[Federal Register Volume 82, Number 204 (Tuesday, October 24, 2017)]
[Notices]
[Pages 49226-49228]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2017-23039]


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DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

[Docket No. FR-6049-N-01]


Drafting a New Federal Strategy To Reduce Childhood Lead 
Exposures and Impacts: Request for Information

AGENCY: Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes, HUD.

ACTION: Request for information.

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SUMMARY: Through this notice, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban 
Development (HUD), which co-chairs the Lead Subcommittee of the 
President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks 
to Children (Task Force) requests public comment on a new federal lead 
strategy being developed by the Task Force.

DATES: Comments Due Date: November 24, 2017.

ADDRESSES: Interested persons are invited to submit comments responsive 
to this request for information. Comments should refer to the proposal 
by name and/or Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Control Number, 
and should be sent, either electronically to the email address of the 
Task Force for commenting on this federal lead strategy, 
[email protected], or by mail to Warren Friedman, Ph.D., CIH, 
Senior Advisor to the Director, Office of Lead Hazard Control and 
Healthy Homes, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th 
Street SW., Room 8236, Washington, DC 20410.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Warren Friedman, Ph.D., Office of Lead 
Hazard Control and Healthy Homes, Department of Housing and Urban 
Development, 451 7th Street SW., Room 8236, Washington, DC 20410; 
telephone number 202-402-7698 (this is not a toll-free number). Persons 
with hearing or speech impairments may access this number through TTY 
by calling the Federal Relay Service, 800-877-8339 (toll-free number).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Background

President's Task Force

    On April 21, 1997, the President issued Executive Order 13045,\1\ 
establishing the President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks 
and Safety Risks to Children. The Task Force works to identify 
children's environmental health and safety issues, develops federal 
interagency strategies to protect children's environmental health and 
safety, and communicates information to federal, state, and local 
decision makers to protect children from environmental health risks.\2\ 
Among other things, the Task Force is developing a comprehensive 
strategy to further reduce lead exposure in children's environments.\3\ 
The Task Force has 11 executive agency members and 7 Executive Office 
of the President agency members.\4\ Ongoing activities of the Task 
Force are managed by its Senior Staff Steering Committee, co-chaired by 
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Health and Human Services 
(HHS). The Senior Staff Steering Committee has established five 
subcommittees, one of which is the Lead Subcommittee, which is co-
chaired by HUD, EPA, and HHS staff.
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    \1\ The Executive Order was subsequently published in the 
Federal Register on April 23, 1997, at 62 FR 19885.
    \2\ The Task Force's Web site is available at: https://ptfceh.niehs.nih.gov.
    \3\ The Task Force's Web site's lead exposures page is available 
at: https://ptfceh.niehs.nih.gov/activities/lead-exposures/.
    \4\ The member agencies are listed on the Task Force's Web 
site's ``About'' page and is available at: https://ptfceh.niehs.nih.gov/about/.
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Lead Reports by the Task Force

    In February 2000, the Task Force published ``Eliminating Childhood 
Lead Poisoning: A Federal Strategy Targeting Lead Paint Hazards.'' \5\ 
The strategy put forward a set of recommendations aimed at eliminating 
childhood lead poisoning in the United States as a major public health 
problem by the year 2010. It focused primarily on expanding efforts to 
correct lead paint hazards (especially in low-income housing), a major 
source of lead exposure for children. Addressing lead exposures in the 
United States, however, requires consideration of sources of lead 
exposure in addition to lead paint, including, among others, soil, 
food, drinking water, and consumer products.
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    \5\ The strategy is available at: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/about/fedstrategy2000.pdf.
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    In November 2016, the Task Force published ``Key Federal Programs 
to Reduce Childhood Lead Exposures and

[[Page 49227]]

Eliminate Associated Health Impacts.'' \6\ This inventory report 
summarized the efforts of nine federal departments and agencies 
currently planned or underway to understand, prevent, and reduce 
various sources of lead exposure among children. These efforts include 
a wide range of activities such as research, surveillance, regulation, 
and enforcement, as well as community interventions and educational 
outreach. The report also provided a basis for increased coordination 
and collaboration among multiple federal agencies that, as with 
previous progress on the issue of lead exposures, will be required to 
further protect the nation's children.
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    \6\ The report is available at: https://ptfceh.niehs.nih.gov/features/assets/files/key_federal_programs_to_reduce_childhood_lead_exposures_and_eliminate_associated_health_impactspresidents_508.pdf.
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Development of a Comprehensive Federal Lead Strategy

    The Task Force determined that the inventory report provides a 
starting point for the development of a comprehensive federal lead 
strategy that will inform policy makers about evidence gaps and steps 
needed to further reduce lead exposures in children in the United 
States. The Task Force charged its Lead Subcommittee with drafting the 
strategy, conducting outreach to stakeholder groups, and soliciting 
comments from stakeholders for consideration in developing the 
strategy. This Request for Information (RFI) is part of the comment 
solicitation process.

