For years, health officials have warned Tacoma-area parents that children could be jeopardized by exposure to lead-tainted soils, a legacy of the old Asarco smelter.
Now, hardly a day goes by without a national news report about lead in children’s toys, lunch boxes or cosmetics. And state Health Department officials say there’s no safe level of lead, a powerful neurotoxin that hinders brain development and disrupts behavior.
But government officials have never tried to determine whether Pierce County children have been harmed by lead exposure. That’s about to change, thanks to a $98,000 federal grant to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
“There are suspected, but undocumented elevated blood lead levels in Tacoma,” said Barbara Ross, a federal Environmental Protection Agency official in Seattle who will oversee the work.
The Tacoma grant, approved Oct. 1, is one of five totaling $406,000 provided to Washington and Oregon communities, she said. EPA’s goal is to reduce childhood lead poisoning, promote screening and boost public awareness of the risks.
Over the next two years, Tacoma Health Department officials plan to set up partnerships with such community organizations as Centro Latino and the Tacoma Urban League to screen at least 800 children and teach their parents about the dangers of lead. The program is called the Pierce County Lead Screening and Family Education or SAFE project.
Screening is scheduled to begin in February, said Frank DiBiase, Health Department prevention coordinator. The focus will be on children from poor families and those belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups, though DiBiase said no one will be turned away.
Some of the screening might take place at festivals and community events. The Health Department already bought portable testing equipment, he said.
Nationwide, the most common way children get exposed to lead is accidental ingestion of lead paint, commonly applied to homes before a 1978 ban.
For that reason, lead screening and abatement programs in many U.S. cities, particularly in the East and Midwest, have targeted older, deteriorated neighborhoods, where poor children live.
OLDER HOUSES A FACTOR
A high concentration of older houses in some parts of Tacoma is one reason health officials chose to focus on children from poor families, DiBiase said.
Another concern is the lack of attention to lead poisoning in the home countries of some of the parents and family members of children at risk, he said.
For example, Mexican candies, ceramics, spices and medicinal remedies often contain lead, DiBiase said. Among the dangerous products are greta and azarcon, used to control diarrhea. Both substances consist of oxides of lead, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Pierce County, doctors don’t routinely test children for lead, in part because state Health Department officials have long discouraged universal blood lead level testing and continue to do so.
“The prevailing wisdom seems to be it’s not a problem,” DiBiase said.
Washington state Health Department officials estimate less than 1 percent of Washington children 6 years old or younger are affected by elevated levels of lead in their blood. However, state officials acknowledge that the estimate is based on a limited number of tests.
“Part of what we want to find out is a little bit about what’s happening in Tacoma-Pierce County,” DiBiase said.
As prevention coordinator, DiBiase works with families whose children’s blood shows high levels of lead. Some of his referrals have come from providers at Sea Mar Community Health Center on the Hilltop, where about 80 percent of clients are Hispanic.
DOCTOR FINDS LEAD IN KIDS
Dr. Peter Lee, a family practitioner at Sea Mar, said he routinely screens preschoolers for lead when they come in for immunizations or physicals.
It’s the same finger-poke test used to check for anemia, he said. “It’s a very easy test to perform,” he said. “We do it in the office and we have the results back in literally five minutes,” he said.
He recently discovered high levels of lead in two patients’ blood.
Neither Lee nor DiBiase has been able to figure out how the two children, who are cousins, were exposed, but DiBiase hasn’t given up. The children are Hispanic, their parents do not speak English, and the families reside in adjacent trailers in a Lakewood park, he said.
DiBiase found lead paint coating a shed outside the trailers, so he plans to ask Lakewood officials whether they would be willing tap a state-sponsored lead abatement program to fix them.
But the children also might be vulnerable to other risks. For example, the parents said they had given the children greta in the past and apparently did not know it might cause harm, DiBiase said.
Part of the Health Department’s plan is to gauge to what extent home remedies, lead paint and other sources of lead contribute to Pierce County children’s exposure to lead, DiBiase said.
“We just don’t have enough information,” DiBiase said.
Susan Gordon: 253-597-8756
susan.gordon@thenewstribune.com
Test your child
If you would like to have your child’s blood tested for lead, the easiest way is to ask his or her health care provider to perform a simple blood test, said Frank DiBiase, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s prevention coordinator.
If your child doesn’t have a health care provider, contact Cindy Simmons, the Health Department’s access-to-care coordinator, at 253-798-6573.
