New and Noteworthy from The Gothamist, original article by Christopher Werth
Lead, which was once widely used in paint, plumbing, and gasoline, is a neurotoxin that can cause irreparable learning disabilities and behavioral disorders. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no level of exposure is safe. However, one of the continuing issues in public health circles is at what level a pediatrician or a health agency should respond.
The City Council approved legislation in 2019 requiring the city's health department to keep track of any changes in the CDC's "blood lead reference value," which is essentially a guideline for when local health departments should intervene to give treatment and cut off the source of exposure. The CDC dropped their reference limit from 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood to 3.5 micrograms in October.
Despite the City Council's legal mandate, New York City officials did not immediately follow the new guidance. According to a department official, the New York City Health Department opted to adopt the CDC's new reference level of 3.5 micrograms after nearly five months of public pressure from public health advocates.
Any test results that are at or above that level will now automatically trigger a departmental investigation. Hundreds of additional children will now be eligible for city-funded programs each year, according to data obtained by Gothamist through a Freedom of Information Law request, resulting in a 50 percent increase in the city's annual caseloads.
The city's adoption of the new lead limits is something that many public health experts had feared wouldn't happen anytime soon. A group of ten advocates and groups petitioned the city's Board of Health to adopt the new guideline earlier this month.
“What the Council did was to add a provision that would essentially eliminate the need for the Council coming back and passing new legislation every time the CDC changed its reference level,” said Matthew Chachere, the attorney who filed the petition on behalf of the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning and others.
“It took five months, but I’m glad [the health department] did it. Unfortunately, it took a petition from advocates to get them to act on it,” he said.
One of the continuing issues in public health circles is at what level a pediatrician or a health department should respond. The CDC's so-called "level of concern" for lead paint was 30 micrograms per deciliter in the 1970s – an astounding quantity by today's standards.
Given what experts have discovered about the cognitive impacts of even low levels of exposure, those days are long gone. The new lead level change — from 5 to 3.5 micrograms — may appear little, but it will add hundreds of children to the department's caseload each year.
Dr. Morri Markowitz, the director of the Montefiore’s Lead Poisoning Treatment and Prevention Program in the Bronx, questioned whether the city has the resources to handle such a large expansion of cases.
“Do they really have the capability? Because the numbers are going to increase a lot,” Markowitz said. “Adopting [the CDC guidance] and acting on it aren’t necessarily exactly the same thing.”
Gothamist received statistics on the number of children who tested between the new advisory level of 3.5 micrograms and the city's old action threshold of 5 micrograms to see how the city's caseloads would be affected.
According to those calculations, if the new action threshold had been adopted citywide in October 2021, when the CDC made its modification, around 400 children would have been added to New York City's list of children with elevated blood-lead levels in 2021. The caseload increase would have been 1,725 children if the rule had been imposed retroactively to the entire previous year.
The number of kids between the old and new action level would be most pronounced in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, in descending order.
The implementation of the CDC's revised guidance by New York City means more resources for families with children who qualify under the expanded action level. The lead poisoning and prevention program of the health department sends nurses to follow up on cases of lead poisoning until the child's lead levels have decreased. It also provides free lead paint checks using sophisticated X-ray fluorescence technology (XRF), which is expensive when paid out of pocket.
When lead-paint issues are identified, the health commissioner now has the authority to force landlords to do abatement work. If a landlord refuses to comply, the city may hire its own contractor and charge the landlord.
If you or a loved one has been seriously injured due to someone else's careless, reckless or negligent actions, do not hesitate to reach out to the dedicated legal professionals at Trolman Glaser Corley & Lichtman.
The Gothamist Article:
https://gothamist.com/news/after-5-month-delay-nyc-health-department-adopts-new-federal-rules-on-childhood-lead-exposure