The removal of lead from gasoline and house paint almost 40 years ago has resulted in our national average children’s blood lead level decreasing to less than 2.0 µg/dL (micrograms of lead per a tenth of a liter of
The removal of lead from gasoline and house paint almost 40 years ago has resulted in our national average children’s blood lead level decreasing to less than 2.0 µg/dL (micrograms of lead per a tenth of a liter of blood), which correlates with an increase in our national average IQ by several points.
However, in cities like Cleveland where the housing stock was largely built in the first half of the 20th century, lead paint and the subsequent lead poisoning remains a very significant problem for our children. The 2012 data for Cleveland found 16 percent of the children tested had elevated blood lead levels, a figure that was 26 percent for children in East Cleveland.
The effects of elevated lead levels are a decreased IQ, a decreased attention span, poor school performance and aggressive behavior. This is a very negative legacy for our children and our schools.
A positive legacy is the great decrease in these numbers over the past 10 years due to the leadership of our city and county health departments as supported by local foundations, led by a large grant from the St. Luke’s Foundation to the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council (now part of the Healthy Homes Advisory Council of Greater Cleveland). While over 36,000 children were lead-poisoned from 1997 to 2007, there has been a greater than 50 percent reduction in lead-poisoned children since 2007.
The GCLAC was a leader nationally in declaring 5 µg/dL as the more realistic level of concern, five years before the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the same change. Unfortunately, the major source of this decrease has been related to both surveillance and housing remediation, both very dependent on funding from federal agencies.
CDC decided two years ago to remove local health department surveillance funds from their budget. Cleveland’s federal Housing and Urban Development grant for remediation ran into application problems so the city will go without those funds until they can reapply in a year. We still have far too many children being lead-poisoned and we must do more.
A negative Cleveland legacy comes from our Fortune 400 paint companies. While lead toxicity was recognized in the early 1900s and lead removed from residential paint in European countries in the 1920s, the U.S. paint companies chose to continue producing lead paint until the 1960s, even though the evidence is now clear that they knew better.
The paint companies have lost ‘nuisance-based’ lawsuits in several states but so far have been able to overturn them on appeal. The latest is in California; an appeal is expected. This is a $1.1 billion judgment for primary remediation; for every dollar spent on such remediation of houses, there is estimated to be an 18- to 200-fold financial return (in less medical costs, education costs, but greater lifetime earnings, etc) for the children, families and communities in the long run.
When the Rhode Island Supreme Court overruled a jury verdict against the paint companies, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office decided to drop its pending lawsuit. In light of the California judgment, that should be re-considered. Moral responsibility should not just be abrogated legally.
A potential very positive Cleveland legacy is the targeted education of our lead-poisoned children. Originally, the brain damage from lead was thought to be irreversible. However, this ignored the developmental flexibility and reserve of the young human brain. Given an early-childhood-enriched environment, it appears that these children can be brought up to ‘normal’ performance.
Many but not all of these children are already in one of our 33 Universal Pre-Kindergarten programs around the county, but we, as a community, need to make sure that all-lead poisoned children are given the proper enriched early-childhood education.
This is going to take investment from both governmental and private funding sources. Our children and the future of our community are worth it!
Dorr G. Dearborn, Ph.D., M.D., is the chairman of the department of environmental health sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine; co-chair for the Goal 2 Committee on Safe and Healthy in Cuyahoga County, Invest in Children; and is on the executive board of the Healthy Homes Advisory Board of Greater Cleveland.