News Coverage
Lead poisoning isn't going away
Published May 9, 2004
Every child who lives in an old neighborhood filled with lead-painted houses must be tested for lead poisoning, according to Ohio law.
So must every child on Medicaid, according to federal law.
Despite these laws, too few Ohio children are being tested for lead poisoning during their regular checkups, reports the Environmental Working Group. Doctors must do their duty if this state has any real chance to arrest its high lead poisoning rate.
Lead contamination has been linked to neurological damage in children, a problem that then falls to the state's overburdened educational system.
Despite the laws, EWG's "Lead Astray in Ohio" report estimates that about 19,000 children are lead-poisoned but only 5,700 have been identified. After looking at 88 counties, the organization found that not one had a testing rate better than 30 percent.
Cuyahoga County had the best lead detection rates in the state because it discovered nearly 20 percent of its 4,011 cases through early screening.
EWG, based in Washington, D.C., compiled the figures by poring over lead test results at the Ohio Department of Health and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lack of medical access does not appear to be a problem. Many of the children were poor enough to receive health services through a Medicaid HMO. But the study quotes a General Accounting Office report that says these insurance companies have a financial incentive to skip some tests for their young patients.
In response, some HMOs complain that parents aren't taking their children to the doctor.
That may be true in some neighborhoods, but immunizations are in the 80 to 90 percent range, proving that most children are getting their checkups.
The likely reason for the poor lead screening numbers is that doctors are simply unaware of the state law requiring testing for Ohio youngsters in high-risk neighborhoods, which went into effect last month.
In addition, doctors and parents may not realize that lead poisoning remains a major problem.
But the significance of lead poisoning in the industrial Northeast and Midwest can hardly be overstated. The CDC ranks Ohio third among the states in the prevalence of lead poisoning, and that's directly related to another figure: Ohio has one of the country's largest concentrations of pre-1950s housing stock.
As long as those houses remain, some of them laden with lead dust or covered with chipped paint, lead poisoning will continue. No HMO, no doctor, no parent should ignore it.