the walls in the past and lead paint. Oftentimes, we'll see levels like in Rochester, 1,000 parts per million, very high. In terms of, if you have a concentrated amount, like you have a fuel tank with leaded aviation fuel, it's very likely or even just fuel itself, in a tank. Oftentimes, those will leak, and those will need to be sampled and probably cleaned up pretty extensively before any houses or other developments put in there.

01:02:47 Supervisor Chavez So, and what I would add is that California has really strict rules about what you can develop with you know, so you have to test soil at different levels even to make sure that you're being extremely careful about when you're able to build or not build. So I would say that we definitely have concern and want we'll make sure that we do all those soil studies. I do think that, in certain parts of the airport, perhaps, where you may have a mechanic shop and there's, you know, seepage, that you could have a problem. If you have an underwater or high ground water table, there's probably challenges with that too. One thing I will say is that, for us, our fuel systems, our fuel tanks are above grade. And so we're less actually worried about that because I think the point that, Dr.  Lanphear raised is that, there's a higher level of risk when something is below grade in part because you're not able to see it and stop it if it's leaking as easily you as you can if it's above grade. So for Reid-Hillview, you know, I'm concerned whenever we're redeveloping anything, but I'm not, I don't think we've done enough research yet for me to be able to know the answer to that question, exactly, except to say that, you know, we do have a lot of rules, and we're going to  be very careful before we develop on top of these properties, this property.

01:04:20 Laura Kaplan Good to know. Thank you so much. You know, for a community that might be considering steps like that, it's good to be able to follow in the footsteps of someone who has done it and considered it. So, perhaps we'll follow along on your journey as you think more about, you know, does topsoil need to be scraped? Are certain areas of the airport more prone to contamination than others? And maybe there are some parts that you worry about and some parts that you don't. So thank you for that. We did have a question about, if someone were trying to estimate how much lead you know, like, trying to do a visual, like, this number of pounds of lead, which is, you know, equivalent to a pile this high…how would you estimate how much lead is being emitted annually? Is it something that can be based on fuel sales, based on number of operations? Has anybody tried to estimate how much lead is being emitted by Reid Hillview Airport operations annually?

01:05:22 Supervisor Chavez So when the EPA did their study, they were able to quantify what they thought the…I don't know if they used pounds. I can't really remember that study off the top of my head. But we have not done a visual like it's a basketball size or anything like that. In fact, I think Bruce did a good job of explaining how much lead. And maybe, Bruce, if you could say again what the spoon in the Olympic sized pool just maybe describe that for a moment because I think that that really helps people understand how little it takes to negatively impact human health.

01:06:00 Dr. Lanphear Yeah. Well, let me, I'll go back and do one better, I think. Back in 1975 when leaded gasoline was still being used in cars, you could look at a typical amount of lead in a man, in an adult, and that was about 165 milligrams. That was found by basically cremating people - after they died, of course - and finding out how much lead was left. 165 milligrams, and that's about the weight of a paper clip. A lead poisoned man had about 500 milligrams, 3 paper clips. And so the difference between a typical man and a lead poisoned man was threefold. Now I've already said that today, we're about 10 to a 100 times more heavily exposed than our preindustrial ancestors. And in 1975, they were about a 1000 times more heavily exposed. So lead levels have come down, but the difference between a lead poison man and a non lead poisoned man, it's just so small relative to the amounts of exposure we have. So it doesn't really directly get at your question, but very small amounts of lead are toxic. And I don't think we've seen, I think we're going to  find down below parts per billion that lead can be toxic to humans. We haven't seen the end of it, is what I'm expecting.

01:07:36 Laura Kaplan Thank you. So I think that is all of the questions that we've had submitted so far. So, if folks feel you haven't had your question answered or if you have a follow-up question, feel free to put it in the q and a. So, Hep, I want to  turn it back to you. Is there anything on your mind that you want to ..

