Hundreds More NYC Classrooms Found With Lead Paint, City Says

NEW YORK — Dangerous lead-based paint has been discovered in hundreds more classrooms serving New York City's youngest students, city officials revealed this week.

The Department of Education found broken-up lead paint in 1,858 classrooms across the city this summer, officials said Friday. That number has roughly doubled since about a month ago, when the DOE said it had found hazardous paint in 938 classrooms.

The new total includes first-grade classrooms and newly identified rooms that will serve kids younger than 6, such as those previously used for higher grades that will soon house prekindergartners, according to the Education Department.

The DOE said it expects to have all the deteriorated paint remediated by the first day of school on Sept. 5, as only about 75 classrooms were waiting to be cleared as of late Thursday.

The city also announced that it will check for lead paint in common spaces within schools. And the accounting firm Ernst & Young is reviewing the DOE's protocols and procedures for lead-based paint to ensure they are as strong as possible, the department said.

"Our primary focus has always been on where kids spend the most time — classrooms," Jane Meyer, a spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in a statement. "As part of our recent efforts to achieve vision zero for lead in New York City, we will enhance our protocols around common space with new inspections, testing, and remediation guidelines — this is in addition to the abatement that is already done when schools undergo capital projects."

The latest round of inspections, which started in the last week of June, came after WNYC discovered alarmingly high levels of lead in paint samples from four schools. Lead poisoning can cause a range of problems such as brain damage, slow development and learning issues.

The new number of rooms where deteriorating lead paint was found accounts for about 22 percent of the 8,428 that were inspected throughout the summer, according to the DOE. That figure includes first-grade classrooms, which were inspected for the first time, along with pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and District 75 classrooms and LYFE child care centers used by kids of students.

Some 662, or more than a third, of the rooms with hazardous paint are in Brooklyn, DOE data show. The Bronx is home to 533, while Queens has 390, Manhattan has 175 and Staten Island has 98, according to the figures.

The DOE said it is requiring principals in the affected schools to only use classrooms that have been cleared for use by children age 6 and younger, who are at the highest risk for lead poisoning. The principals must confirm which rooms they plan to use by the end of the month as students continue to register, the department said.

All the inspected classrooms are in buildings erected before 1985, which goes beyond a legal mandate to check facilities built before 1978, according to the DOE.

Custodians check classrooms for deteriorated paint, which an outside inspector examines with X-ray fluorescence technology that detects how much lead is in the sample, the DOE said. Problematic paint gets covered with a state-approved primer that locks in the lead along with two new coats of paint, according to the department.

The new inspection results come amid de Blasio's efforts to eradicate childhood lead poisoning. The mayor's Democratic administration has received scrutiny in recent years for its handling of lead paint in public housing, which led to strict federal oversight of the New York City Housing Authority.