Congress chooses to keep poisoning children

[TexasTowelie]

Yes, we certainly need to cut unnecessary and even frivolous federal spending, because… well, because it's unnecessary and frivolous.

So, Congress has targeted unnecessary oil subsidies and frivolous tax giveaways to billionaires, right? Uh… no. Instead, our learned solons have chosen to whack the Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. This tiny, $30 million fund (not even a decimal point in the national budget) was slashed by 94 percent to only $2 million. Gutting this program will not save you and me a penny on our tax bills.

Well, retort the whackers, who needs this program, anyway? Some of the poorest families in America, that's who. Lead poisoning from contaminated paint and soil is a silent epidemic in our country, afflicting some half-a-million low-income children a year with permanent brain damage and loss of IQ. The only safe level of lead in a child's blood is zero, which is why this program to monitor blood levels of lead and help state health departments inspect homes and contain the poison was initiated.

Lead poisoning is entirely preventable. America has the science and programs to stop this insidious destruction of babies' brains. Yet, even the miniscule $30-million budget the program previously had couldn't touch the crisis of lead contamination in the four million homes in which vulnerable children live – and now Congress has refused this dollop of funding, responding instead to the wails of Wall Street billionaires that federal spending be cut to preserve their minuscule tax rates.

http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7679

[Igel]

1. This is probably why.

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/USnationalChart1997_2008.pdf

Open the document and look at the numbers. The number of children tested from '97 to '08 went from 1.6 million to nearly 3.5 million. The percentage of confirmed high lead levels dropped from over 7% to under 1%. Double the numbers tested, drop the confirmed positives by over 85%. By now it's probably down to 0.5% or less, if the trend continued. I don't have the numbers. The program overseers, however, would.

For the last year listed, 2008, that's 31,500 kids. Granted, that's still 31,500 kids--but it's taking more and more to find fewer and fewer. Before rummaging for data I rather thought that the prevalence of lead exposed to kids in forms they could ingest ought to follow an exponential decay curve and be asymptotic to some relatively low and consistent number. The sources of lead in children's bodies were mostly things like lead-based paint, exposure because of lead-containing gasoline, and lead in pipes. They outlawed lead paint for residential uses a long time ago, and every year more and more of those houses are condemned, accidentally burn down, or are cleaned up through gentrification (either gutted or torn down). With them go the lead pipes. Even near highways where lead levels were high 40 years ago the lead's mostly gone. This should all follow an exponential decay curve. And that's what the PDF shows.

I don't know where the OP gets the "500,000" number. Perhaps he's just misreading the same PDF I linked to and assumes that the blue line showing percent (to be read off the scale to the right) can also be read off the scale on the left (which shows number of kids tested). Perhaps he has a reliable source. Or perhaps he's citing some advocate who thinks that's just a reasonable and good-sounding number.

(For more info, try http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/index.htm )

[izquierdista]

2. Yes, Hightower missed the boat on this one

It's sad when someone with otherwise stellar liberal credentials turns out to be a scientific ignoramus.