City of Newark signs “Model Lead-Safe City” agreement with NJ Public Advocate

Mayor Booker and Advocate Chen Announce aggressive actions to prevent childhood lead poisoning

NEWARK –The City of Newark today signed a landmark agreement with the Public Advocate to aggressively respond to and prevent the problem of childhood lead poisoning.

View Newark Model Lead-Safe City Agreement
 

The agreement commits the city to implementing one of the most comprehensive and sweeping lead poisoning response and prevention programs in the state.

Despite the fact that the City of Newark is home to only about 4 percent of the state's population of children under age 6, it accounts for 17% percent of lead burdened children, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services 2006 annual report on Childhood Lead Poisoning in New Jersey.

Flanked by local families who have experienced the childhood poisoning problem, New Jersey Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen and City Mayor Cory A. Booker signed an agreement designating Newark as the state’s sixth and largest “Model Lead-Safe City.”

“Under Mayor Booker’s leadership, the city has already put in place several measures to tackle the issue of childhood lead poisoning,” said Chen. “This agreement builds on the work already being done here and sets some significant goals that will put the city on a course to reduce and ultimately eliminate this pressing public health concern.”

“Everything we are doing in this Administration involves deepening partnerships and bringing people together to work on common goals and missions. Today is another example of a great partnership with the State Public Advocate’s Office and local community partners to move forward with a commitment to City and statewide goals to decrease the prevalence of childhood lead poisoning and make Newark a “model lead-safe City” and leader in urban transformation,” Mayor Booker said.

Chen 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 Newark had one of the most severe childhood lead poisoning problems in the state.

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; crack down on landlords who fail to abate lead-contaminated properties; and provide improved relocation assistance and more lead-safe housing to affected families.

There are approximately 25,608 children under the age of six in the City of Newark, and 5.4% of the children in Newark who were screened in FY 2006 were found to have a blood lead level at or above the federal level of concern.

In addition, proximately 81% of Newark’s housing was built before 1978, when the national ban on the sale of lead paint went into effect, and approximately 45% of the housing in Newark 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:

• Inspect all units of a multi-family dwelling when one such unit has been found to be the cause of a child’s lead poisoning.
• Designate a Model Lead-Safe City Coordinator
• Distribute education materials through the public schools, child care centers, Head Start programs, the WIC program and pediatrician offices.
• Utilize geographic mapping to identify areas where children are most at risk and target those areas for additional screening.
• Will establish lead-safe work practices training for building contractors.
• Seek grant funding to train more inspectors.
• Outreach landlords and tenants to educate them about the dangers of lead dust and advise them of cleaning techniques and assistance programs that are available.
• Prosecute landlords who fail to remediate lead-contaminated buildings.
• Require that all people living in a multi-unit dwelling be notified if a child who lives there is diagnosed with lead poisoning
• Identify and compile a list of lead-safe housing in the city that can be used to relocate affected families.
• Establish relationships with area hotels to provide relocation assistance to affected families.

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 addresses had already undergone an abatement. DPA took up to 12 samples in each of the homes of the floors, window sills and window wells.

###