The city is poised to start peeling lingering lead paint off old walls — after alders voted to allow data sharing to proactively track and eliminate the endangerment to childhood health.
The Board of Alders cast that unanimous vote during their latest meeting in City Hall Monday night to authorize a five- year contract between the city and the Housing Authority of New Haven that will allow the exchange of otherwise confidential data related to blood lead levels of children under six between those parties.
“Lead poisoning continues to be a significant public health concern,” Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller said, particularly in homes built before 1978, the year the federal government banned the residential use of lead paint.
Read in more detail about the contact here.
The underlying aim is to permit the city’s housing authority and health department to construct a comprehensive database of addresses where children with high lead levels have previously lived in order to facilitate swift identification of households with children that could still be at risk.
Our country is pathetic when it comes to regulating toxins and pollution. Most other countries in the world banned lead in paint in 1928!!! The paint lobby prevailed until 1978. Lead was added to gasoline the the 1940s to lesson "engine knock". Lead from gasoline got into all of us and everything, even found in infant baby teeth. Lead has been banned more recently from children's toys but is still heavily prevalent in balloon colors and all the stupid holiday decorations mostly made in China. This bothers me a lot, thinking of the billions Americans spend on Halloween decorations which are then thrown in our landfills to forever contaminate our ground water etc. When will ignorant Americans WAKE UP!!!! Stop letting the profeteers destroy our health and environment for a fast buck. They make us sick and then profit off our cancers, diabetes, lung disease, hypertension, kidney disease etc. all derived from toxic cheap processed food, its packaging and household products.