Chicago Sues the Lead Industry
On September 5, Chicago joined 35 other governments, including the State of Rhode Island and the cities of San Francisco, Milwaukee, Newark and St. Louis, in filing a legal suit to hold the lead industry accountable for knowingly harming children by producing and marketing lead-based paint. Chicago, which has more lead-poisoned children than any city in the country and almost any state, has adopted an approach similar to Rhode Island’s landmark case. Both lawsuits claim that the presence of lead-based paint in homes and buildings poses a health and safety threat to area children and seek to hold the companies responsible for eliminating this “public nuisance.”
The Alliance commends Mayor Daley and the City of Chicago for working to advance lead poisoning prevention by requiring the lead industry to help solve the problem it created.
Rhode Island’s Case Against the Lead Industry Unfolds
The State of Rhode Island has rested its case in phase one of the state’s landmark trial against the lead industry, now in its second month. The first phase of the trial will determine whether the presence of lead-based paint in the state’s public and private buildings constitutes a public nuisance. The state’s witnesses included some of the nation’s leading researchers and pediatricians, who testified that intact lead paint can be dangerous and that even low exposures can harm children. The industry has argued that lead-based paint poses no problem when it is well-maintained and sought to blame property owners and government agencies for allowing lead paint to deteriorate and poison children. If the state wins in the initial phase of the trial, the case will proceed to the next phase to determine liability and damages.
Bush Administration Seeks to Stack CDC Lead Advisory Panel
The Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention (ACCLPP) has historically provided science-based advice to inform CDC’s policies to prevent lead poisoning. The committee has always included subject-matter experts, researchers, and public health practitioners and has been instrumental in setting national screening and prevention policy. Historically, CDC has nominated candidates and HHS has accepted their recommendations. For the first time, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, has overruled the nominations of the CDC and named his own appointees. The rejected nominations include Dr. Michael Weitzman, Dr. Bruce Lanphear, and Dr. Susan Klitzman, who are widely regarded experts and practitioners in lead poisoning prevention. Secretary Thompson’s appointees include Dr. William Banner, who is on the witness list for the lead industry in the Rhode Island trial; Dr. Joyce Tsuji, a consultant whose corporate clients include ASARCO and King & Spaulding, a law firm representing several lead companies; and Dr. Kimberly Thompson of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis whose funders include two defendants in the Rhode Island case and 22 other companies that have released lead in the environment. Representatives Edward Markey, Eddie Bernice-Johnson, and Henry Waxman held a press conference and have written Secretary Thompson to protest the unprecedented effort to stack the scientific advisory board with members with financial ties to the lead industry.
California Lead Poisoning Prevention Law Passed
On September 26, Governor Davis signed into law SB 460, California’s first law that is geared to protect children from lead hazards in their homes before they are poisoned. SB 460 makes “lead hazards” a housing violation under state law and authorizes building departments, code enforcement and health departments to investigate and enforce the law against landlords, just like other housing violations. In addition, SB 460 prohibits construction work that creates lead hazards and authorizes enforcement agencies to stop unsafe work and require lead hazards to be safely abated. Violators can be fined $1,000 for each offense. SB 460 also requires laboratories to report the results of all lead blood screens to the State Department of Health Services (DHS). This will allow DHS, for the first time, to collect accurate data on the extent of screening and poisoning throughout the state. The law is the result of over ten years work by community advocates in California. For more information, contact Greg Spiegel, Western Center on Law and Poverty at 213-487-7211 (ext: 2614) or gspiegel@wclp.org.
Overview of Lead and Crime
The October issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (Vol. 110, No.10) has several articles on lead poisoning. Of special note is “The Lead Effect?” by Julie Wakefield, which provides commentary on the scientific evidence of links between lead poisoning and criminal behavior. For a copy of the article from http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2002/110-10/toc.html you need to subscribe to Environmental Health Perspectives, which costs $50 per year.
Researchers Discuss Decline in Prevalence of Lead-Based Paint and Hazards
A new article published in Environmental Health Perspectives (October 2002, Vol. 110, No. 10) by David E. Jacobs, Robert P. Clickner, Joey Y. Zhou, et al. summarizes the results of the National Survey of Lead and Allergens in Housing and discusses the implications of these results. This latest survey estimates that 38 million housing units across the US contain lead-based paint and associated hazards. Twenty-four million units have significant lead-based paint hazards, and low-income families occupy about 1.2 million of those units. The housing stock in the Northeast and Midwest has about twice the prevalence of hazards compared to housing in the South and West. Researchers conclude that public and private sector resources should be directed to units posing the greatest risk to prevent lead poisoning. The article is posted online at www.hud.gov/offices/lead/techstudies/LeadPaintHousingSurvey.pdf.
original posting at:
http://www.afhh.org/res/res_alert_archives_sept02.htm
