Lead Poisoning: A Deadly Reality for L.A.'s Children

By Jim Mangia, CEO, St. John's Well Child and Family Center

Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine released a study of exposure to lead in our children, which revealed that blood lead levels in children as low as 3 "micromoles" per milliliter of blood can cause serious developmental disabilities and dramatic lowering of IQ levels. Many health care advocates and activists have been engaging in activities for years to foster a zero-tolerance for lead in the blood of our children and have advocated for lowering governmental standards (which currently stand at 10 micromoles of lead per milliliter of blood). Most government health agencies that intervene around issues of childhood lead poisoning won't do so unless a child is severely poisoned, often with levels as high as 30. Therefore intervention by government health agencies happens only after a child has been severely brain damaged and virtually nothing can be done to treat or alter that damage.

Over the last six months, St. John's Well Child and Family Center has been engaged in a study of lead poisoning in our children in inner city Los Angeles. As part of a federally and privately-funded "Healthy Homes" project (a public/community partnership), we have been very concerned about the debilitating effects of lead and environmental poisoning on our children. We operate six free medical, dental and mental health clinics in L.A.'s poorest communities: in south, downtown and east Los Angeles, serving over 40,000 children and families. We compiled the statistics from our downtown clinic and found that of the 2,500 children under the age of six who we tested for blood lead levels, an alarming 54% had lead concentrations in their blood above the level the New England Journal of Medicine found caused direct developmental disabilities in children.

What is causing our inner city children to be poisoned by lead? The primary culprit is substandard and slum housing conditions in which most of our children reside. Government is doing little to alleviate the widespread poverty under which our children live. And they are doing even less to hold landlords to task if they force our children to live in conditions which are literally poisoning them and causing developmental and learning disabilities, declining rates of brain function, mental retardation and brain damage.

Even though federal, state and local governments were aware that exposure to lead was directly damaging to our children as early as the 1930s, laws outlawing the use of lead paint (because of paint company and special interest lobbying and campaign contributions) were not passed until 1978. Most of L.A.'s inner city children live in housing that was constructed prior to World War II and are subsequently and directly exposed to high concentrations of lead in their daily lives.

There has been a resolute failure on the part of our local and state government to take seriously the lead poisoning hazards of slum housing on our inner city children and to force lead remediation and lead safe construction practices in our inner city neighborhoods. Children do not make campaign contributions to career politicians - builders, construction companies, paint manufacturers and landlords do. But even with the passage last year of SB 460, which empowers all levels of government and all agencies involved to enforce lead safe practices in housing and construction, government agencies have been slow to wield their new powers to protect our children. Lobbyists and campaign contributors still have an inordinate amount of power in the halls of our local, state and federal legislatures and in influencing bureaucratic focus while our children are bearing the destructive effects of a corrupt political system.

What can be done in the face of this failure of public health? We must develop a concerted effort for community health. While government can be helpful and must be forced to apply laws to protect our children, it is only through innovative and creative community efforts that we can alleviate the poisoning of our children. This innovative Healthy Homes project in downtown Los Angeles, which includes St. John's clinics, Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and the Coalition for Community Health has impacted dramatically on the community health - on the overall health of our children and their families in inner city Los Angeles. Besides providing testing and medical treatment for children with lead poisoning, we have trained hundreds of community health promoters from the communities we serve to educate and organize a community health response to lead poisoning. These "promotoras" literally go door-to-door, doing health assessments for families and doing in-home testing to determine if there are lead and environmental hazards in the home. Tenant's rights clinics every Wednesday and staff attorneys give families the tools they need to force landlords to remediate lead conditions in a safe manner. And domestic workers and lead abatement workers from the community are trained and dispersed to help clean up slum housing which is poisoning our children.

Governmental agencies and organizations alone have failed to protect the health of our children. Only community-based initiatives and public/community partnerships can transform the failure of public health efforts into the success of overall community health. Nothing short of this kind of community effort can save our inner city children from the ravages and destruction of lead poisoning!

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Jim Mangia is CEO of St. John's Well Child and Family Center, a network of nonprofit federally qualified health centers and a member of the Healthy Homes Demonstration Project in downtown Los Angeles.