Background on Lead Poisoning in Boston

"Lead poisoning causes irreversible damage to our children:"

Nobody questions that lead can do great harm, especially to young children. Lead exposure can have serious health effects, including a variety of neurologic and behavioral problems as well as delays in development. Numerous studies have also found associations between lead exposure and decreased IQ and increased criminal behavior. Millions of dollars have been spent on lead programs in Massachusetts over the years and this has helped thousands of children and families but the fight is not over. The cases that are left are our hardest to reach, and more children may be put at risk as the housing that contains lead gets older and older. We must remain vigilant!

Lead poisoning is a serious issue for Boston's communities of color:

• The National NAACP has already expressed interest in childhood lead poisoning because of the national statistics indicating 16% of low-income and 21% of African-American children living in older housing have high blood lead levels.
• In Boston, childhood lead poisoning disproportinately affects our poor and minority communities. Although, the overall trend in lead poisoning has been going down, certain areas of the city (like Dorchester) have not been going down as quickly (between 1994 and 1999: a 50% drop for Boston, 44% drop for Dorchester).

With the current system many families are still not getting the help they need to make their homes lead safe and to have affordable housing:

• This may be due to a number of issues including the substandard housing many of them are forced to live in and potential barriers to receiving grants or loans to have their homes made lead-safe. Even with the existing programs, it can be prohibitively expensive for many of these families to pay the thousands of dollars necessary to make their homes safe. Research has also shown that homes that contain lead may have additional environmental conditions that contribute to injury and diseases like asthma.
• Lead Poisoning also adversely affects the number of affordable homes that are available to families living in Boston. There are currently numerous housing units in Boston that remain unoccupied because landlords do not want to go through the expense of having to clean up the lead in those homes so they can be habited by families. We need to get families back into these homes, especially given the current housing shortage in our city.

But it is not just our inner cities that are affected by this issue. ANY home or building built before lead paint was banned in the 1970Ìs could have levels high enough to poison a child. Many children are poisoned during home renovations by miscroscopic dust particles that