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WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency will announce on Thursday its intention to impose stricter limits on the amount of lead allowed in drinking water and begin replacing the millions of lead pipes that snake around the country and pose a significant public health threat.

Lead is a neurotoxin that can damage the brain and kidneys and interfere with red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the body. It poses special hazards for children whose nervous systems and brains are still in the developmental stage. From the early days of municipal water systems, lead was widely used in pipes where it could seep into drinking water.

Today, nearly 10 million pioneer service lines deliver water to schools, offices, homes and day care centers across the country. It could cost $60 billion to replace them all, according to one industry estimate.

Congress has approved only a fraction of that amount ($15 billion) for lead pipe replacement, as part of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Biden last month.

At an event at AFL-CIO headquarters on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce that the administration will spend the first portion of that money — $3 billion — to start replacing pipes and reducing the health hazard posed by lead paint. said senior management officials.

Until it was banned in 1978, lead-based paint was used in residential buildings where it posed a danger to anyone who could swallow paint chips or breathe lead in dust. Approximately 24 million residential units are thought to have significant lead-based paint hazards.

Ms. Harris is expected to outline the first steps the EPA and other agencies will take toward the Biden administration’s goal of replacing every lead pipe and service line in the United States.

Management officials on Wednesday said there is no time frame for replacing the millions of lead pipes and they want it done as soon as “possible”. Environmental groups said they would like to see the EPA set a 10-year deadline.

“This is truly a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “Many communities have been living with the scourge of lead pollution for over 100 years, and once you remove these lead pipes, they will never come back.”

Current federal regulations set a limit of 15 micrograms per liter of lead in drinking water, but health experts have long argued that lead should be removed from water sources.

“The lead science has settled down,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “There is no safe level of exposure and it’s time to remove this risk to support thriving people and vibrant communities.”

The EPA did not specify when a new rule would be proposed, but a senior official said the administration hopes to complete it by 2024. It is not clear what the new standard will be.

And the agency will allow Trump-era pioneering policies to take effect, despite opposition from environmental groups.

Under the Trump administration, the EPA updated the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, the primary regulation regarding lead in drinking water, for the first time in nearly three decades. But the agency rejected the advice of top medical and scientific experts demanding that all lead pipes and service lines be replaced.

Instead, the EPA under President Donald J. Trump has more than doubled the time allowed for utilities to replace polluted water systems. The Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit to prevent these changes from taking effect, describing them as “weak and illegal”.

But Biden officials speaking to reporters Wednesday evening said the Trump administration rules include some important steps — such as requiring water companies to locate and notify the public of all lead service pipes. This will start right away.