RECESSIONARY CUTS in recent years have already chipped away at the lead-inspection and poisoning-prevention staff of both the state of Massachusetts and the city of Boston, with resources disappearing like flaking paint. The state slashed 10 of its 13 lead-prevention staffers in fiscal 2010. Boston has fallen from 15 staffers in 2006 to nine. Now, if a proposed $34 million federal cut to lead-poisoning prevention programs occurs, there may be only a half-dozen or so people in Boston to conduct outreach, collect data, and do case management in a city where 90 percent of homes were built before 1978, the year before lead paint was banned for residential use.
The federal cuts would be especially unwise because they would take effect just as the federal government’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is set to dramatically lower the levels considered dangerous, based on new studies on lead’s possible harm to small children. Lead-poisoning education and prevention has been one of the greatest long-term victories in urban health, with the number of cases in Boston dropping from 6,000 in 1993 to under 200 last year. But the state says the new federal levels could result in 10 times more children being classified with elevated lead levels.
The Boston Public Health Commission says if the federal cuts come through, the staff will do its best to work with community centers, day-care centers, and hospitals to get literature out and promote lead screening during checkups. But that is too much to ask when only a quarter of the state’s 1.2 million homes suspected to contain lead paint have been inspected. Lead paint intensely attacks the cognitive abilities and educational futures of small children. Congress should reconsider its budget plans, even in a tight economy, and put the lead-prevention funds back into the budget.