The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accepted the recommendations of a Scientific Advisory Board to lower the level of concern for childhood lead poisoning on May 16, 2012. The new reference value, which is based on population blood lead levels, would focus action on those children with the highest blood lead levels (i.e. those above the 97.5th percentile).  Currently, that reference value would set the level of concern at 5.0 ug/dL.

The Healthy Homes Coalition is taking applications for a full-time Outreach Worker position to begin early summer 2012.

In September 2011, a Scientific Advisory Board convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the evidence to determine if there would be any health benefits to the residents when a municipality replaces old, leaded water service lines to individual homes. What they discovered was counterintuitive. In brief, when only part of a lead service line is replaced, the evidence more often than not suggests that there may be a short term increase in the amount of lead in drinking water.

What does this mean for Grand Rapids?

Get the Lead Out! partners were notified on March 23, 2012 that the City of Grand Rapids has been awarded nearly $2.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to re-start the wildly successful Get the Lead Out! Home Repair program.

"A ten-month old baby is at the DeVos Children’s Hospital after a severe case of lead poisoning that was discovered last week in Grand Rapids, " according to FOX-17 reporter Carl Apple.  The Healthy Homes Coalition worked with Carl to get this story out, hoping to alert the community to the fact that lead poisoning is still a very real and present danger in Grand Rapids.