Learned about this phenomenon when considering buying a home built prior to 1978.
The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was estimated that 90 percent of all DC homes were built before 1978.
Despite Baltimore leading the charge to inform the public concerning the risks of environmental exposure to lead by banning lead-based paint (but not plumbing or other construction products) in 1951 following a clinical study from Johns Hopkins University, many Baltimoreans, primarily Black, continue to face excessive exposure to lead. The US would not follow Baltimore's example and ban lead-based paint until 1978, because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts.
Lead remediation is an expensive process and even with programs that help or completely cover the costs, many people may not be aware of the programs to take advantage of them.
You can start to see why the problem disproportionately impacts the Black population.
The issue is similar to the asbestos mania. Lead paint is a problem for young children mostly when it peels and gets ingested, or pulverizes and ends up in the air.
Because the strategy is elimination, lead remediation is a huge expense and has driven landlord behavior to embrace incredulous ignorance. There’s actually an incentive to not maintain property in some cases - remediation may exceed the value of the property.
A smarter strategy imo would be to reduce harm. Do stuff like pay landlords to replace windows and paint trim to encapsulate older lead paint. In poor neighborhoods, you could use this to incentivize section 8 enrollment which gives the government more power to drive other remedies for different problems.
I grew up in an 1890s home and live in a circa 1918 home today. There is almost certainly lead present in both the water supply lines and in various painted structures. Because the homes were/are maintained and the water system isn’t run by criminally negligent people, my kids do not have any lead exposure.
I live in an 1820s farmhouse and had some new windows put in a while back. Basically the installers were “You have lead and we’re going to charge a bit more for the necessary procedures” and everyone was fine with that. It’s a matter if not having a bunch of flaking paint. If that isn’t a reasonable answer, even if there isn’t flaking paint, the answer is basically don’t live in an old place if you can avoid it.
In my city, if I pull a permit for any type of work, it triggers a bunch of nonsense including licensed remediation, etc. Depending on the inspector and the contractor, that could be a big deal.
> because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts.
I have genuine, actual trouble maintaining faith in humanity when I hear about people like this existing. It just makes me incredibly depressed and bummed out about life.
I hear you. We’re just more sophisticated chimps. Sophisticated enough to devise ways to kill nearly all life on earth, but not wise enough to take care of the planet and ourselves.
The biggest importer of asbestos is India. Even if they'd already banned Russian asbestos, the only country to have enough asbestos is China, guess the rest.
Gasoline is not big business? They had a "scientist" on staff, that proclaimed that leaded fuel was harmless. Who cares about paint, when there are millions of cars driving around blowing lead dust into the air? The (real) scientist who saw a connection needed years to prove it. By digging into the ice in the arctis he was able to prove, that the high lead levels where a recent phenomenon. The documentary Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey by Neil deGrasse Tyson [0] tells this story much better than i ever could and much more... Highly recommended!
People doing what's best for them can be very evil for others, like the fact that buildings full of lead paint and lead-leaking pipes have not been fixed.
> buildings full of lead paint and lead-leaking pipes have not been fixed.
That’s because a few IQ points in black and poor people is not considered more important than not using tax money to solve the problem.
Arguably, the added IQ points times the number of people affected would most likely have a positive effect on the GDP and would pay for the fix in a couple decades.
That we even think that we’d need to do the math to justify it is deeply depressing.
Yes because the reason they they are prodominantly represented in those neighborhoods just because they were redlined there as a matter of public policy for decades
Yes, even if redlining wasn't occurring and allowed for access to credit so they could lever up on a mortgage in nicer, newer neighborhoods, that would simply
1) alter representation in poorer neighborhoods, as in, black people wouldn't be so heavily represented, but then you would still have the problem of somebody being exposed to lead paint and apathetic landlords
2) the additional demand would wind up pushing people to the bad neighborhoods anyway, some part of me thinks getting right back to square one, but there are a ton of variables there. (Like maybe the higher prices would have incentivized more developers, or even the landlords of bad buildings to renovate)
the outcome that has occurred is still messed up. a lot of race based discrimination in the US against black people has had an economic rationalizing, I wonder if the increased pricing was a factor, alongside more clear cut segregationist idea.
Buying a home pre-1978 is a mess. Every contractor asks "what year is the home". If you state something before 1978 - they wont open a wall, touch old tiles, do roof work, etc. Contractors immediately offer one of their friends to do asbestos removal or lead work. I had water leak in a 1967 home. Just to throw away plaster walls cost a fortune: "hazardous material". It looked like a sci-fi movie people in full outfits, full plastic wrapped rooms, negative pressure systems, air locks. My home insurance wouldn't pay - then dropped me that year.
> In 2014, it was estimated that 90 percent of all DC homes were built before 1978.
Europeans go what? I'm thinking of all my friends and family and out of hundreds of houses I've been in I can only think of a handful that were built after 1978. I'm not sure why lead isn't a problem so much though, maybe phased out earlier? .
It's not just the buildings. It's the soil, and the air. Test the soil next to any major roadway and you'll get highly toxic lead levels. Children like to get into dirt. Construction kicks the dirt back into the air.
The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was estimated that 90 percent of all DC homes were built before 1978.
Despite Baltimore leading the charge to inform the public concerning the risks of environmental exposure to lead by banning lead-based paint (but not plumbing or other construction products) in 1951 following a clinical study from Johns Hopkins University, many Baltimoreans, primarily Black, continue to face excessive exposure to lead. The US would not follow Baltimore's example and ban lead-based paint until 1978, because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts.
Lead remediation is an expensive process and even with programs that help or completely cover the costs, many people may not be aware of the programs to take advantage of them.
You can start to see why the problem disproportionately impacts the Black population.