Lead Poisoning & the Stultification of Detroit Kids

Photo credit: EPA

Detroit is teeming with lead risks because roughly three quarters (73.4%) of all of the structures in the city were built before 1955, when the amount of lead used in paint was very high. Moreover, even though lead content was reduced over the following 20 years, it wasn't completely removed from all paint products until 1978--and very few buildings have been built in our city since then, as every Detroiter knows full well. But the problem in Detroit isn't merely the prevalence of pre-1955 homes, schools, commercial buildings and  apartment buildings. It's made infinitely worse by the fact that tens of thousands of these buildings have been left to decay, and millions of square feet of flaking paint fall onto our soil and our sidewalks, and then move all over our city, carried by shoes, tires, wind, and water. The inexcusably large number of low-income families in Detroit means that many residents do not have the means to maintain and improve their homes and thus protect themselves from lead risks. This unbelievable amount of lead contamination isn't the end of the matter, since Detroit has also been home to industrial smelters, which blew lead dust into the air, which then settled into the ground. The result is a huge number of children being exposed, day in and day out, to unacceptable amounts of lead. They're paying the cost.

People have been studying this problem, and Wayne State has got significant data together, to demonstrate the severity of the problem. Here's a link to the PDF, simply showing reported lead poisoning cases in the city for 2001. It's infuriating that this problem isn't being tackled with huge community and city government involvement, along with significant state and federal help. There was a state-local initiative, but it's not enough (and the supposed decline in poisoning incidents looks fake, since the sample size was greatly increased in later years). We can't allow tens of thousands of children to suffer from learning disabilities, hearing problems, behavioral problems, and everything else that is associated with lead exposure. And we cannot pay the costs of abatement on an individual basis because, as the EPA reports, the cost averages $10,000 per home. Detroiters, especially those living in housing that needs lead abatement, don't have the money to spare.