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

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

PATERSON –The City of Paterson today joined the growing list of New Jersey cities 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

New Jersey Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen and Mayor Jose “Joey” Torres signed an agreement designating Paterson as the state’s seventh “Model Lead-Safe City.”

 “The City of Paterson joins the growing list of municipalities across the state that are aggressively tackling the problem of childhood lead poisoning. This agreement really builds on some forward-thinking initiatives that the City already has in place,” 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.

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:

·        designate a Lead Safe City Coordinator who will head up all efforts related to responding to and preventing lead poisoning;

·        distribute lead poisoning educational materials through city public and private schools;

·        Notify residents of a multi-unit building to get a blood lead test when a child is found to be lead poisoned in one unit of that building;

·        Review and recommend changes to the existing Lead-Based Paint municipal ordinance to deal with lead hazards;

• Identify areas in the City where children have elevated blood levels or are not being tested and initiate corrective actions for the safety of all children living in Paterson;

l  Tighten oversight of lead abatement contractors.      

Because New Jersey has one of the oldest housing stock in the country, lead poisoning remains a challenging public health concern. Paterson, in particular, is most vulnerable because of the number of pre-1950 housing units in the City. Household paint contained extremely high levels of lead pigments before 1950.  Approximately 60% of Paterson’s housing stock was built before 1950, and just over 91% was built before 1978, the year that lead-based paint was completely banned.

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, approximately one-third of the homes had already undergone an abatement. 

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