On 3/26/03 9:42 AM, "Michael Atherton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Please note that the report cited above says, "In communities where the houses > are old and deteriorating..." "Deteriorating" being the key word. If lead > paint is flaking or chalking then I agree that it is a bad thing, but if > it is firm and stable there really is no problem, unless some fool > comes along and starts dry sanding it.
OK - here's another interesting tidbit I learned about from the Minneapolis Department of Regulatory services. Less than 30% of property owners in Minneapolis are in compliance with federal regulations that require tenants or buyers to be provided with information about lead. That would suggest to me that the likelihood of some fool coming along and dry sanding a window frame with lead paint is not so remote. > As I understand it, it unlikely that any child in Minneapolis (who > is not eating paint chips) will have been exposed to more lead than > I was growing up in L.A. in the 1950s. Ok, so I could be a lot smarter, > but I'm doing ok (if being qualified to join Mensa means anything). I can't speak to what the conditions were in LA in the 1950s since that was 20 years before I was born. What I do know is that in 2002, there were 63 cases of children with elevated blood lead levels in Minneapolis that were detected through screening. > "Correlation does not imply causation!" Do you have evidence that > when matched for SES that %50 of unincarcerated adults do not show > exposure to lead as children? Wasn't my statistic - I borrowed it from Wizard. But as she pointed out earlier today, we know where most lead exposure comes from. And we know from the Minneapolis Department of Regulatory Services where the majority of children with elevated blood lead levels were exposed to lead. 62% of those cases were determined to be from rental properties. > We also don't know how bad the problem of space alien infiltration is, > but do we really need to worry about it? If you really want to worry about > household hazards, then worry about the lack of air circulation in > new homes and the type of sealants and materials used in them. There > are many materials that have not been tested and are likely to show up > as health hazards twenty years from now. I could write a book about these issues because Michael is right, there will be new problems that come up and Michael also hits the nail right on the head as to why. Materials and sealants and such being used in new homes have not been tested for toxicity characteristics. However, the fact that there are other concerns out there is no excuse to ignore the threat from lead. We know how toxic it is. We know where it is. We know it's messing up little kids' lives. Now we need to decide if we're going to continue to do something about it or if we're going to throw up our hands and let children suffer because it's too much of an inconvenience to deal with. > Do you want to provide some really useful information? Report the > percentage of the 33% of children in tested Minneapolis that actually > have dangerous levels of lead in their blood (33% is a huge sample). > Next report the follow up studies that determined exactly what the > source of this contamination was in their environments. It may turn > out to have nothing to do with lead paint, and instead could be problems > with their drinking water (bad soldering in copper pipes can also cause > lead poisoning and I believe it is still used in new housing). It would be nice to have all of this information. But while we go about collecting it, more children are getting exposed to lead. As Wizard said earlier, we know about exposure from uncovered soil, so we try to mitigate it by providing vegetative cover. We know how to reduce lead hazards in homes. Sometimes that requires total removal of painted surfaces, sometimes other mitigation that is less costly can be done. But to ignore it should not be an option. > I live in a house build in 1883. I can say with a high degree of > certainty that there is lead paint in my house. I can say with > the same degree of certainty that removing all of the lead paint > would cost more than the value of the house. I have no intention > of tearing down what is a wonderful example of Victorian architecture. > I have had my blood tested while I was doing restoration. My wife > was tested during both of her pregnancies. My children are both > tested regularly and none of us has shown any evidence of > elevated levels of lead. As a side note, for those of us really > paranoid parents, as I understand it low levels of lead can be treated > with iron supplements. Paranoid parent might also want to buy HEPA > vacuums. I live in a house built in 1906. I expect there's lead paint in my house as well. But I don't have children and I'm pretty sure I've outgrown any attraction to paint chips. I'm glad to see Michael took the threats of lead exposure seriously enough to do regular screening. Not every family is fortunate enough to have a parent who knows enough to take these steps. I know if I ever get to the point where I'll have children, I will either be shelling out some cash to make sure my house is lead-safe, or I'll be moving to one that is. A lot of this uproar about lead seems to come down to how expensive it is to make homes lead-safe. What those doing the complaining seem to be missing is that we're all going to pay one way or the other. We're either going to pay to remove the threat or we're going to pay for increased special education needs, increased social security disability claims, increased incarceration rates, increased health insurance premiums and all the other social costs that result from lead poisoning. Personally, I'd rather pay to get the homes cleaned up so I'm not paying for all the other stuff. Because as expensive as lead removal is, all the other stuff costs way more and we'll keep on paying for it until we pull our collective heads out of the sand and realize that old saying about an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure is more than just an old saying, it's true! Does anyone actually know how the committee vote turned out? Mark Snyder Windom Park TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
