This threat is a clear and present danger

“I didn’t know anything about lead until that call telling me my son’s brain could be damaged. I was shaking and crying. I didn’t sleep for 30 days.”

It’s a nightmare for any parent. When the doctor called last year with the news that her 2-year-old son was poisoned with lead, Fatu Kante’s hear broke. While her landlord refused to remediate the toxic, peeling paint from the property, the health department stepped in to clean up.

But Kante admits she’s still scared. “If we’d known, we’d never have moved into this house,” she told the internationally-read Guardian. Online reactions are predictably of shock and confusion, as readers wonder how such a preventable tragedy could happen in the one of the largest cities of the world’s wealthiest nation. And why it happens so frequently.

Shayana Ball, another conscientious Philadelphia mom, did her best, she told the Guardian. But by his first birthday, her son couldn’t communicate, play, or move like other babies. First diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, he was subsequently diagnosed with high levels of lead in his blood.

“I knew nothing about lead, but it was everywhere, and my baby was crawling through it. I felt so guilty. Was it my fault, should I have known?” Ball had done everything she could to prepare for her son, but didn’t know about Philadelphia’s lead paint crisis, or that lead poisoning disproportionately affected minorities and low-income families. They were both.

一个 recent state report shows that 2,881 children under the age of seven were shown to have high blood lead levels in Philadelphia. But with only 30% of under-seven children tested, the reality is certainly much worse.

That’s why PCCY and the Lead Free Philly Coalition worked so hard to pass the most protective lead law in the country last October. That’s why our work continues in Southeast Pennsylvania, where old housing stock pre-dating the 1978 lead paint ban comprises most dwellings.

Last week, the Delaware County Lead Poisoning Prevention Coalition, which PCCY coordinates, announced $2 million in grants available to families and landlords to get the lead out. They also officially unveiled two local guides to help raise awareness of childhood lead poisoning and what parents can do about it. The event garnered significant media coverage, as Delaware County officials, health and community organizations united for this major step in the fight against lead.

As PCCY’s health policy director Colleen McCauley told the Guardian, “It’s hard to sell primary prevention [to elected officials] because it costs money to find the lead and then more money to remove the hazards. This is an utterly shortsighted perspective, however, because caring for children after they are poisoned is much more expensive.”

But there may be a correction for such stymieing shortsightedness and that may be to finally hold those accountable for this crisis, as opposed to burdening taxpayers with the bill. Last summer, we reported that Montgomery and Lehigh Counties were suing the paint companies that greatly profited from selling oceans of toxic paint.

We believe, until they take responsibility and work to get their poisonous product out of homes, paint companies continue to profit from the lead paint that poisons well over 3,000 children in Southeast Pennsylvania every year.

The good news is this week, a federal appeals court upheld the decision that would allow the lawsuit to proceed in state court, as opposed to federal court that is poorly equipped to enforce state law protections, which is what the paint companies were likely banking on.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected specious claims by the paint companies, including their contention that they were merely following the direction of the federal government when they supplied lead paint during wartimes and for other government purposes, like federal housing projects.

The court ruled that the paint companies can’t make a federal case out of a local one just because the U.S. government was a customer. And, also, what does that have to do with Montgomery and Lehigh Counties, anyway?

While the world worries over the seemingly unrelenting spread of a new type of super flu, we must remain vigilant over the clear and present threat of toxic lead paint in too many of our homes. We know the danger and terrible harm lead visits upon young children, just as we know how to turn this tragic tide.