City of East Orange signs “Model Lead-Safe City” agreement with Public Advocate

Announce aggressive actions to prevent childhood lead poisoning

EAST ORANGE –The City of East Orange became one of the first cities in northern New Jersey  to sign an agreement with the New Jersey Public Advocate to aggressively respond to and prevent the problem of childhood lead poisoning.

VIEW MODEL LEAD-SAFE CITY AGREEMENT

Flanked by local families who have experienced the childhood poisoning problem, New Jersey Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen and City Mayor Robert L. Bowser signed an agreement designating East Orange as  a“Model Lead-Safe City.”

“East Orange already has an innovative and aggressive approach to addressing this important issue. This agreement builds on the work already being done here and places the city at the head of the pack in terms of tackling this critical public health concern,”  said Chen, who unveiled a report in April that showed that thousands of children in New Jersey are poisoned in their homes every year due to exposure to deteriorating lead-based paint.

The Public Advocate’s report showed that East Orange had one of the most severe childhood lead poisoning problems in the state. There are about 6,700 children under the age of six in East Orange and 6.2 percent who were screened in fiscal year 2006 were found to have a blood lead level at or above the federal level or concern.

In addition, about 83 percent of the city’s housing was built before 1978, when the national ban on the sale of lead paint went into effect, and about 53 percent of the housing in the city was built before 1950 when the level of lead in paint was at its highest.

According to the Public Advocate’s report, the childhood lead poisoning problem was determined to be particularly acute in the state’s major cities. In response to the report, Governor Jon S. Corzine has signed an executive order requiring state departments to tighten their lead poisoning prevention activities

Under the Model Lead-Safe City agreement signed today, city officials committed to take steps to: improve educational outreach on the issue; expand the number of children screened for lead poisoning; improve the inspections of properties that may be lead-burdened; tighten oversight of lead abatement contractors; and provide improved relocation assistance and more lead-safe housing to affected families.

Specifically, the city will:

• continue its program with UMDNJ of mapping the city based on the prevalence of elevated childhood blood lead levels and aggressively testing and treating children in those neighborhoods;
• investigate the creation of a special dedicated fund that would permit local health departments or poor homeowners to clean up their properties at no cost and would provide rent subsidies for displaced tenants;
• designate a Lead-Safe City Coordinator who will head up all efforts related to responding to and preventing lead poisoning;
• work with the local school districts to identify lead-based products that are used in the schools,
• distribute lead poisoning educational materials through city public and private schools;
• determine if its housing inspectors can become licensed lead inspectors/risk assessors;
• require that all people living in a multi-unit dwelling be notified if a child who lives there is diagnosed with lead poisoning;
• tighten oversight of lead abatement contractors;
• update its landlord registration file and crackdown on landlords that fail to remediate their properties;
• hold abatement contractors accountable for the quality of their work;
• apply for federal grants to support increased lead screening, home inspections and abatements, and family relocations.

The New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate conducted a field investigation late last year in five of the New Jersey cities with the highest concentration of lead-poisoned children: Trenton, Camden, Newark, East Orange and Irvington. Together, these five cities accounted for 31 percent of all reported lead poisonings in New Jersey in FY 2005.

At each of the 104 addresses inspected, one or more children had already been lead poisoned within the past 10 years, and thus were or should have been inspected. Additionally, a minimum of approximately one-third of the homes had already undergone an abatement.  DPA took up to 12 samples in each of the homes of the floors, window sills and window wells. 

As part of that DPA field study, 21 East Orange homes were tested and 15 came back with elevated lead dust levels, or about 71 percent of homes tested.

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