ROBERTA HAZEN AARONSON, executive director of the Rhode Island Childhood Lead Action Project, and Liz Colón, its director of training and outreach, deserve high marks for their community-education work on childhood lead poisoning. But their July 1 Commentary piece (“Don’t let paint firms wiggle away”) is a rhetorical rant that vilifies me and others who are trying to do what’s right in solving this difficult problem.

Aaronson and Colón say my May 14 Commentary piece (“Justices should overturn lead-paint verdict”) “seeks to instill fear and mislead the public,” spouts “misguided arguments and half-truths,” tries to “shift blame, drum up controversy, and deny responsibility,” and denies childhood lead poisoning exists.

But every point made in my article was factual. Some 240,000 residences immediately lost value when the jury verdict, now reversed by the state Supreme Court, declared them “public nuisances.” Every house containing significant lead was to be stripped of its interiors, with or without the owners’ consent, who would have to move out during renovations totalling $2.4 billion. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Department of Public Health noted, the proportion of new cases of lead poisoning “has declined dramatically from 6.6 percent in 1998 to 1.3 percent in 2007.” This is all public record.

Colón’s rage is understandable when we consider Peter Lord’s article (“Court reversal on lead poisoning stuns a longtime advocate for lead poisoning victims,” July 6), which recounts her one-year-old child Sam’s lead poisoning. Colón and her husband purchased a “fixer-upper” in 1996, and Sam’s blood-lead level skyrocketed. They had to borrow $45,000 for repairs. She recently sold that house and bought another — which also contains lead paint. She’s evacuating her children this summer while the paint is eliminated.

“She was nearly overwhelmed with guilt and anger,” Lord reports. Clearly, she’s still angry — but at the wrong people.

Colón could have taken legal action after Sam’s diagnosis. Lead paint isn’t hazardous until it deteriorates, so prior owners could be liable for personal injury to Sam and to her for property damages. In addition, according to federal laws passed in 1994, if the sellers did not give the Colóns the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s lead-paint warning booklet and allow them 10 days to inspect for lead and the option to cancel the contract if it was found, she could have recovered her $45,000 times three, plus three times Sam’s medical costs, plus her legal fees.

Aaronson and Colón, who are neither legal scholars nor scientists, get their facts wrong on two other central issues. First, they say the Rhode Island case was “legally sound,” based on Wisconsin law. That state’s law is not binding in Rhode Island, however, and the jury verdict in the Wisconsin case was actually for the defendant companies.

Second, they say the Heartland Institute “has been promoting pseudo-science and misinformation on behalf of Exxon Mobil to convince Americans that global warming is a myth.” Wrong. Exxon Mobil is not a Heartland donor, and donations from all energy companies have never amounted to more than 5 percent of Heartland’s budget in any year.

As to the assertion about pseudo-science, Heartland simply agrees with the 31,072 scientists who have signed a petition stating, “There is no convincing scientific evidence” that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing catastrophic warming and climate disruption ( http://www.petitionproject.org/).

Aaronson and Colón should avoid inflammatory rhetoric and false claims and stick to what they know best: educating Rhode Islanders about the dangers of childhood lead poisoning.

Maureen Martin, an attorney, is senior fellow for legal affairs at the Heartland Institute ( martin@heartland.org).