More Than 2,000 NYCHA Kids Poisoned By Lead Since 2010: City

NEW YORK — More than 2,000 children living in New York City's public housing have been poisoned by lead in recent years, a shocking new report issued by a city agency shows.

The city's Department of Health on Thursday published its first-ever quarterly report showing how many kids younger than 18 were found with elevated levels of the toxic substance in their blood. The report, promised by Mayor Bill de Blasio last month, together with a regularly issued annual report that was also released Thursday, are the first to provide distinct numbers for children living in New York City Housing Authority homes.

From 2010 through June of this year, 2,017 kids living in NYCHA were found with at least 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, a level the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider concerning.

The vast majority of those children — 1,691 — were younger than 6 years old, the ages at which kids are most at risk for lead poisoning and most vulnerable to its harmful effects. Lead can cause a range of problems including brain damage, slow development and learning problems, according to the CDC.

The Department of Health report gives the fullest picture yet of how widespread lead poisoning is in public housing. NYCHA's failure to properly check apartments for lead paint — and its false statements to federal officials that inspections were performed — were at the center of a settlement between federal prosecutors, the housing authority and the city.

The report shows a steady citywide decline in lead poisoning since 2010 and affirms city officials' assertions that the greatest number of cases comes from private housing, not NYCHA.

Some 2,525, or 97 percent, of the 2,602 kids younger than 18 who had elevated lead levels in the first six months of this year lived in private housing, the report shows. The total so far this year is down from 17,054 cases in all of 2010.

"Childhood lead poisoning continues to decline in New York City, but all of us can play a role to protect children from exposure to lead," Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the outgoing city health commissioner, said in a statement.

The CDC since 2012 has reportedly recommended public health officials work to find potential sources of lead exposure when a kid age 5 or younger has a blood lead level of at least 5 micrograms per deciliter.

But as the New York Daily News revealed in June, the Department of Health used a threshold of 10 micrograms per deciliter until this January, meaning NYCHA was previously not notified and apartments were not inspected when kids had blood lead levels of 5 to 9 micrograms.

NYCHA failed to perform required inspections for lead paint from at least 2012 to 2016, federal prosecutors have said. The rate of lead poisoning among kids younger than 6 fell for both public and private housing in that time, the report shows.

But the NYCHA's rate stayed flat from 2013 to 2014 at 11.9 children with elevated lead levels for every 1,000 kids tested, the report shows. The rate for private housing continued its decline, falling from from 22.9 in 2013 to 21.3 in 2014.

De Blasio, a Democrat, has defended the city's success at driving down lead poisoning overall. He announced plans last month to inspect all 130,000 NYCHA apartments where lead paint hasn't been ruled out in a first-of-its-kind survey.

(Lead image: A public housing building is pictured in Brooklyn in June 2018. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)