Thousands Of Lead-Poisoned Kids Ignored By City: Stringer

NEW YORK — Thousands of children ended up with toxic lead in their bodies after falling through the cracks of New York City's bureaucracy, City Comptroller Scott Stringer charged Thursday.

From 2013 to October of last year, 2,749 kids — including 228 in public housing — were found with elevated levels of lead in their blood even after the substance was found in another child in the same building where they lived, Stringer's office found in an investigation launched last year.

Those buildings should have been inspected after their first case of lead poisoning emerged — but the Health Department failed to tip off other city agencies responsible for checking them, according to the probe. Stringer blamed the failures on a communication breakdown and the city's delay in adopting a more stringent threshold for inspections.

"By failing to connect the dots, government complacency may have allowed thousands of our precious children to get hurt," Stringer, a Democrat, said at a Thursday news conference. "We didn't go in and do anything to keep these children from getting sick."

Concerns about his administration's handling of childhood lead poisoning have dogged Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, for the last two years and even followed him to a presidential debate stage. While most of the worries have stemmed from public housing, Stringer's probe reveals how deep the problem has run in private housing.

The comptroller — a potential candidate for mayor in 2021 — accused the de Blasio administration of taking a "lackadaisical approach" to the city's childhood lead poisoning crisis. He urged City Hall to improve communication between the agencies responsible for protecting kids from the toxic substance and implement more proactive inspections.

Spokespeople for de Blasio did not immediately comment on Stringer's findings Thursday afternoon.

Stringer's investigation identified 11,972 children living in 9,671 buildings across the city who had lead in their blood at a concentration of at least five micrograms per deciliter.

That's the threshold at which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend public health authorities take action to address lead poisoning, which can cause brain damage, slowed development and problems with learning, behavior, hearing and speech.

Some 804 of those kids lived in 572 buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority, according to Stringer's office. The rest lived in private buildings with at least three units, which the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development is responsible for inspecting.

The Health Department only intervened when kids had lead levels of at least 15 micrograms per deciliter — which was all city law required until this year, Stringer's office said. But it did not tell HPD or NYCHA when tests showed lead levels between five and 15 micrograms, meaning those kids' homes were never inspected, according to the office.

That didn't change when multiple kids were poisoned in the same building, the probe found. The comptroller's office says it spotted 503 buildings to which HPD did not send lead inspectors even though they housed at least three children with elevated levels of lead in their blood.

Stringer also accused the city of waiting for tenants to complain about landlords failing to follow lead-paint regulations instead of proactively enforcing the law, which he called a "pattern of bureaucratic neglect."

HPD didn't issue any violations to landlords for skipping required inspections or failing to get rid of lead paint when an apartment got a new tenant — both important pieces of the 2004 city law meant to prevent lead poisoning, the comptroller's office says.

De Blasio has touted his plan to eradicate childhood lead poisoning, which he says has become far less common in the city over the last roughly 15 years. The initiative calls for lead-paint inspections in smaller homes, more proactive enforcement of the 2004 law and other measures.

The federal government also installed a monitor this year to track NYCHA's efforts to clean up lead paint after revelations that the agency falsely claimed for years that it had performed required inspections for the substance.

But Stringer argued the city has a long way to go to protect its kids from toxic lead. The problem requires "purposeful coordinated action," he said.

"It’s a failure of government, and the stakes here continue to be very high," Stringer said.