=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #294
—July 15, 1992—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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FORTY YEARS OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
Lead is a soft gray metal that improves the protective power of
paint. Throughout the 19th century and up until about 1950, lead
was added to most paint to improve its covering power and
durability. Unfortunately, lead is a powerful poison. At low
levels, it reduces a person’s intelligence, makes it difficult to
concentrate or pay attention, and harms hearing. These effects
are permanent. Naturally, in children, these effects reduce
performance in school. (At higher levels, lead has many
additional severe effects including kidney disease, blindness,
seizures, and death.)
Kids eat peeling paint; it tastes like lemon drops. Starting in
the 1930s, public health authorities began to realize that lead
in paint was poisoning children, particularly children in
dilapidated housing in inner cities. Baltimore began a lead
screening program in 1931. After 20 years observing the lead
problem, the head of the Baltimore health department published an
evaluation in a public health journal:
In Baltimore, he said, the rate of poisoning among children was
“[7].5 times as high among the Negro population as it was among
the white population…. The high rates among Negro children are
a problem of considerable public health significance since 30
percent of Baltimore’s pre-school population is Negro. The racial
difference in incidence is believed to be due to environmental
factors probably resulting chiefly from economic disadvantage.”
This was written 40 years ago, in 1952.[1]
By 1969, the best estimate was that 200,000 children each year
were being added to the thousands already poisoned by lead,
according to researchers at the New Jersey College of Medicine.
“These children are almost entirely black and Puerto Rican
because it is they who are stuck in run-down housing,” they said.
They went on, “At present, Boards of Health in most cities would
admit to the magnitude of the problem but do little to solve it.
Some small-scale screening programs are carried out
intermittently, but of course, they do not reach the majority of
the hundreds of thousands of affected children.”[2]
In 1970, publications of the U.S. Public Health Service [USPHS]
acknowledged that lead poisoning was disproportionately affecting
black and Puerto Rican children. For example, one publication
said, “A high incidence is reported among Negroes and Puerto
Ricans, probably because such a large proportion of these ethnic
groups live in ‘lead belts.’”[3]
There can be absolutely no doubt that by 1970 the medical and
public health communities, inside and outside government, fully
understood and acknowledged that lead was selectively killing and
maiming black and Puerto Rican children trapped by poverty in
poisoned housing.
The selective poisoning of non-white children was the subject of
many studies and front-page newspaper stories 20 years ago. For
example, the U.S. Public Health Service’s Bureau of Community
Environmental Management surveyed housing in 27 U.S. cities in
1971. Dr. Roger Challop, who coordinated the survey, told the
WASHINGTON POST that “[33] percent of the black children tested
had elevated levels of lead in their blood while the figure for
white children was 11%.”[4]
In Washington, D.C., a city with a large black population, the
situation was acknowledged to be particularly bad: “Thirty to 50%
of District of Columbia babies may be expected to have an undue
body burden of lead before school age, a 1971 survey by
Georgetown University doctors reported. Damage may range from
nervous disorders to severe mental retardation.”[5]
A 1971 study of 79,199 children by the Health Services
Administration of New York City found lead poisoning three times
more common among black children than among a population called
“white and Puerto Rican.”[6]
A 1973 editorial in the WASHINGTON POST described the situation
in unusually plain language: “As the late Rep. William F. Ryan
said last year in Senate hearings, ‘lead poisoning is not some
rare malady waiting for a miracle cure. It is totally man-made
and a totally preventable disease. It exists only because we let
it exist. Lead poisoning has sentenced thousands of young
children to lives of misery, disease and even death.’” The POST
went on to say, “One reason the nation has never mounted a public
health campaign against lead paint poisoning is that it affects
mostly the poor, the black, the Spanish speaking and others who
often must endure miserable housing.”[7]
The tone and style of the federal government’s response to the
poisoning of non-white children was set by Richard Nixon. In 1970
Congress authorized $30 million to solve the problem. However, in
his 1971 budget sent to Congress, Mr. Nixon include zero dollars
to combat lead poisoning. After 45 members of Congress, led by
Senator Ted Kennedy, complained loudly, the Nixon administration
grudgingly put in $2 million for three demonstration projects.[8]
Reporting these events, the TIMES printed the current best
estimate, which was that 400,000 children were then being
poisoned by lead each year.
