Isles, Inc.
Making New Jersey Lead Safe for Children
Dear Legislator,
Help Make New Jersey Housing Lead Safe for All Children
Protect kids now when they are most at-risk
Each year, more than 4,800 new cases of childhood lead poisoning are reported in New Jersey. What’s more, these numbers hardly capture the extent of the problem because nearly the majority of children at risk for poisoning in New Jersey have not been screened.
Even so, we know that more than a dozen children each and every day are exposed unnecessarily to a neurotoxin that affects learning, memory, behavior and overall health. Over the past couple years we have read a lot about the dangers of lead in drinking water in Flint, MI and now here in Newark. What may surprise you is that the lead dust in homes -- from cracked, chipped or deteriorated paint – is a major source of lead poisoning. We cannot ensure lead-free children unless all sources of lead, including paint, are addressed.
But lead poisoning doesn’t only affect children. For adults, a lifetime of lead exposure can affect the heart, kidneys and brain. Research suggests that in older adults, lead has been an underestimated cause of an increased risk of hypertension, stroke, cardiovascular disease and even cancer.
Today, as we enter a new wave of COVID-19 infections, kids are spending more time in their homes than ever. And while this helps protect families from COVID, this also has unintended consequences - kids are getting poisoned from the lead in their homes at even higher rates.
Unofficial information from the NJ DOH shared recently at a statewide conference revealed that since the pandemic started:
• Elevated Blood Lead Levels (EBLLs) in kids have gone up 4% - that’s an additional child poisoned by lead each day.
• Lead testing in children has dropped by 40%.
• Hospitalizations for extreme cases of lead poisoning have also spiked up.
Why is this still happening!? Lead in the deteriorating paint of older NJ homes and apartments and lead tainted water are poisoning our children. For decades, thousands of apartments and homes in NJ have remained in poor condition, poisoning a new group of children each and every year.
What’s worse is that it’s well known that children with even low levels of lead in their system are far more likely to enter the juvenile justice system, fail 3rd grade reading and math and to drop out of school. Unlike with COVID 19, kids can’t protect themselves from lead dust with a cloth mask and social distance. Their only protection is for adults to act to remove the lead hazards from where they live.
There are proven, cost-effective ways to make homes lead-safe, and each day we wait costs children their future as well as wastes taxpayer dollars. The cost of government inaction is huge – NJ taxpayers shoulder a minimum of $61 million in annual costs related to lead poisoning. Estimates are as high as $1.2 billion when all costs are taken into account. If we address lead hazards permanently, we can save billions of dollars over the next decade and protect the futures of thousands of children. Doing nothing is both bad policy and morally indefensible.
Now thanks to Senators Ruiz, Cruz-Perez and other legislators, New Jersey Senate Bill 1147 and its companion bill in the Assembly, would ensure that every family can live in a home or apartment that is safe from lead in paint. The bill requires a lead inspection for all rental properties and that landlords have an updated "Lead Safe Certificate" at rental turnover.
A second key component ensures that at point of sale, buyers of homes built before 1978 must test for lead hazards from paint in the home just like buyers do now for radon, faulty wiring, a leaky roof and other dangerous conditions in a home. That just seems like common sense. The Senate bill was just released favorably from Senate Committee on Economic Growth and will be in Budget & Appropriations in November or December.
Where these types of policies have been implemented, childhood lead poisoning has plummeted. Rochester has reduced childhood lead poisoning by nearly 90% and in Baltimore by 99%! Massachusetts and Rhode Island have had similar results. New Jersey can and should do the same for its children.
The fight to make our State lead-safe requires a comprehensive effort to eliminate lead from our homes, whether in the water, paint, or soil. We ask that you do all that you can to make New Jersey lead safe for all children.
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