Tell THEM to forget the past, Bill
Blows off NYCHA lead woes as 40 new kid cases emerge
Mayor de Blasio defended his handling of the lead-paint crisis Monday as health officials confirmed 40 new cases of children with elevated blood-lead levels living in public housing.
In an appearance on NY1, Hizzoner repeatedly emphasized reforms he’s implemented going forward while downplaying the significance of hiding the true number of children with lead poisoning living in NYCHA developments.
The Daily News revealed Sunday that since 2012, more than 800 children ages 5 and younger living in public housing tested positive for elevated lead levels of at least 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, the level deemed concerning by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The city is now beginning to inspect the apartments of all children with those blood-lead levels — something it had not done for years.
“We’ve got more to do, but we have the best public health department in the entire country, and they aggressively followed up with each case for years,” the mayor said, noting the NYCHA cases had previously been included as part of the overall city numbers. “And they’ve published the data for years. What hasn’t been done is to separate the NYCHA cases, which are clearly an absolute minority of the cases, a small percentage of the cases. We’re going to do that from this point on.”
Contrary to de Blasio’s assertion, the city did not “aggressively follow up" each case. The Health Department sent a single notice to the parents and doctor of these children, who already were aware of the test result, advising the doctors to ask questions about potential sources of lead. The CDC since 2012 has recommended doing an “environmental assessment of detailed history to identify potential sources of lead exposure.” The city for the last six years chose not to inspect the kids’ apartments unless the level hit 10 micrograms.
In January, however, the Health Department suddenly adopted the CDC standard and began inspecting the apartments of NYCHA children with blood-lead levels of 5 to 9 micrograms. Since then, the department has performed 40 inspections in NYCHA apartments with children who registered those levels of lead, according to Deputy Health Commis-
sioner Corinne Schiff. She said she expected the new protocol “will be a dramatic expansion” of its lead inspection program.
The stats contradicted de Blasio’s earlier claim that no kids have been harmed due to NYCHA’s failure to do required lead inspections. City officials had lied to the federal government and said the inspections were done.
“Thank God there has not been harm done to any child because of the mistakes that have been made,” the mayor said in November— a statement he still has not retracted despite a federal investigation concluding kids did get hurt.
On Sunday, city Controller Scott Stringer opened an investigation into the way the Health Department tracks blood-lead levels in children, and city Public Advocate Letitia James called for the state Health Department to begin testing all young children living in city public housing.
On NY1, the mayor claimed that the city did test some — but not all — of the apartments of the 820 children: “In some cases they were, in some cases they weren’t,” he said, continuing his argument that there was no proof the children got lead poisoning because of conditions in their homes.
“Here’s the challenge — it can be something in the home, it can be something out of the home. It could be paint. It could be something else. We know there could be any number of causes, but we don’t know in each case what it came from,” he said.
The mayor was able to limit the questioning on the unfolding lead poisoning scandal by calling in to NY1 after refusing to take press questions at an earlier event.
Before the mayor took to the airwaves, City Councilman Ritchie Torres (DBronx), chairman of the Council’s Oversight and Investigation Committee, called for Deputy Mayor Herminia Palacio, whose portfolio includes the Health Department, to resign over the revelations. “I would never do so lightly, but it’s clear to me that the de Blasio administration has systematically misled the public and the City Council about the true extent of lead poisoning and lead exposure in public housing,” he said, citing Palacio’s testimony under oath before the Council that there were only 19 cases of elevated lead exposure.
“The deputy mayor’s statement is false, she should resign for misleading the City Council on a matter of public health.”
The smaller number was based on the city Health Department’s more conservative standard of 10 micrograms per deciliter.
“The essence here is that the administration cannot be trusted to tell the truth because there has been a culture, a pattern of deception around the issue of lead safety,” Torres said. “It seems like anything short of criminal prosecution, the status quo is going to persist.”
De Blasio said that the call for Palacio’s resignation is “an absolute mistake.”
He denied his administration had misled the public, saying information about the number of kids with lead levels above 5 micrograms has been available for years, just not broken down by how many live at NYCHA.
“We’re actually one of the national leaders on this. We’ve seen the numbers go down in NYCHA and in private housing. But we take every case seriously,” he said. “If people think this is primarily a public housing problem, that’s not accurate.”