Maryland lab destroys documentation on lead poisoning of children
Maryland’s Department of Health destroyed test results from the 1980s documenting lead poisoning of Maryland children — potentially thousands of records that are crucial to pursuing lawsuits seeking damages on behalf of lead-poisoned children and their families.
“We regret this, and we’re going to do everything possible to make it right,” said Maryland health secretary Joshua Sharfstein. Since learning of the destroyed files, Sharfstein has:
Asked for an investigation of how the destruction of records happened.Replaced the lab’s director.
Ordered that efforts be made to recover whatever test results might have been deleted from state computer files.
Since the 1980s, physicians and health clinics in Maryland have had to report test results showing that children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. The state Department of Health maintained those test results for years and provided them on request to people who had been tested, their parents or their attorneys.
Attorneys say the records are critical to the hundreds of pending lead-poisoning cases. “If in fact the records are permanently gone,” one attorney said, “it will just make it impossible for some citizens in Baltimore to pursue cases.”
The revelation of the destroyed files comes more than a week after reports that the Baltimore City Health Department had lost federal lead abatement money for failing to meet treatment targets.
Sharfstein, who took over the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in January, acted promptly to halt the practice and restore any results that can be restored.
“We are not destroying any more records. We are preserving records. We are going back and reconstructing databases and doing everything possible” to find and replace the lost test results, Sharfstein said. “Regardless of whether the department has a legal obligation to maintain these records, we intend to do so.”
Source: The Baltimore Sun
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