For the next 20 years, Congress and the nation’s medical and
public health establishments waffled, procrastinated, and
shuffled paper while the problem steadily grew worse. Sometimes
funding would reach as high as $50 million per year. During the
years of Mr. Reagan’s policy of “benign neglect,” funding dropped
much lower, but even in the best years funding never reached
levels that would make a real dent in the problem. Meanwhile new
research year after year revealed that effects of lead poisoning
were worse than previously understood. In 1971 a child wasn’t
considered “at risk” unless he or she had 400 micrograms of lead
in a liter of blood (or 40 micrograms per deciliter [u/dl]).
Since that time, the amount of lead that is considered “safe” has
continually dropped. In 1991 the U.S. Public Health Service
changed the official definition of an “unsafe” level to 10 u/dl.
Even at that level, a child’s IQ can be slightly diminished and
physical growth stunted.
In a particularly blunt assessment of the problem, Professor
Marianne C. Fahs of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City
said in 1991, “Lead poisoning is the most common and socially
devastating disease of young American children, resulting in
lifelong stupidity for at least 3 to 4 million future
citizens.”[9] Dr. Fahs pointed to a recent study showing that a
$32 billion investment to clean up lead in dilapidated housing
would save more than $60 billion in medical costs for poisoned
children.
In the spring of 1991, the Bush administration announced an
ambitious program to reduce lead exposure of American children,
including widespread testing of homes, certification of those who
remove lead from homes, and medical treatment for affected
children. At last it seemed our leaders were coming to grips with
the lead-poisoning problem. At that time, Dr. William Roper,
director of the federal Centers for Disease Control [CDC]
said–echoing words that had been common among politicians in
1970–“We believe that lead poisoning is the No. 1 environmental
problem facing America’s children. Therefore it will take a major
societal effort to eliminate it.” [10]
Six months later, President Bush turned his back on the lead
problem. CDC officials announced that the administration “does
not see this as a necessary federal role” to legislate or
regulate the cleanup of lead poisoning or to require that homes
be tested, or to require home owners to disclose results once
they are known, or to establish standards for those who test or
clean up lead hazards. It was a total collapse. According to the
NEW YORK TIMES, the National Association of Realtors had
pressured Mr. Bush to drop his lead initiative because they
feared that forcing homeowners to eliminate lead hazards would
add $5,000 to $10,000 to the price of those homes, further
harming a real estate market that had been devastated by the
aftershocks of Reaganomics.
The lead problem now affects almost all American children, though
black and Hispanic kids are still more poisoned than whites. A
1990 report by the Environmental Defense Fund [EDF], a
Washington-based environmental group, revealed that, judged by
the new 1991 standard (10 u/dl), 96% of black children and 80% of
white children of poor families in inner cities have unsafe
amounts of lead in their blood, amounts sufficient to reduce IQ
somewhat, probably harm hearing, reduce the ability to
concentrate, and stunt physical growth. Even in families with
annual incomes greater than $15,000, among black children in
cities, 85% have unsafe lead levels, compared to 47% of white
children. [11] Never before in the history of the world has a
nation poisoned its children on such a scale.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] Huntington Williams and others, “Lead Poisoning in Young
Children,” PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS Vol. 67 (March, 1952), pgs.
[230-236.]230-236.
[4] Bart Barnes, “Lead Level Found Hazardous in 75% of Pre-
[1950] Homes,” WASHINGTON POST June 15, 1972, pg. A30.
[5] Victor Cohn, “FDA Bans Lead From Home Paints,” WASHINGTON
POST March 11, 1972, pgs. A-1, A-10.
[7] “Let Them Eat Lead,” WASHINGTON POST Feb. 10, 1973, pg.
A-[14.]14.
Descriptor terms: lead; baltimore; usphs; lead poisoning; puerto
rico; washington; washington post; reagan; bush; cdc; edf; race;