PROVIDENCE -- A nationally recognized expert on lead poisoning testified in Superior Court yesterday that paint companies put so much lead in their paints two generations ago that tiny quantities now readily poison small children in every town in Rhode Island.
"Lead paint is such a concentrated source of lead that it takes very little to poison," said Dr. James D. Sargent, a pediatrician at Dartmouth Medical School and a leading researcher and consultant on lead poisoning.
"Lead paint is everywhere in the environment. You can't lock it up. It's just sitting there, waiting for a kid to bite it or for it to deteriorate," the doctor said.
Sargent took the stand during most of the fifth day in the trial. The state is suing eight corporations, alleging they created a public nuisance in Rhode Island when they made and marketed lead-based paints now found on an estimated 330,000 houses across the state.
Before such paints were banned in 1978, they contained anywhere from half of 1 percent to as much as 50 percent lead, Sargent testified. He said a typical paint would be about 16 percent lead.
No other source for lead in the environment comes close to paints, Sargent said. Lead in drinking water is measured in parts per billion, he said. Lead in soil is measured in parts per million. But lead in paint is usually described in percentages.
As in every other day of the trial, there were long breaks to hear objections raised by the paint company lawyers.
When Deputy Atty. Gen. Linn Freedman asked how lead poisoning affects families of Sargent's patients, defense lawyer John Tarantino objected.
Judge Michael A. Silverstein had ordered both sides to avoid individual stories in this trial and to stick to expert testimony and scientific reports, Tarantino said. Letting Sargent describe family reactions was just another way of entering summaries of evidence that wouldn't be allowed individually.
Freedman argued that one of the key issues of the state's case is showing the harm lead causes to families in Rhode Island.
"The defendants are trying to preclude the truth from getting to the jury," she said. "To divorce these families from this case is prejudicial to the state. The doctor sees sadness, fear, guilt and a multitude of families whose children need special education."
Silverstein asked if there were any studies of the effects on families. Freedman said she wasn't aware of any.
Silverstein ruled that Sargent could not testify about family reactions. He advised Freedman to look for an expert who had done studies.
Tarantino used similar objections to bar Elizabeth Colon, a community organizer for the Childhood Lead Action Project, from testifying.
Colon said she worked with hundreds of families of lead-poisoned children and had seen a lot of crying, many families separated to get their children away from lead, and some families left homeless. But the jury didn't hear her testimony.
Under cross-examination from Tarantino, Sargent testified he wasn't very familiar with cities and towns in Rhode Island, but he did spend some time in medical school and delivered his first baby here.
He also acknowledged that lead-poisoning levels are declining.
When Tarantino asked how poisoning rates could be declining when Rhode Islanders are living in the same housing that caused more poisonings years ago, Sargent said maybe it's because people removed the lead paints.
Find out more about the impact of lead poisoning in Rhode Island and how to prevent it at:
http://projo.com/extra/lead/
