Post Date: 06/22/10 | Category: Lead News

Get the Lead Out! and Healthy Homes are the cover story for the MiBiz Sustainability Report for this quarter. 

Some excerpts from the article:

"It's an urban environment issue for kids," Paul Haan, executive director of the Healthy Homes Coalition of West Michigan, told TBL. "Lead poisoning causes brain damage, and that causes problems for life. People paid for that by increased special education, social costs and (juvenile courts). People (were paying) for the disability a person gets as a result of lead poisoning, which impacts the wage they can earn and their ability to keep a job. The health costs were the least of it. And when you multiply that by more than 5,000 (sic) kids in 2001, those are astronomical costs. ... From birth to age 2, kids are overwhelmingly at risk. Prevention is really key."

What's more, Haan said a map of the most affected neighborhoods revealed a troubling trend. 

So the city assembled a coalition of about two-dozen organizations ranging in scope from environmental groups to businesses, from landlords to children's advocates, from for-profits to nonprofits, and attacked the problem from a community development standpoint, said Connie Bohatch, managing director of the city's Community Development Department.

The resulting Get The Lead Out campaign has been successful in bringing in more than $13.5 million through five grants for lead hazard control in targeted city neighborhoods, mostly the older neighborhoods with a high rate of poverty.

Read the full story and see the picture here (registration required).