New Haven still has the state’s highest rate of children with lead poisoning, like 18 month-old Piper Forbush (pictured). The good news is that the city has dramatically cut that rate.
Over the past ten years, the number of pre-school kids with elevated lead levels has dropped from 299 to 61. Lead poisoning can result in serious, permanent physical and intellectual impairments for young children. Most of the poisoning occurs from hand-to-mouth contact with contaminated dust.
Paul Kowalski, environmental health program director at the New Haven Health Department, pointed to several factors for the city’s progress.
“Due to the elimination of lead in gasoline, there’s less lead in the dust that accumulates outside and seeps into apartments,” he said. Money has helped too — with federal grants the city has funded full lead abatement of more than 700 housing units. (Census figures indicate the city has 47,000 housing units, the majority renter-occupied, and most were built well before interior lead paint was outlawed in 1978.) The city’s policy requires full lead abatement whenever housing stock is renovated, at an average cost of $8,000 per unit.
Finally, Kowalski said, education is having an impact.
For more than ten years he’s been distributing 1,000 coloring books annually about how to reduce the risks of lead poisoning. (Full disclosure — this reporter collaborated on the coloring book while a staffer for an environmental education program.) For the past few years Kowalski has been holding a family activity day at Lighthouse Park with clowns and puppets focused solely on lead poisoning prevention.
Although the majority of babies and toddlers in the city with lead poisoning are tenants in buildings with peeling paint, Piper Forbush lives in a house owned by her parents — a big pink house on Quinnipiac Avenue in Fair Haven Heights.
Her mom, Cheryl, said they discovered the problem when Piper’s lead level was routinely tested at her one-year check-up. “It was around 30 [micrograms per deciliter of blood], and anything over 20 they’re concerned about,” she said. “So the health department came and did an assessment of where the lead is.” They found that lead dust was created with the friction of movement of the windows and doors. So Cheryl’s husband, Doug, is replacing them all.
The number of kids who’ve been identified with elevated lead levels has dropped even as the lead level of concern itself has dropped over the years from 50 micrograms to 20; it’s been shown that drops in cognitive and neurological functioning, and other physical impairments, can occur at the lower level. If it’s very high, kids can be chelated, a process in which the lead in their blood binds with a chelator (something that attracts metals such as lead) and is excreted. In less serious cases, once the source of lead dust is removed, a child’s lead level drops on its own.
For years, babies and toddlers were considered the “canaries in the coal mine” in the sense that the poisoning of a child was proof of lead in the home, just like a canary keeling over in a coal mine demonstrated the presence of poisonous gas. It was those housing units that were then made top priority for abatement, which means removing all the lead-based paint in the unit and repainting with non-leaded paint. Now, however, owners or renters with children under six can request a lead inspection, and if lead is found, the owner can apply for a forgivable loan to get rid of the lead.
The health department collaborates with the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund to get the lead abatement done. Kwasi Oduro, the Loan Fund’s point person on the lead program, said there’s a very specific process that must be followed to qualify for a lead-abatement loan.
“The applicants come here after being cited by the health department,” he said. “We use the owner’s income to determine eligibility. Then the house is inspected for lead levels and code violations. If violations are found, they must be addressed first, then abatement can proceed. The applicant must provide two competitive bids from state-certified lead abatement contractors; then the abatement plan is drawn up and submitted to the city after approval by the loan advisory committee.” During abatement, the family must relocate (if renters, at the owner’s expense unless the family can stay at Yale’s Lead-Safe House).
Cheryl and Piper Forbush stayed with Cheryl’s sister in Florida while Doug did the messy abatement work in the house. The good news for this family is that Piper so far shows no indication of any ill effects. Her lead level has dropped to around 20 so far, and is heading downward.
