Ending the federal budgeting process recently, Congress dealt a devastating blow to the fight against childhood lead poisoning. The Omnibus Appropriations Bill cut funding for the CDC’s Healthy Homes Lead Poisoning Prevention Program to $2 million—a 94% reduction from FY11.

Lead poisoning still remains a significant environmental public health threat that affects over 30 million homes and nearly a half-million children annually. Today, parents of lead poisoned children can rely on their state or local health departments for help. A nurse or trained professional will come to their house and find the source of lead poisoning.

The program may connect parents to resources to remove hazards and can compel rental property owners to fix hazards. The program also prevents the disease through policies, community education, and outreach. ”Congress gave our children a lump of lead this holiday season,” said Rebecca Morley, Executive Director of the National Center for Healthy Housing.

“Studies show that educating a child with lead poisoning costs an extra $38,000. If even half of the children with lead poisoning incur these costs, that’s a $10 billion price tag,” continued Morley. “The cost of eliminating this program is staggering.”

The decision will result in the near-elimination of the program and massive job loss at the state and local levels. The move follows an advisory committee’s recommendation to CDC to lower the threshold for when a child is considered to have enough lead in his or her blood that follow-up action is needed. This change in the “action level” will more than double the caseload of poisoned kids that need the health department’s help.

“The burden on the most vulnerable families just got heavier. Too many children with lead poisoning already go undiagnosed. Without this program, we will return to the era of children being hospitalized for lead. Why is Congress treating our children like canaries in a coal mine?” said Liz Colon, parent and organizer for the Childhood Lead Action Project in Rhode Island.

The impact of these proposed cuts will also fall directly on the backs of low-income families and communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by environmental health hazards. Nationally, African American children are three times more likely to suffer from lead poisoning.

In some locales, African American and Latino children are eight to nine times more likely to enter school with a history of lead poisoning. Children poisoned by lead are seven times more likely to drop out of school and six times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system.

“Lead poisoning is preventable. We are taking a huge step back in protecting our children’s health, safety, and future by eliminating the resources communities need to prevent and address lead exposures,” said Nsedu Witherspoon, Executive Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network.

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Authorities often are depriving victims of needed lead testing, treatment, and prevention, as stated in a 75-page report researched by New-York based Human Rights Watch released on Wednesday, June 15, 2011. The report also stated that the government has failed to force polluting factories to close and clean up contamination despite its high-profile effort to crack down on heavy metals pollution.

Millions of Chinese children suffer from lead poisoning despite a crackdown on contamination, and local officials are systematically withholding the right to medical testing in order to cover up the problem. “Children with dangerously high levels of lead in their blood are being refused treatment, and returned home to contaminated houses in polluted villages,” said Joe Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch.

China has launched a campaign to crack down on lead poisoning, and to clean up contamination. The campaign closed down hundreds of lead-acid battery factories in eastern China’s Zhejiang province after several major pollution cases were brought to attention by state-run media. In the recently reported case, more than 600 people, including 103 children, were reported sickened from tinfoil processing workshops in the Zhejiang town of Yangxunqiao.

All the children and 26 adults suffered from severe lead poisoning. Human Rights Watch’s researchers conducted detailed interviews in heavily contaminated villages in four provinces—Hunan, Henan, Yunnan, and Shaanxi, and found authorities were systematically seeking to silence those who sought help or spoke out. Authorities had even refused testing or given distorted readings to relatives of sick children.

Lead poisoning can damage the nervous, muscular, and reproductive systems. Children are the most at risk because their bodies absorb up to half of what they are exposed, potentially disabling them for life. “Chinese experts are saying lead is one of the leading causes of pediatric health problems,” Amon said. Many parents interviewed for the Human Rights Watch report said that even when their children were confirmed to have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood, doctors just advised them to give their children milk or certain types of foods. Parents reported that local police threatened individuals seeking treatment and information, and those trying to protest against polluting factories have been arrested. Even journalists have been intimidated and threatened when trying to report on lead poisoning.

It seems that the Chinese government is falling back on how they have handled other recent health crises, including AIDS, the SARS outbreak in 2003 or the toxic milk scandal of 2008. The first instinct is to deny, conceal and block any further discussion of the problems.

Though this secrecy is not new, it does make it harder for anyone to bring this problem to light without risking their life. Once the problem is exposed, the Beijing government can act swiftly to reduce harm like in the other crises. However, at what stage is the China lead a crisis? How many more children must become sick from the poisoning, refused treatment, and sent home before Chinese government takes an action? Covering up this epidemic is not the solution; they must protect their children.

Image Courtesy of  Times Union

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