Across suburban southeast PA, at least 50% of homes were built before 1978 when lead-based paint was banned for residential use (a range of 52% in Chester County to 83% in Delaware County). Across the nation the number one source of lead poisoning is lead-based paint in children’s homes. Consequently, lead paint-based hazards in thousands of homes may be poisoning children. Unfortunately, too few children are tested for lead poisoning – a range of 9% to 19% of young children in 2012. If children aren’t tested, their blood lead levels remain unknown.

County leaders should identify and utilize local and federal funds to test children’s homes for lead hazards and remediate them, educate parents about lead poisoning and screen more children for lead.

Click here for a summary of the Bottom Line Health Reports – Learn more about the state of children’s health across Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties.

Click on the links below for the full reports in all four counties.

• Bucks – Only 10% of Bucks County children under six received screenings for lead poisoning in 2012.
• Chester – More than half of Chester County houses may contain lead, but only nine percent of children received screenings for lead poisoning in 2012.
• Delaware – Delaware County had the highest share of children screened for lead in 2012 (19%) than in any suburban county.
• Montgomery – More than two-thirds of Montgomery County houses may contain lead, however, only 14% of children received screenings for lead poisoning in 2012.

Children First initiated a successful two-year campaign that resulted in Philadelphia City Council passing a law in December 2011 requiring landlords to test their properties for lead hazards to prove they are lead-safe and help protect young tenants from lead poisoning.

At the time the law was passed, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported that 55% of properties that poison Philadelphia children were rental properties. The city’s Property Maintenance Code requires landlords to maintain their properties free of lead-based paint hazards, and many did but too many did not. Philadelphia is an old city with 95% of its housing stock built before 1978 when lead-based paint was banned for residential use. Consequently, many homes in the city have the potential to poison children.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health maintains a webpage with detailed information regarding the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords in terms of this law – which includes an informational document for tenants and a guide for landlords. Click here to view these documents and several others.

Click here to view a copy of the Philadelphia’s lead law.

Children First has chronicled the status of childhood lead poisoning in Philadelphia and the city’s progress towards prevention in a series of comprehensive reports.

Getting the Reporting Right: Improving PA’s Lead Poisoning Surveillance Data Sharing (2019)

• To ensure appropriate resources are directed to reduce the incidence of childhood lead exposure and poisoning, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania annually publishes a Childhood Lead Surveillance report. The reports for 2016 and 2017 were released in December 2018. These reports provide useful raw data that show that nearly 10,000 children are still testing positive for lead poisoning annually.  However, the reports don’t tell us enough to fully inform decisions that can result in significantly more resources being deployed effectively to save children from the lifelong consequences of lead poisoning. This report from Children First does that.

Making Philadelphia’s Lead Disclosure Law Universal Will Improve the Health of the City’s Babies (2019)

• All Philadelphia babies should have an equal opportunity to grow and develop into healthy children and productive adults no matter where they live in the City.  Tragically, this isn’t true when it comes to childhood lead poisoning. Most children are poisoned by lead-based paint in their older homes – and most (62%) are poisoned in a rental property. For hundreds of years, lead has been known to be a neurotoxin and an environmental hazard, yet lead was not banned for residential use in the United States until 1978. In Philadelphia, nearly 90% of the housing stock was built before 1978.  Although the City of Philadelphia has made progress in reducing childhood lead poisoning rates and has recently taken steps toward increasing primary and secondary prevention measures, there are still too many children poisoned each year. To ensure that more children are protected from serious injury by lead poisoning, we must modify the Lead Paint Disclosure Law to include all pre-1978 rental units.

The Lead Court and Healthier Children: The Philadelphia Story, 2008 – Part Three

• In a short period of time, the Philadelphia Lead Court made a dramatic impact on increasing the number of properties made lead-safe in the city and, consequently, on decreasing the number of children poisoned. This report describes some of the court’s outcomes and challenges accompanying the court’s progress – in particular the continuing lack of adequate funding to ensure that all properties are remediated.

Keeping the Lead Out: The Philadelphia Story, 2007 – Part Two

• Philadelphia government re-focused and re-organized its efforts on primary lead poisoning prevention programs and activities – to keep children from ever getting lead poisoning in the first place. This report highlights the expansion and outcomes of the successful Lead Safe Babies program that targets pregnant women and families with newborns to test their properties for lead hazards and remove them before the baby is exposed.

Get the Lead Out: The Philadelphia Story, 2006 – Part One

• This report chronicles the progress the city made since PCCY published our first report in 2002 including the “campaign for change” undertaken by PCCY and other advocates to push for the creation of the Lead Abatement Strike Team and Lead Court that aided in bringing increased federal funding into Philadelphia and significant expansion of primary prevention programs such as Lead Safe Babies.

Unleaded Only: Toward A Safer City for Children (2002)

• A Report on Childhood Lead Poisoning in Philadelphia