When tests showed Helen Jackson’s 2-year-old daughter had dangerous levels of toxic lead in her blood, the worried mom instantly suspected her public housing apartment.
Tests by city health officials say she might be right — though New York City Housing Authority officials insist she’s not. An attorney assisting the Jackson family knows which agency she believes.
“It’s clear that NYCHA is trying not to be blamed because they’re at fault, and the proof of that is the lead in that child’s body,” said lawyer Bonita Zelman. “Since she was born, she has only lived in that apartment.”
While NYCHA claimed paint in Jackson’s Brooklyn home tested negative for lead, a March 25 visit by city health inspectors found different.
The words “LEAD PAINT,” stamped in red, appeared in 19 spots where inspectors found the home’s pale yellow paint tested positive.
“It’s heartbreaking to hear that your kid is sick,” said Jackson, 39. “To hear your child has lead poisoning, I just started bawling, crying.”
The number of children poisoned by lead paint has dropped dramatically since the 1970s, when lead was outlawed in paint and gasoline nationally.
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Forty-four years ago, the city identified 2,600 children with blood-lead levels so high they required hospitalization. In 2012, the last year of available data, only five kids were in that category.
Yet hundreds of city children still test positive annually for blood-lead levels considered dangerous — almost always in poor neighborhoods where the housing stock is more than 40 years old.
While virtually no building erected after 1978 is tainted with lead paint, hundreds of thousands of older apartments across the city still have the stuff.
A total of 923 New York City children younger than 6 tested positive for lead poisoning in 2012 — a blood-lead level above 10 micrograms per deciliter.
Of that number, 623 were under age 3. City health officials say children 3 and younger are especially vulnerable, in part because lead is more readily absorbed into the bloodstream at that tender age.
That year 313 of these children registered a level of 15 — high enough that the city immediately inspected their homes and ordered lead abatement. The number dropped to 254 in 2013. City code requires that blood-lead levels above 15 mandate “environmental interventions.”
Most of those young children with dangerous levels of lead are poor: 76% receive Medicaid. And most are minorities — 23% black, 31% Hispanic and 26% Asian.
“Even scientists think that exposure to lead in children was a thing of the past. It isn’t,” said Dr. Tomas Guilarte, environmental health science chairman at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“It continues to be a very significant issue here in the United States because those homes, people continued to live in them. It is a problem of today. It is a problem of the future.”
NYCHA in particular has a persistent problem with old housing stock: 80% of its 178,000 apartments are in buildings that are more than 40 years old, and thus likely to contain lead paint.
The toxin is often painted over, sometimes multiple times. But in areas near windows, and on radiators and doorframes that are subject to friction or temperature changes, the paint tends to chip.
And Jackson’s husband caught little Makayla eating paint chips off the floor near their TV just a few weeks back.
The chips can also turn to dust that is easily absorbed into the bloodstream — especially by young children.
Over the years, NYCHA fell behind in thousands of requests for repairs, including lead paint abatement requests.
As of February 2013, NYCHA records obtained by the Daily News revealed the agency had yet to address 97 outstanding repair tickets for lead paint.
That included 29 requests more than 100 days old. Three of the lead paint requests dated to 2010, and nine dated to 2011. The oldest ticket was more than 1,100 days old.
In 2014, the authority greatly reduced its repair backlog, and as of February said it was able to address lead-paint abatement requests within an average of nine days.
At Jackson’s apartment in the Linden Houses, the two city agencies found two different results in recent weeks. The Health Department’s X-ray analysis found lead in 19 spots; NYCHA said its lab analysis of eight spots came back negative.
“The health and well-being of our residents, especially children, is of the utmost importance to us, and when lead is found in our buildings, we take the matter very seriously,” said NYCHA spokeswoman Jean Weinberg. “NYCHA will continue to work closely with the Health Department to determine the cause of the lead exposure in this case since conclusive testing of the apartment came back negative.”
Jackson finds herself caught in the middle after a March 24 phone call from the Health Department, which was notified by her child’s pediatrician that Makayla’s blood-lead level was 18 — close to four times the acceptable level of 5.
Studies have shown high levels of lead in small children can lead to brain damage and impaired intellectual function.
“These children can have a loss in IQ based on the amount of lead exposure and how long,” said Guilarte. “If the exposure took place, there’s impaired intellectual development, there’s poor performance in schools.”
Jackson says she’s spoken to her pediatrician over concerns that her child was “not speaking like the average 2-year-old speaks.”
Nearly three weeks later, the disturbing red “LEAD PAINT” stamps linger ominously on doorframes and radiator pipes, and behind a TV set in a bedroom.
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