The Trump administration on Wednesday introduced a multi-agency strategy to reduce the exposure of children to lead poisoning in drinking water or in dust that is generated from old lead paint in homes and schools.

Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, along with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson unveiled the “federal lead action plan,” which is a big-picture strategy document, and not a formal regulatory proposal.

“Lead exposure is a calamity that disproportionately harms children and low income communities,” Wheeler said during a press conference at EPA headquarters. “The Trump administration is committed to combating the problem head on."

The Cabinet officials belong to the President’s Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children, a coalition established in 1997 featuring the leaders of 17 agencies.

The group aims to improve monitoring of children exposed to lead, better the health outcomes of children who have already been harmed by lead, more proactively communicate the dangers of lead, and advance research on the effects of lead.

Lead is a heavy metal that was used for decades in pipes and paint that is especially harmful to children, causing learning disabilities and slower growth.

Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said early on that combating lead in drinking water was a top priority, declaring a "war on lead" more than three years after the crisis in Flint, Mich., in which pipes corroded by a change in fresh water sources tainted the city’s drinking water with lead.

Wheeler, who replaced Pruitt in July, said EPA plans to introduce an implementation plan for the strategy by March, including performance metrics.

Most prominently, the EPA is working with state and local officials to update the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, a federal mandate that dictates how communities test for lead in drinking water.

Wheeler said that the agency plans next spring to unveil its proposed new version of the rule. It will also propose new lead dust standards for homes in June, an action that EPA is mandated to take because of a December 2017 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Carson, meanwhile, said HUD on Wednesday will be announcing nearly $140 million in grant funding to states and local governments to protect families from lead-based paint in public housing.

“Lead poisoning’s impact on children is personal to me,” said Carson, a former pediatric neurosurgeon. “No mind is more precious or fragile than the mind of a child.”

But updating the EPA’s Lead and Copper rule is considered by experts to be the policy area that can have the greatest impact.

The Lead and Copper rule, which has not been revised in more than a decade, governs how much lead is acceptable in drinking water and what utilities must do if their water tests above the threshold.

It requires public water systems to periodically test for lead and copper, limiting the amount of lead in drinking water to no more than 15 parts per billion. If more than 10 percent of sites sampled by water utilities in an area exceed 15 parts per billion, the utilities have to improve their corrosion control methods, and they eventually might have to replace their lead pipes.

Environmental advocates have argued for years that the law is easy to exploit and hard to enforce.

Replacing lead pipes is the best way to combat lead, according to a 2015 report by an external group of water advisers organized by the EPA.

But the EPA has expressed concern over the cost — up to $30 billion — of replacing the country's 7 million to 11 million lines. It’s unclear if Wheeler’s proposal would require it.

It's also challenging because there’s uncertainty around who owns the lines — the water utility or homeowner — since they straddle public and private property.

In addition to the challenges of funding and ownership, most utilities do not know where pipes are located due to poor recordkeeping. Some were built as early as the 1920s.