If you had any doubt that poverty and race in the U.S. are systemic and linked to health disparities, look no further than a new study that finds kids living at or below the poverty line, kids living in predominately Black neighborhoods, and kids living in housing built before 1950 have significantly higher levels of lead in their bloodstreams. Did Flint, Michigan, teach us nothing? This country needs the infrastructure bill STAT! 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there is no safe lead level. This is a 100% preventable health problem.

The federal government may have outlawed lead paint in 1976, but in many cities, poor people live where they can afford, and that often means housing built before the ban.

“There has been significant progress in reducing lead exposure throughout the country,” the study says. “This study demonstrates, however, that there are still substantial individual-and community-level disparities that have important implications for addressing childhood lead exposure.”

In 2012 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where 90% of housing was built before 1976, the Philadelphia City Code was amended to include the Philadelphia Lead Paint Disclosure and Certification Law. The law requires owners of properties built before 1978 and rented to the parents of children 6 years old or younger to provide the tenant with certification prepared by a dust wipe technician stating the property is either lead-safe or lead-free. But the law has been difficult to enforce. 

In 2020, Shanya Ball, 27, told The Guardian that she was floored when a pediatrician told her that her son Amari had dangerously high levels of lead in his system. The Philadelphia mother says her son was poisoned from lead paint crumbling off the old windows, door frames, and skirting boards to create a cloud of toxic dust both she and her son inhaled. 

“I knew nothing about lead, but it was everywhere, and my baby was crawling through it,” said Ball, a single mother who works at a convenience store. “I felt so guilty: was it my fault, should I have known?”

An investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer found that one in five children in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods were found to have high levels of lead poisoning. 

According to the study, which was done in conjunction with doctors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Quest Diagnostics, 50.5% of more than 1 million kids tested nationwide had detectable blood lead levels. 

Nebraska, Missouri, Michigan, and Iowa found that over 75% of children had detectable lead levels, reported Dr. Marissa Hauptman, one of the study’s authors. 

Missouri and Kansas have some of the highest numbers of lead service lines, the Missouri Independent reports, with Missouri ranking 6th for the most lead service lines. 

President Joe Biden recently proposed to remove all lead pipes in the U.S. in his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. If enacted, the American Jobs Plan would likely provide enough money to eliminate lead from drinking water in the U.S., and that can’t happen soon enough. 

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry reports: “Even when exposed to small amounts of lead levels, children may appear inattentive, hyperactive, and irritable. Children with greater lead levels may also have problems with learning and reading, delayed growth, and hearing loss. At high levels, lead can cause permanent brain damage and even death.”

Again, this is a 100% preventable health issue, and we have to ask whether it would be such an epidemic if it were happening to white kids.

“We’ve known for a century that poor kids, those living in rundown housing, are more likely to be poisoned by lead. The tragedy is that researchers have to continually document this fact, despite a century of knowledge of lead poisoning’s direct relationship to race, class, and poverty,” sociomedical historian David Rosner of Columbia University told Med Page Today. 

“Americans should be ashamed that we allow this tragedy to just continue along, with only occasional nods to correcting it,” he added.