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5.17.2001
By
PETER B. LORD
Journal Environment Writer
IN THIS SMALL state, most people seem to have little awareness
of lead-paint poisoning.
Until it touches their lives.
Those who are most outspoken are usually the people who are personally
affected.
Sheldon Whitehouse is one of them.
The attorney general had some work done on his house in Providence several
years ago. Not long after, annual lead-screening tests revealed that his
two children had mildly elevated blood-lead levels.
"Compared to problems other children have, this was not significant,"
Whitehouse says. His children's blood-lead levels were low and are declining.
But he reminds people that lead poisoning can happen to anyone -- no matter
where they live.
Whitehouse has stepped up efforts to sue landlords whose apartments poison
children and has started working with Providence officials to target the
worst offenders. He also put Rhode Island out front nationally when he
filed the first state lawsuit against lead-paint manufacturers.
Elizabeth Colon is another advocate.
A lifelong Providence resident, Colon never dreamed she would become a
community activist. But that was before her son, Sammy, 5, was severely
lead poisoned in their Smith Hill home several years ago. Sammy required
hospitalization for chelation treatments to help reduce the lead in his
blood, and his mother still worries about whether he is developing as
he should.
So passionate is she about the need to stop further poisonings, Coln has
also testified before committees at the General Assembly and the U.S.
Senate.
ACROSS THE nation, the lead problem is easing, but it's still serious
in Rhode Island. In some Providence neighborhoods, 40 percent of the toddlers
last year were poisoned, according to an analysis of state data by the
Providence Plan, a nonprofit group working to revitalize the city.
The state continues to spend a meager amount to combat lead poisonings.
Most of the efforts are financed with federal dollars.
Rhode Island, unlike some other states such as Massachusetts, takes no
action against landlords until their young tenants become lead poisoned.
Some critics have likened it to miners who once used canaries to signal
the buildup of dangerous gases in mineshafts.
The state does little to help parents determine which apartments are safe
and which threaten their babies.
And for the last three years, the General Assembly has rejected bills
that would have pushed landlords to make their buildings lead safe.
WHY HAS the state's response been so weak?
"It's invisible -- that's the problem with lead," says Dr. Peter Simon,
a physician at the state Department of Health who has struggled with Rhode
Island's lead problem for more than 20 years. "You can't appreciate the
impact on individuals, and that's why it gets ignored by society."
He says the experts have known for a long time what to do to end lead
poisoning -- provide safe housing for the poor. They just can't
get the community mobilized to fix the houses that are poisoning children.
"There's no housing infrastructure, no policy, no leadership. We have
no plan for safe, affordable housing. Our society just doesn't want poor
people around," says Simon.
"It's race and class," says James Celenza, director of the Rhode Island
Committee on Occupational Safety and Health. "It is the biggest environmental
health problem in the country and the least is spent on it."
Celenza says there is little high-level leadership on the lead problem.
The state Department of Health is always squeezed for resources. The Providence
Housing Court is "a joke." And people have different attitudes about regulating
houses, compared with industry.
"There are huge cultural and legal obstacles to regulating houses," Celenza
said.
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LEAD
(led) n. 1. Symbol Pb
A dense metallic element used in solder, radiation shields,
paints, and antiknock compounds.
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The only time state leaders offered a unified response to lead was in
1991, when the General Assembly passed the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act.
It required the Health Department to define hazardous levels of lead in
houses, mandated that owners make their houses "lead safe," and required
the screening of all children under 6.
At the same time, the law protected landlords through an"innocent owner"
provision, which frees them from liability for lead poisoning unless they
fail to clean up a lead problem within 90 days of notice, or unless they
have been cited on at least three other properties.
Critics say the 1991 law was a good start, but it wasn't strong enough
to get landlords to clean up their properties. By comparison, Massachusetts,
with similar housing but much tougher laws, has a lead-poisoning rate
one-third that of Rhode Island. Children are significantly poisoned in
Rhode Island (20 ug/dl and above) at a per capita rate nearly eight times
higher than Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, older houses must be made
lead safe when they are sold. Also, owners of housing in which children
are lead poisoned face unlimited liability and even criminal penalties
in the Bay State, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public
Health Web site.
"In the early '90s, there was a broad spectrum of community groups, unions,
and health people who supported the bill," Celenza says. "The bill got
through quickly because people felt it had to get done. Now people understand
how complicated the problem is."
SOME MEASURES to address lead poisonings have already been taken
in Rhode Island.
• The HELP Lead Safe Center, at 841 Broad St., Providence, is patterned
after national models for providing a one-stop service center for those
who have been lead poisoned. It offers a clinic, counseling for families
on nutrition and cleaning and other measures to lessen lead's impacts,
as well as referring landlords to sources of financing. It has served
500 families in just the last two years.
• For the first time, the Health Department, the City of Providence, and
the attorney general's office are working together to take action against
landlords who refuse to clean up lead hazards on their properties. More
than 150 cases are involved in some court action. And the Health Department,
after a period of being short-staffed, is now processing more than 200
new inspections a year.
• Rhode Island operates a lead-screening program for children under 6
that is so effective it's been used as a model in other countries. Last
year alone, 32,313 children were tested.
• Whitehouse teamed up the key law firm that waged the battle with the
nation's tobacco companies that resulted in a multibillion-dollar settlement,
and filed a precedent-setting lawsuit against the nation's paint manufacturers,
arguing that they knowingly marketed a product toxic to humans.
