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Local Advocates Speak out about Lead Poisoning Issue

Sojourner’s Truth Staff

National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week was held this year from October 20 to October 26 and local advocates commemorated the occasion with a press conference and a call to the city’s administration to start working now to get the appropriate legislation in place to prevent more casualties.

Members of the Toledo Lead Poisoning Prevention Coalition, faith-based leaders, representatives from social justice organizations and community advocates stood at the podium with Toledo Councilman Larry Sykes and the Black and Brown Coalition on Tuesday, October 22, to vent their frustration at the current state of affairs in the city’s on-again-off-again battle to rid dwellings of lead poisoning.
 

 

“Lead poisoning is not a political issue, this is a moral issue and we will do what is necessary to rectify this issue and save our children,” said Bishop Robert Culp, pastor of First Church of God and co-chairman of the Black/Brown Coalition.

Since 2016, when the first lead ordinance was passed, noted Rev. Otis Gordon, pastor of Warren AME Church, an additional 1,000 children with elevated blood lead levels have been diagnosed, which only includes those who have been tested.

Lead-based paint is the most common source of lead exposure for young children and much of Toledo’s older housing stock still contains lead-based paint. An estimated 3,500 children are afflicted by lead poisoning in the Toledo area, it is estimated, and between 45,000 and 60,000 homes contain such paint.

Children afflicted by lead poisoning will suffer health and cognitive development issues, and a life-time of social, educational and economic effects that will significantly impair their life outcomes and ability to succeed.

The 2016 ordnance approved by City Council was struck down by the courts as being too biased against some homeowners. Since then, according to George Thomas, an attorney with the Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, enough work has been done to correct the legal deficiencies that the city administration can now go forward with the task of bringing together the interested parties to hammer out the new legislation.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine also commemorated National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week by holding two events with members of his Lead Advisory Committee – one at the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital and one in Toledo at Marshall STEMM Academy, a Toledo Public School.

“We do not have to wait,” wrote Sykes in the days before the press conference held by local organizations. “We and our legal counsel, ABLE, have carefully reviewed the current court case. Nothing prevents the City from passing a new ordinance that simply avoids the legal issues in that case. Lead poisoning doesn’t wait for frivolous law suits and neither can we. It’s our understanding that the city’s law department has also concluded that City Council may proceed.”
 

 

   
   


Copyright © 2019 by [The Sojourner's Truth]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 10/31/19 09:22:19 -0400.


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