Military homes’ levels of lead paint spark probes

Congress is poised to require sweeping audits of reportedly dangerous levels of lead paint in the homes of U.S. military personnel and their families.

Provisions in two bills represent lawmakers’ response to an August news report that disclosed unhealthy levels of lead paint exposure in Army family homes at bases in several states. The report, by Reuters, documented more than 1,000 children with elevated lead levels in their blood.

In response, the military construction spending bill for fiscal 2019 would require the Pentagon inspector general to “conduct an investigation and submit a report to the congressional defense committees on toxic lead levels at military housing on all installations,” according to the conference report’s joint explanatory statement.

The so-called Milcon-VA bill is packaged with two other spending measures in legislation (HR 5895) that the House plans to clear for President Donald Trump’s signature.

“The conferees are concerned for the well-being of service members and their families residing in on-post military housing with regard to their exposure to toxic levels of lead based paint,” the statement says. “It has been reported that installations around the country possess housing units that contain lead based paint levels exceeding the federal threshold for acceptable levels and could have grave implications on service members and their families’ health.”

Meanwhile, the Senate-passed fiscal 2019 Defense appropriations bill, part of a separate three-measure package (HR 6157), contains two amendments on this issue. Appropriators signed off on the conference report Thursday afternoon but have not yet released the text, so it is unclear whether the Senate provisions made the final bill.

One of the provisions orders the Government Accountability Office to assess the problem and the other requires the Pentagon to use an unspecified amount of its fiscal 2019 money to test young children at military medical facilities for lead levels in their blood.

Lawmakers want to send the Defense money measure to the president by the end of September and the text could be released late Thursday.

The Reuters story focused on homes on or near Army bases such as Fort Benning in Georgia. But the GAO and IG probes will cover lead levels in housing for members of all the military services. And the legislation requiring the audits does not limit the reviews to addressing only stateside homes.

The story of one family at Fort Benning was at the heart of the Reuters story. Georgia’s two Republican senators, Johnny Isakson, who is chairman of Veterans Affairs, and David Perdue, a member of Armed Services, have been among the senators leading efforts since August to get to the bottom of the problem.

They joined Virginia Democrats Tim Kaine, also on Armed Services, and Mark Warner in writing a letter last month to Army Secretary Mark Esper seeking answers. Pentagon reviews have found lead-paint exposure at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

Isakson, who was a champion of the two amendments to the Defense spending bill, told CQ in a statement that they would help address the problem.

“We should be doing everything we can to ensure the safety of our military families, including conducting the necessary testing and maintenance to prevent leadbased paint problems in military housing,” Isakson said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a senior member of Armed Services and ranking member of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, also led the effort.

“Our service members and their families sacrifice so much to serve this nation and we need to make sure we’re doing all that we can to keep them safe both at home and abroad — so reports that we’re falling short of that commitment by exposing children on Army bases to lead poisoning need to be addressed immediately,” said McCaskill in a statement after the Senate amendment votes to the Defense bill last month.

The IG probe must be completed within 90 days. The GAO would have a year to do its work.

The IG is given a broad charge to study “toxic lead levels at military housing on all installations.”

The Senate legislation launching the GAO probe is more precise. The auditors would have to assess: the effectiveness of Defense Department programs to monitor lead exposure in military housing; the degree to which military homes comply with lead limits; what the Pentagon is doing to fix the problem; and any recommendations on expanding blood testing among the children of military families.

The Army announced in late August that it plans to test 40,000 homes on its bases for lead levels, prioritizing homes with small children.

Some 700,000 people, including about 100,000 small children, live in military family housing at bases in the United States, according to Reuters. Many more are housed on bases overseas.

The active-duty U.S. military comprises more than 1.3 million people.

The Pentagon inspector general has conducted numerous audits already on unhealthy conditions in U.S. military family homes and other Defense Department buildings, both in the United States and overseas.

CQ disclosed in 2016 that the IG had found “critical” safety problems in twothirds of 36 installations in the United States and abroad.

“Deficiencies in electrical system safety, fire protection systems, and environmental health and safety were pervasive because of a lack of adequate preventative maintenance and inspections being performed at the installations,” the IG wrote at the time. “As a result, DoD personnel and military families were exposed to health and safety hazards at installations around the world.”

The Pentagon accepted some of the recommendations the IG made then for ways to correct the problems by reorganizing how the department’s leaders conduct inspections and oversee military and contractor personnel. But officials disagreed with a few of the proposals.

CQ also disclosed two years ago a Senate Appropriations finding that one in four Defense Department facilities were in “poor or failing condition.”