II. Key Components of the Draft Federal Lead Strategy

    1. A vision of this new federal lead strategy, such as to ensure 
that the United States will become a place where children live, learn 
and play free from the harmful effects of lead exposure.
    2. A mission of the strategy, such as to improve the health of 
children in the United States, through federal collaboration, by 
eliminating harm from lead exposure.
    3. A background section that includes the following topics: The 
Task Force, its lead activities, including development of its 2000 
federal lead paint strategy, 2016 inventory report, and this strategy; 
the problems to be addressed by this strategy; children's lead 
exposure, including exposure sources, routes, and pathways; lead doses 
and blood-lead levels lead toxicity, and children's health effects; and 
federal lead and related (e.g., environmental justice, fair housing, 
civil rights) statutes, regulations, policy, and guidance.
    4. A set of goals for the strategy, such as to effect the 
following: Reducing sources of lead exposure in children's 
environments; improving identification and monitoring of lead exposed 
children; improving the health of children identified as lead-exposed; 
communicating effectively and consistently with stakeholders about 
childhood lead exposure; supporting or conducting research to advance 
our scientific understanding of the effects, evaluation, and control of 
lead hazards in children's environments.
    5. Under each of the goals, a set of objectives that would further 
define the focus of this strategy.
    6. Under each of the objectives, specific actions that would 
further the enumerated goals of the strategy.\7\
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    \7\ A starting point for developing actions could be the list of 
over 58 current and planned Federal programs and activities in 
Section 7 of the November 2016 inventory report. The actions under 
the strategy would not be limited to those programs and activities 
in the inventory report. Similarly, not all those programs and 
activities need to be mentioned in the strategy because of the need 
to keep the strategy to manageable size and focus. But such a 
decision should not be used to infer that the Task Force considers 
that any programs or activities not mentioned are less important 
than those mentioned.
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III. Request for Information

    The purpose of this RFI is to solicit feedback on developing the 
new federal lead strategy report. HUD encourages participation from 
stakeholder groups, including the general public; non-governmental 
organizations, including philanthropic organizations; health care 
providers; the housing industry; the general aviation industry; health 
economics researchers; outcomes researchers; environmental firms, 
including certified lead professionals; and lead hazard control firms.
    While HUD, as co-chair of the Lead Subcommittee, welcomes comments 
on all aspects of the drafting of a new federal lead strategy, HUD is 
particularly interested in receiving comments and data on the 
following:

1. Priority Risks and Goals

    a. What priority risks, for example, exposures from housing, air, 
water, soil, food, etc., and issues should be addressed in a new 
federal lead strategy?
    b. Should any of the suggested goals above be deleted or revised, 
and/or should any goals be added? Within the suggested goals above (as 
stated, or as you would revise them), or additional goals, what 
specific objectives should be identified?

2. Strategy Development and Implementation

    a. What actions should be implemented to address these priority 
risks and issues?
    b. What obstacles should be considered in determining which actions 
to include in the strategy? What obstacles pertain to one or more 
goals, objectives, or actions? Please be specific about the anticipated 
impact of the obstacles.
    c. How can the obstacles be overcome? What effect, if any, would 
the effort to overcome these obstacles have on the ability to achieve 
the goals of the strategy?

3. Messaging and Outreach

    a. What federal agency messaging regarding lead exposure in 
children, including information on where lead is found and how to avoid 
exposure, have been useful in the past and to which audiences? How 
could such messaging be improved?
    b. Which non-Federal partners should the Task Force consult with to 
address the environmental health risks and safety risks of lead 
exposure to children, and why? Please identify specific organizations, 
or categories of organizations.

IV. Request for Information Response Guidelines

    If you submit comments by email, your response must be provided as 
one or more attachments, specifically, as Microsoft Word (.doc or 
.docx) or Microsoft Excel (.xls or .xslx) attachment. Graphics may be 
provided as JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) file attachments or as JPEG images 
embedded in the Microsoft Word or Excel attachments. It is recommended 
that emails with attachments having total file sizes exceeding 10 MB be 
compressed (.zip or .zipx) to ensure message delivery. If you submit 
comments by mail, your response should be no longer than 50 pages.
    Please provide the following information at the start of your 
response to this RFI: Company/institution name (if applicable); contact 
information, including address, phone number, and email address. Do not 
submit Confidential Business Information (CBI) in your response to this 
RFI. Responses identified as containing CBI will not be reviewed and 
will be discarded.
    Please identify your answers by responding to a specific question 
or topic if applicable. You may answer as many or as few questions as 
you wish. HUD will not respond to individual submissions or publish 
publicly a compendium of responses.

[[Page 49228]]

    To help you prepare your comments, please see the How Do I Prepare 
Effective Comments segment of the Commenting on HUD Rules Web page, 
https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/general_counsel/Commenting-On-HUD-Rules#1. While written for commenting on regulatory proposals, these 
tips are generally applicable to this RFI.

    Dated: October 18, 2017.
Matthew Ammon,
Director, Office of Lead Hazard, Control and Healthy Homes.
[FR Doc. 2017-23039 Filed 10-23-17; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE P