Lead Reports

Delaware County has the fifth highest number of children poisoned by lead of all PA counties, with an average of 250 children harmed each year. Lead was finally banned in residential paint in 1978, yet 81% of Delaware County houses and apartments were built before then. Children First and the Delaware County Lead Poisoning Prevention Coalition developed this five-year Action Plan with the Delaware County Health Department input to harness the new capacity of the Department to prevent and manage childhood lead poisoning, and to establish a pathway for all county stakeholders to work together.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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