For the past four years, Tom Irwin has talked to countless people about the tragedy of childhood lead poisoning. Especially before the Flint crisis put lead issues back in the headlines, he often would be met with the incredulous response, “But haven
For the past four years, Tom Irwin has talked to countless people about the tragedy of childhood lead poisoning. Especially before the Flint crisis put lead issues back in the headlines, he often would be met with the incredulous response, “But haven’t we solved that problem already?”
It’s a fair question, says Irwin, director of CLF’s New Hampshire Advocacy Center. “We’ve known that lead is a dangerous toxin, especially for kids, for decades, even before it was banned from paint in 1978. But unfortunately, the answer to the question is still no.”
That answer frustrates Irwin because lead poisoning is an entirely preventable problem, so there’s really no good reason for why several hundred new cases are diagnosed in New Hampshire every year – nearly 750 in 2016, as reported in the State’s most recent data. According to the Centers for Disease Control, any exposure to lead is dangerous to children. When left untreated, even low levels of exposure can cause irreversible health problems, such as loss of IQ and cognitive and behavioral impairments.
Irwin himself was troubled to realize the magnitude of the lead poisoning problem after evaluating environmental justice (EJ) issues in New Hampshire in 2013. At the time, an anonymous donor had reached out to Irwin, wanting to know the most significant EJ issues facing the state and how they could help. But there was no clear answer to the question, because, unlike Massachusetts or Rhode Island, New Hampshire lacks an established EJ advocacy community. Irwin suggested to the donor that CLF conduct an assessment. The goal: to understand the key issues in the state and who they impact, and where advocacy needs were going unmet.
Irwin spent the next several months talking with stakeholders, from public health experts, to State employees, to city workers in the state’s largest cities, Nashua and Manchester. “I asked each person who else I should speak with and followed those leads,” he says. The interviews ultimately added up to about 35 people, who identified a range of issues that span the state’s rural and urban populations and echo those of EJ communities everywhere: substandard housing, transportation challenges, lack of access to healthy food, and poor working conditions.
But the issue of childhood lead poisoning stood out. With the oldest housing stock in the country, inadequate screening of children across the state, and a high rate of kids being exposed, New Hampshire clearly had a problem. And, while lead poisoning affects children across all demographics, it hits low-income and communities of color the hardest. “You’ve got kids who are already facing economic and other challenges,” Irwin says. “Add the permanent impacts of lead poisoning – learning deficiencies, attention deficit disorders, behavioral problems – and we’re just creating another barrier to breaking the cycle of poverty.”
While advocates had worked successfully on the issue in the past, lowering the State’s regulatory “action level” from a blood lead level of 20 micrograms per deciliter to 10, little progress had been made since. “New Hampshire’s laws weren’t up to the task,” Irwin says. “People working on lead were doing the best they could working within the system to protect our kids. But many said they had just been worn down and had given up on further improvements to our laws.”
Navigating the intricacies of law and policy, however, is what CLF does best. Irwin had already identified a core group of stakeholders through his assessment, and they soon began meeting to share information, develop a strategy, and engage in advocacy