01:07:54 Supervisor Chavez Wait, I do have a number. I'm sorry. I just found this. So when the EPA did their study in 2008, Reid Hillview put out more than 1200 pounds of lead into the air annually, and it was at 25th in the country at that time among 3400 airports. 

01:08:14 Laura Kaplan Wow. Wow. So that is striking when you think about 3 paper clips’ weight is enough to poison a person.

01:08:22 Supervisor Chavez Right. That's a lot of paper clips. So thank you for that, Dr.  Lanphear.

01:08:32 Laura Kaplan That's huge. And, supervisor Chavez, do you know how that estimate was arrived at?

01:08:34 Supervisor Chavez I don't. This was in the EPA's report. So they have an old…this report is from I thought it was from 2011, but it was from 2008, and this was their 2008 report.

01:08:45 Laura Kaplan Okay. So we could maybe look at that report and try to read their methodology. Okay. That is a helpful lead. Thank you so much. So I want to turn it back to hep. Is there anything on your mind that you would like to add to the discussion or ask, Dr.  Lanphear or Supervisor Chavez at this point? And we need to see if anything else comes up in the chat.

01:09:03 Hep Ingham Yeah. Just, Robert Boutelle's study, he did a map of the annual lead load that was at the 3 airports. And I want to say Boulder was about 400 pounds. So it was about 300 or 500 pounds. RMMA, I think, was close to 1200 pounds, and then Erie was about a little higher than Boulder. And so were…in Longmont, it was about 600 pounds. So we're here in Boulder, we're kind of in the middle of a little lead vortex. Our, my particular house is a little bit north of the [BDU] runway. And, yeah, not only I mean, the planes come over, it's over 100 decibels, but they're right over where I can smell it, and they're about maybe 300 to 500 feet up. And this is one of those cases where the FAA won't enforce its own altitude standard. But, you know, so that was one of my arguments to city council. I'm like, well, you know, if the FAA won't follow its own rules, why do you have to follow their rules? I know that's kinda simplistic, but, just the belligerence of the people that I met with at the FAA and the aviation community, you know, I just don't get a sense that, they really think this is an evil or a bad thing, and they're going to  try to put it off as long as possible. But and that's why I was trying to see other than doing it the old fashioned way of organizing, I guess there is no other way. I thought maybe, you know, Howard Zinn’s old quote, you don't follow laws that aren't just. And so I was hoping that maybe you could comment on maybe somehow you were able to get the rest of your crew, supervisors to, you know, go along, and I and it sounds like it was probably pressure from below that pushed him that way.

01:11:09 Supervisor Chavez Yes. And, Bruce, I saw your hand up. Did you..or Dr. Lanphear, I love it.

01:11:14 Dr. Lanphear Oh, I wanted to bring up 2 things. Number 1, I think you really had champions in the leadership in the county. And, yet there was also a big public outcry, and I think you need both. And it's certainly clear that the science by itself is almost never enough. You need to have people get behind it. I did want to  just point out. We, everybody's talking about all these, all the amounts of lead that are released from these different airports. 10,000 pounds, 460 pounds. It goes somewhere. And we've been talking about human health today, but there are loons and there are eagles dying from lead poisoning as well. And I don't know if anybody is familiar with Mary Oliver, but if I could, can I take one minute and read a Mary Oliver poem?

01:12:10 Laura Kaplan Please.

01:12:11 Dr. Lanphear Alright. The title is Lead. “Here's a story to break your heart. Are you willing? This winter, the loons came to our harbor and died one by one of nothing we could see. A friend told me of one on the shore that lifted its head and opened the elegant beak and cried out in the long sweet savoring of its life, which if you have heard it, you know is a sacred thing, and for which if you have not heard it, you had better hurry to where they still sing. And believe me, tell no one just where that is. The next morning, this loom speckled in iridescent and with a plan to fly home to some hidden lake was dead on the shore. I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again for the rest of the world.

