DC Child Accident & Safety Blog

Since lead paint was banned in 1978, the number of children with elevated lead levels has decreased so much that at one point, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was confident that this environmental hazard would be eliminated by 2010. However, health officials no longer think they can meet that goal this year because lead hazards are still present in houses built before the lead paint ban, many of which are in “poor urban pockets,” says Mireya Navarro of the New York Times.

Although the 1978 law banned the use of lead paint, local laws and enforcement have yet to catch up with their own laws requiring inspections and cleanup of houses built before 1978. Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief of the lead poisoning prevention branch at the CDC, said that there are still jurisdictions that do not have laws requiring landlords to check for lead-based paint. Even in places that do have such laws, landlords are not always compliant – in a survey done from 2007 to 2009 in Brooklyn, New York, “59 percent of tenants reported that their landlords had not followed any of the law’s provisions,” Navarro reported in the NY Times article.

In addition to experts’ recommendation of strengthening local laws and enforcement, the EPA implemented a regulation in April, 2010, that “requires renovation and remodeling contractors to be certified in techniques for containing lead dust stirred up during work” in buildings constructed before 1978.

Elevated lead levels in young children, especially those under 6, can “cause irreversible impairment intelligence quotient, motor skills and behavior,” says Dr. John Rosen, who founded a lead prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

In Washington, D.C., lead safety laws impose strict liability on landlords who know they are renting to families with children under eight years old. However, many landlords still are lax about cleaning up apartments unless families complain loud and often. In our law firm's work in representing such families, we find that landlords don't take their obligations seriously until they are taken to court.

A newly-released study, done over the course of six years by researchers at Cornell University, finds that even small amounts of lead in children's blood (below CDC guidelines for acceptable levels) make reduced IQ much more likely. This correlation holds true even when other factors that affect IQ--such as other environmental factors or genetics--are accounted for.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that the maximum allowable blood-lead level is 10 micrograms per deciliter. But the new Cornell study focused on kids with between 0 and 10 micrograms per deciliter, and found that those in the 0-5 range had average IQs of about five points higher than those in the 5-10 range. The unavoidable conclusion is that even when lead poisoning is less than what the CDC deems harmful, it can still have significant negative effects on children's developing brains.

Those who are poor are at greater risk for lead poisoning, as lead is often found in the paint of old or poorly-maintained buildings. Lead poisoning has been in the news lately, because of the Mattel recall and other toy safety issues. This very morning, New York State recalled children's jewelry from stores including Michael's and Big Lots because they contained hazardous levels of lead. It is important to remember that houses are the most common source of lead-related brain damage.

The researchers involved in this study had previously published another, similar study in 2003. They found then, as they did again now, that blood-lead levels are related "inversely and significantly" to IQ. Clearly, this is a serious problem that needs to be recognized and addressed.

Amidst all the press about Mattel's toy recall and lead paint in toys, there is a grim reminder in today's Washington Post about the most common source of lead poisoning: paint in houses. The Washington DC attorney general has finished filing cases against twelve DC landlords whose buildings were found, after testing, to have hazardous levels of lead-based paint and who did not comply with instructions to remove this dangerous material.

Doctors, after running blood test on children under 8 who lived in or frequently visited these buildings, found that the children had elevated levels of lead. In children this young, lead exposure can have permanent consequences for mental development and abilities. Thankfully the DC attorney general recognizes this and is pursuing these cases.

For more information, here is a list on the effects and symptoms of lead poisoning in young children.