• U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and others have succeeded in increasing the Housing
and Urban Development budget for lead-abatement work. "This year it's
$100 million, up 25 percent," Reed says. "The good news is it's up 25
percent. The bad news is we need a hell of a lot more."
• HUD recently announced a national program to train contractors, painters,
and remodelers in lead-abatement safety.
ONE BIG obstacle to making a concerted effort to end the lead problem
is the wrangling over who is to blame.
Is it the landlords? Or the tenants?
Rhode Island already is experiencing a shortage of affordable housing
and some fear that if landlords are forced to spend a lot of money removing
lead from their tenements, the crisis will worsen.
Two officials in the Providence Planning Department, David Johnson
and Arthur L. Hanson, argue that landlords are victims of "historic construction
techniques" and shouldn't be penalized if children contract lead poisoning
from their houses. (Currently violations can result in civil complaints,
punishable by fines.)
"If you just cite all the properties and you don't have the resources
to fix them, you eliminate housing," Johnson says. "This problem is big.
It's basically the entire city. And you just can't knock the city down."
Hanson added that if landlords are penalized for having children in their
apartments, they'll avoid renting to families with children. "If you criminalize
this, what have you done? We're trying to balance a need for affordable
units here."
But Brown University Prof. Harold Ward, whose students have done several
studies of Providence's lead problems, says abatement money and enforcement
efforts should be focused on the landlords who poison the most children.
"If the landlord has money, hammer him," Ward said. "If he doesn't have
money, tell him to take (government lead-abatement loans now available)
or you'll hammer him."
Houses that poison children should be so designated with a plaque out
front, Ward says. "It's just basic information." Houses that can't be
fixed should be torn down, he says.
Richard H. Godfrey Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island Housing
and Mortgage Finance Corporation, which is using millions of dollars in
HUD money to provide lead-abatement loans to homeowners, says many landlords
are not cooperating because they can't generate enough rental income to
keep their apartments lead safe.
"We're facing entrenched opposition from realtors and landlords. Landlords
already have properties valued at less than cost. They're scared, struggling
for financial survival," Godfrey said.
"But we have kids getting poisoned," he added.
Some contractors feared that when the state Department of Environmental
Management started regulating workers who scrape lead paint from house
exteriors, they would be hit with onerous fines that would put many out
of business. That didn't happen.
The DEM has only three inspectors, and they are responsible for many duties
besides lead paint. Last year the inspectors issued 32 warning letters
to homeowners for violating regulations on removing lead paint.
Forty-eight contractors, who are supposed to know how to repaint houses
safely, were issued warning letters for not taking the proper precautions
with lead-paint removal. Five second-offenders got notices of violation.
So far, three have been settled, with fines totaling $6,100.
THERE IS much more that can be be done.
• Celenza wants Reed and Whitehouse to convene a statewide task force
of everyone who works helping victims or abating lead problems to meet
twice a year to hash out problems.
• Researchers at Brown University are trying to pinpoint the landlords
whose properties are causing the most poisonings and persuade the city
to clean up their properties first.
• Childhood Lead Action Project, CLAP, the only advocacy group that focuses
strictly on lead, has a five-part bill before the legislature this year.
The group wants to make it mandatory for insurance companies to provide
lead liability insurance in Rhode Island. It also wants tax credits for
landlords who fix lead problems, and more legal clout to go after those
who don't.
• Dr. Simon says the state should withdraw all aid for communities that
refuse to provide housing and services to the poor. And it should funnel
more resources into improving the lives of poor children by building playgrounds
in the city, making schools safer, and improving educational opportunities.
• Richard H. Godfrey Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island Housing
and Mortgage Finance Corporation, says the state needs to reverse its
legal approach toward the owners of older properties. Instead of assuming
that all owners of older houses are "innocent" until proven otherwise,
it should assume there is lead in every house built before 1978.
"This is virtually every apartment in South Providence. We should accept
that and deal with it," Godfrey says. "People are so afraid of liability.
So afraid of testing. The answer to a hot stove is not to get rid of the
stove. Everyone knows there's lead. Who are you fooling? If the landlord
takes reasonable steps, he should be protected. If he's truly negligent,
he should be liable."
• Celenza thinks there should be a national lead-abatement trust fund
and that every real estate transaction should prompt a lead inspection.
Beyond that, he says, enforce the laws already on the books. Get Providence
Housing Court judges to more vigorously enforce housing codes. Require
landlords to disclose lead problems. Make HUD do a better job of inspecting
the housing it subsidizes.
• A national advocacy group, the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning,
is pushing to double federal financing to clean up lead problems and improve
lead screening, particularly for children covered by Medicare, who face
some of the highest risks for poisoning and have the lowest rate of screening.
Most important, it wants to "mainstream lead safety" by providing basic
lead training to the entire remodeling industry.
This spring, the state is ablaze in warnings about lead paint. Various
agencies are sending people door to door, putting posters on buses and
messages on billboards.
The question is, what will it take to make people pay attention?
Just two weeks ago the United Nations Commission on Human Rights voted
in Nairobi, Kenya in favor of a global policy statement that everyone
has the right to live in a world free from toxic pollution and environmental
degradation.
Last year a federal task force set the year 2010 as the goal for ending
lead poisoning in America.
Will Rhode Island's leaders set similar goals?
Will they set a date for ending childhood lead poisonings and figure out
how to make that happen?
Will Rhode Islanders wake up to the fact that even though our poor and
minority children are the most affected, everyone pays when a child's
future is diminished?
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