01:12:10 Laura Kaplan Thank you, Dr. It is heartbreaking, and we appreciate the reminder that it's not just human health, but it is all of the critters that we share this planet with who are also impacted by what happens, when we put lead into the environment. I do want to, I see another question, that was submitted actually through email. This is something that has been a conversation here in Boulder that if we were to close our airport, that potentially it won't matter because other planes will just zip into that airspace, right, that somehow the airport creates this protective zone over Boulder. And if we remove that by not having an airport, other planes will just fill in the gap and maybe be worse. Is that something that ever came up in the rhetoric or in the discussion around Reid-Hillview, something that you've considered?

01:14:03 Supervisor Chavez No, actually.

01:14:10 Laura Kaplan Interesting that it never came up because it's been so prevalent here as a line of reasoning of why we should not close the airport.

01:14:18 Supervisor Chavez I mean yeah. And I could understand the argument, but it doesn't and that, yeah, that doesn't really make I mean, I understand it intellectually, but that's really not something that's come up at all.

01:14:32 Laura Kaplan Okay. Well, maybe we should ask someone who has actually closed an airport and that they have some experience with whether that happened to them or not.

01:14:44 Supervisor Chavez Yeah. That's a good question.

01:14:44 Laura Kaplan Well, we are coming towards the end of our webinar time here, and I think we have run out of questions that have been submitted. So I think I just want to open it up to you, Supervisor Chavez and Dr.  Lanphear, for any last words. How do you want to end this and wrap it up? What wisdom do you have for us, or questions you want to leave us with?

01:15:01 Supervisor Chavez Well, I wanted to say 3 things. 1, I'm delighted to have an opportunity to share thoughts and ideas with all of you. 2, I'm so blown away that you are getting this put on the ballot. That is a lot of work, and that is exactly the kind of organizing that I would just really want to honor and lift up. I will close with just this thought, which is that, in our county, there was a single member of the board of supervisors in the 1990s that tried to close the airport because she thought it was such an incompatible land use. And then another member came in the 2000s and she did the same thing. She tried the same thing, and that was after years of battling and being worried about, not just the toxins, but noise and the risk of planes crashing and into homes and that. And part of…so two things: 1, we really built on the leadership of those two people, and I'm mindful that these fights can be long. And I just you know, from my perspective, I took what they did so right and at a time when it was so difficult to do and really just kept their work going. And I feel like we're just passing the baton to each other. I will be out of office in December, and one of the things that I'm we're getting…I'm termed out. And one of the issues that I'm asking every single candidate that's running for the board of supervisors is what are they going to do on a number of issues? But on the top of my list is how are they going to handle Reid-Hillview. And I say that because the organizing, there is no way around it. If it had just been me, even if it had been the brilliant Dr. Sammy Zahron. I think Bruce hit it on the head, which is how do you do studies in all these places? And there's not the kind of movement, especially when you look at, you know, a state like Michigan that had the Flint, Michigan crisis. Like, that doesn't even compute. So organizing and really engaging people, there's just there's no shortcut to building political space and will.

01:17:24 Supervisor Chavez And let me just say this for the elected officials. I don't mean, I don't know if there are any on here, but let me say to you all as an elected official that people ask us to do hard things all the time. And when you run for office, you know that one of the things that's going to  happen is that you go from being a candidate where everybody thinks you have the possibility to be amazing to being just any other politician who's on the take and who's awful and, you know, you get the worst hate mail and it's just, you know, there's nobody brings you flowers and candy for doing a good job. And so what that means is that there are a lot of people who worry about how many hills do you die on. And one of my theories of change is that when people do the right thing and it's hard, we have to have a base of people around them that support them, or what happens is you just get beat down so much. And you know this from the struggle you're having with your airport. So what I would just say is when you get elected leaders who are who are excited and willing to pitch in, you cannot leave them on the battlefield alone, and cheer from them from the outside. Because when you're doing something that's this hard, that you're dealing with multiple levels of government with, you know, frankly, an industry that has been really just terrible to the communities they're in and not worried about human health. You have a lot you're changing, and so support them and create spaces. And this is what I call it, creating the political space and will for everybody to do the right thing. And it takes a lot of work, but it's really I think it's going to be really worth it. I won't be making decisions about what happens with the land, and I'm not going to be making decisions about what exact day it closes, but I did my baton part. Like, I've got the baton and it's ready to go to somebody really good there, you know, somebody who's going to do a good job and see it over the finish line. But that is organizing. There is just no shortcut.

