Before 1978, lead-based paint was popular among homeowners because it is both washable and durable. It was endorsed by government at all levels and specified for use on government-owned buildings until the mid-1970s. Its popularity peaked in the 1920s at a time when little to nothing was known about the dangers of lead poisoning, particularly for infants and young children. By the 1940s, the use of lead paint for interiors was on its way out and by 1978, the federal government banned all consumer uses of lead paint.
While much is still unknown about lead poisoning, we do know that exposure is most detrimental to infants and young children, and that it can affect nearly every system in the body, causing a number of long-term side effects including developmental delay, learning disabilities, lower intelligence, language or speech delays, behavioral problems, hearing damage and seizures. It can also cause irritability, appetite loss, weight loss, fatigue, stomach pain, vomiting or constipation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that today, at least four million homes are exposing the children living in them to high levels of lead. In the United States, approximately half a million kids between the ages of one and five have levels of lead in their blood that are considered to be detrimental. Here in Maine, the Maine State Housing Authority estimates that more than 350,000 homes built before 1978 were likely painted with lead paint and that half of Maine homes built before 1950 are likely to have high levels of lead.
This is a major public health problem since, according to U.S. Census data, nearly 30,000 children under the age of six reside in these homes built before the 1950’s. Areas hit especially hard with childhood lead poisoning in Maine are Lewiston-Auburn, Bangor, Portland, Saco-Biddeford and Sanford. Collectively, these communities account for 40 percent of all cases in Maine with 80 percent of the affected children living in rental housing units.
In 2015, I sponsored a law to make Maine’s state standard for lead exposure in children consistent with the federal standard, lowering the standard amount of lead detected in a child’s blood that triggers a home inspection. This law also provided funding for new inspectors and significantly increased penalties for landlords who refuse to have their units abated.
Now that some time has passed, we are beginning to see the benefits of this new measure. Last year, under the old law, we would have identified only 34 children statewide as lead poisoned. But under the new law, an additional 386 children – who otherwise would have been left to get sicker – were identified as lead poisoned and provided with the intervention needed to address the lead hazards in their environments.
I’m so glad to see that this new law is meeting its intended goals of helping children and families before early on, but there is so much more that needs to be done. Just last week, the Sun Journal highlighted how this issue is affecting children in Lewiston, Maine’s Ground Zero for childhood lead exposure. The State CDC, the city of Lewiston and the federal government are working hard, but in my view we need to do even more both to make people aware of the dangers of peeling, chipping or flaking paint in a language they understand and to continue to clean up apartments where children live.
If you reside in or own a home that was built prior to 1978, please visit www.mainehousing.org for information and resources on lead. While abatement can be expensive, the long term costs of doing nothing are much greater.
(207) 287-1505 | (800) 423-6900 | amy.volk@legislature.maine.gov