Times Chronicle & Public Spirit
Lead paint exposure for Montco kids is PA’s 6th highest
Pottstown, Lansdale, Norristown, Abington are most affected
The controversy over widespread lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., made national headlines in 2014. Nearly 100,000 residents were exposed to lead in their drinking water, forcing a state of emergency.
But 500 miles east, in Pennsylvania, many children in 18 Pennsylvania communities are experiencing lead exposure rates worse than the average in Flint, according to Vox.com.
Montgomery County has not been spared. Countywide, more than 250 children get diagnosed with lead poisoning each year. The number would be higher were more children tested, according to the Lead-Free Promise Project. Montgomery County has the sixth-highest rate of any county in Pennsylvania.
Call it the quiet crisis of children’s health.
The areas most affected are Pottstown, Lansdale and Abington, said Tori McQueen, Montgomery County’s Community Environmental Health Coordinator in Norristown. But bits of residual lead lurk in a majority of the county’s residences.
“Throughout the county, more than 163,000 homes are contaminated, which equates to approximately 63 percent (of all houses),” she said.
“The devastating effect of lead on children is no secret to anyone,” said Frederick Henretig, a medical toxicologist at the Poison Control Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania.
The threat is especially pertinent in houses built before 1978.
“Unlike in Flint, in Montco the problem is contaminated paint,” Henretig said. “Lead paint tended to be used on wooden surfaces, window frames, windowsills, doors, molding stairs, the banister of the stairs, things like that.”
He explained that the greatest danger is posed to children who are “1 to 3 years old when they are constantly putting their hands in their mouth. They can be getting little particles of paint or paint dust on their hands.”
And, unfortunately, lead has a sweet taste, which increases the risk of ingestion.
Henretig said the “biggest number of kids have no symptoms” but, for those who do, they often begin with fatigue. Then appetite can disappear; constipation can set in and, in “very rare cases, they can become unconscious, have a seizure, or become anemic.”
The potential longterm effects are perhaps even more concerning. According to the Centers for Disease Control, prolonged exposure can damage the brain and nervous system, leading to slowed development, learning, behavior and speech problems, and attention deficit disorder.
Inside this health crisis, there is a ray of hope.
The same year the county discovered that 63 percent of its houses might be contaminated with lead, a grant was secured from the federal government to begin addressing the problem. Montgomery County’s Health and Human Services Department was awarded $1.8 million from the federal government to combat childhood lead poisoning in Lansdale and Pottstown. Norristown was included later.
“HUD awarded more than $314 million to 77 state and local government agencies across the country,” McQueen said. “Montgomery County was one of only six grantees awarded in Pennsylvania.”
Last September, McQueen reported to the Montgomery County Board of Health meeting that the program would be 42 months long and end in August 2023.
As of April 2022, McQueen said, the program had completed lead remediation at 10 units, “four owned or occupied by Black and Brown families, and four were unoccupied.” No information about the race of the occupants in the other two properties was provided.
Although lead poisoning is not a secret, McQueen said that finding funding for solutions has been challenging. The most vulnerable are, unsurprisingly, people of color who often live in older housing stock where lead paint was routinely used.
According to the Pennsylvania Lead Surveillance Report in 2020, in Montgomery County, non-Hispanic Black children are almost four times more likely than non-Hispanic White children to have an elevated lead blood level, and Hispanic children are more than eight times more likely.
To execute the program, the Montgomery County Lead and Healthy Homes program is collaborating with two local organizations, Genesis Housing Corp., and ACLAMO, McQueen said.
Judith Memberg, executive director of Genesis Housing Corporation, said her agency’s job is to hire contractors to do the remediation and to pay for alternative housing for residents while the work is done, such as a hotel or motel. Sometimes families need to be out of their homes for as long as two weeks while the lead remediation work gets done.
Nelly Jimenez-Arevalo, the Executive Director and CEO of ACLAMO, said the nonprofit informs the Latino community in Montgomery County regularly about lead poisoning, mostly through workshops that ACLAMO offers. ACLAMO received a $30,000 grant to increase their outreach and line up more families to get their homes remediated.
Jimenez-Arevalo says the Latino community is not very aware of the silent, building danger of lead poisoning. Most do not hear of the special risks to children “unless the pediatrician tells you.”
Colleen McCauley, Health Policy Director at Children First, explained that the current practice for pinpointing lead hazards gets priorities backward. “We largely test children to assess for the presence of lead hazards in their homes. So, we are effectively using children as canaries in the coal mine to test for a toxin, which is an incredibly harmful strategy.”
In general, when it comes to lead exposure in vulnerable communities, lack of access to information and to funds for remediation can be a combination with lethal consequences.
McCauley explained that Norristown has taken some steps this year to alert and protect its residents:
“Norristown is the only municipality in Montco with an ordinance requiring older properties to be tested,” she said. “This ordinance requires landlords of pre-1978 properties to test them for lead paint hazards every three years and report the results to the city to get their rental license. And anyone selling a pre1978 property must get the property tested within six months before selling their home.”
For Latino residents, the problem with lead poisoning can get even more complex.
Latinos often don’t feel comfortable talking with outsiders about problems they face in their communities. After many attempts, a substantial group of Norristown-area Latinos agreed to share their experiences, but not for attribution. While some said they didn’t know about the risks of lead poisoning, others said their children had been diagnosed with it. They said they experienced difficulty getting their apartments’ lead problem addressed.
Frequently, they said, their landlord is also their supervisor or the owner of the construction company for which they work, so they are reluctant to pester the landlord to spend money on remediation.
They say they do worry about their children’s health but are afraid that if they contact county health authorities to get them tested, they risk having their children taken away for negligence. Some said they have spent money or used their own labor to try to eliminate the lead exposure in their units.
“We are in a crossfire,” said one Latino resident who wants to remain anonymous.
None of these residents was aware of the remediation grants available in the county, underscoring the need for federal outreach funds.
And even if they were, the program’s goal of 50 units fixed by the end of next year — a goal which the county will need to accelerate its pace to meet — is only a first step in addressing a problem that may affect thousands upon thousands of dwellings.