01:19:27 Laura Kaplan Thank you so much. And, so I want to just acknowledge as one of the organizers of the Airport Neighborhood Campaign here in Boulder that the work that we are doing absolutely, it does exactly what you just said, Supervisor Chavez. It builds on the work of people who came before us. I first heard about the idea of closing the airport from a councilwoman, a former councilwoman named Lisa Morzel, who also got termed out. And Lisa is actually one of our 5 people who, as a resident of Boulder, put their name on every page of every petition that we circulated to get this on the ballot. You have to have 5 residents who put their name on it. So Lisa is still with us, but not having to do all the heavy lifting right now. And, another council person who has really taken up this baton is Mark Wallach, who is on the call tonight. And, Mark, I took the liberty of going ahead and promoting you to a panelist on the off chance that you might want to say something. I don't know, Mark. You're usually so very shy about public speaking. But I did want to give you an opportunity to chime in here if you would like to. And then we'll, go to Bruce Lanphear to wrap things up from a scientific perspective. But, Mark, did you want to respond to the supervisor's comments or to what you've heard tonight?

01:20:35 Mark Wallach When was the last time I did not want to say something? I really appreciate everybody's participation this evening and, you know, the path that you have outlined for us. Laura is correct. This is almost a generational effort. It probably started at around Lisa's time. I picked it up 4, 5 years ago. There was very little support for it. I think there's almost a majority, possibly there is a majority on council now, to move forward in this direction. And, all that we need is for the residents of Boulder to approve decommissioning the airport for us to go forward and take that path. So, yeah, I agree with everything that Supervisor Chavez has said. It requires organizing, it requires effort, it requires doing all of this over a great period of time. And, you know, this is the 1st year that I've had some degree of optimism that we might actually hit the goal. And I will be off council as she will be off council, but well, well before, the first home is ever built on this reclaimed land. But I have some optimism that we can ultimately get there. And, again, Laura, as always, thank you for your efforts, and thank you for putting together this webinar, which has been very, very helpful to me as a member of the Boulder City Council. So thank you all, and good night.

01:22:25 Laura Kaplan Thank you, Mark. And I do have to acknowledge, I had nothing to do with putting this webinar together. It was all Hep. So, Hep Ingham, thank you so much for your organizing efforts and connecting us with Supervisor Chavez and Dr. Lanphear and making this webinar happen while the rest of us were very much distracted with gathering signatures. Dr.  Lanphear, did you have any final comments or thoughts for us to leave us with?

01:22:52 Dr. Lanphear I think just to reiterate what Cindy said, and Mark said as well, I used to think that once the science was there, my job was done. Somebody else would pick it up and run with it. And what I've learned over the past 30 years is that's rarely the case. The science is, maybe the beginning, maybe it comes from a different part of our community, but by itself, the science is never enough. It really is about the collaboration and the community getting together and saying, this is what we want for our community. And so it's heartening to see this because, too often or for too long, so much of my work was neglected. That's beginning to change, and, certainly, what you're doing here is a part of that change. So it's just so gratifying to see.

01:23:45 Hep Ingham Well, thank you so much, Laura, for co-hosting and Matt Wilson and Supervisor Chavez and Professor Lanphear. I really appreciate it. I'm so glad you guys showed up, and we've got this excellent recording for tonight.

[Group thank yous and goodnight]