As fears of childhood lead poisoning swept Boston in the 1980s, The Green Miles distinctly remembers being dragged to the doctor by The Green Mom to have his blood tested for lead poisoning, despite my protestations that no kid so wicked smahht could’ve been impaired by lead.
Now Slate’s Matt Yglesias flags new research adding to the growing mountain of evidence that those fears about lead exposure were not only justified, but understated. The research by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes published in the National Bureau of Economic Research finds cutting lead exposure has made Massachusetts children measurably smarter:
Childhood exposure to even low levels of lead can adversely affect neurodevelopment, behavior, and cognitive performance. This paper investigates the link between lead exposure and student achievement in Massachusetts. Panel data analysis is conducted at the school-cohort level for children born between 1991 and 2000 and attending 3rd and 4th grades between 2000 and 2009 at more than 1,000 public elementary schools in the state. Massachusetts is well-suited for this analysis both because it has been a leader in the reduction of childhood lead levels and also because it has mandated standardized achievement tests in public elementary schools for almost two decades. The paper finds that elevated levels of blood lead in early childhood adversely impact standardized test performance, even when controlling for community and school characteristics. The results imply that public health policy that reduced childhood lead levels in the 1990s was responsible for modest but statistically significant improvements in test performance in the 2000s, lowering the share of children scoring unsatisfactory on standardized tests by 1 to 2 percentage points. Public health policy targeting lead thus has clear potential to improve academic performance, with particular promise for children in low income communities.
When we talk about environmental regulations, the public debate centers almost entirely on cost – higher taxes, higher prices, etc. But as David Roberts has detailed, limits on lead have had massively higher benefits than anyone predicted.
It’s a lesson worth remembering whenever industries or their allies scream bloody murder about efforts to limit pollutants like mercury, carbon – or even, after all these years and all this research about the massive return on investment, lead.
at an early age is soooo bad. This is why one needs to be seriously careful about fetal and child exposure to many types of fish. Body burden max levels for kids are very low before negative effects become evident.
In my college days, I worked in my state’s Water Resources Center, so the research papers and things would come in regarding mercury/methylmercury and other water-related exposures…scary stuff.
BTW, methylmercury is way worse than plain mercury. Once mercury gets into the food chain, into fish, the fish deal with their body burdens by turning a lot of it into methylmercury, which they cope with better.
Your body can get rid of mercury at a certain rate, so as long as your intake of mercury is less than your body’s ability to rid itself of it, you can do all right (I wouldn’t say it’s healthy but…). So if you are not smelting for gold and inhaling mercury fumes, etc, but only get occasional exposure through rainwater or whatever, you’re probably not going to see terrible effects.
However, methylmercury is way harder for your body to get rid of. (For some reason, I seem to be remembering it had to do with it binding in your fat cells) and if I recall it’s also more toxic, so you reach your body burden of it faster and keep it a long time. Since your exposure to methylmercury is likely through eating fish, this is something to keep in mind.
Also, on top of all this, there’s biomagnification – a small fish has Y burden, then ten small fish with Y get eaten by medium fish so now there’s 10*Y in the medium fish, then the big fish eats 10 of the medium fish and now the levels are magnified to 10*10*Y, and so on. This is why large fish (many salmon, tuna, etc) are so toxic.
All adding up to A) we need to stop burning coal and using other things that freaking put mercury in the environment and B) really need to read up on the best fish for you to eat, even if you are an adult, but especially if you plan on having kids, nursing, or feeding your young children.
There is my big takeaway from my college job, which was awesome in terms of the situation (best boss ever) and for learning. I almost was a bio science major so this stuff sticks with me…
If I walked down my street, almost every house would probably have some level of lead exposure in the paint, simply because the homes are all so old. (The only one that would be a sure bet to be free and clear would be the only house on my street less than 20 years old — and only because the home before it burned down.)
If we go across the Commonwealth into older working class and middle class neighborhoods, it’s going to be much the same, and maybe even worse in some poorer communities, because fewer people would have the income to de-lead the house.
Since the health and cognitive benefits seem such huge, how do we go about addressing all of these aged homes? I doubt anyone in them wants the lead, but few are going to be able to afford to truly clean it all up.
After all, the average cost to remove all the lead is $10k, and quote possibly higher in Massachusetts (because everything construction-related seems to be higher).
The federal government can get money at an effective rate of 0%, and we have millions of people looking for work. So why don’t we borrow some money & use it to hire people to remove lead from all those buildings, then pay no real interest while “each dollar invested in lead paint hazard control results in a return of $17–$221“?
I presume that gov’t owned housing has all been deleaded at this point. If not, well, spend the money and get it done.
For privately owned homes, its not clear to me how you would prioritize spending money on deleading, short of gov’t interest free loans or relatively small tax credits. Do you focus on low income owner-occupiers? Landlords who own housing often occupied by children? Homes which are in relatively good shape and therefore likely to “benefit” from deleading the longest? All kids deserve to grow up in lead-free homes, but I wouldn’t want a program where most of the benefits went to those who could most afford to pay for the deleading abatement themselves.
This is also the kind of program where one could imagine cities or towns attaching repayment of interest free loans to the property in the form of a lien. I don’t know much about bankruptcy laws, but it seems to me that a loan for this improvement, tied to the property and repaid using the property tax mechanism could be designed so that as long as the property is worth more than the loan, the city or town collects that money. What’s elegant about this system is that it isn’t another bill — it’s a “surcharge” on the property tax bill, which is repaid in a set amount of time. If the property is sold, it is carried over to the new owner since, after all, the new owner benefits from the deleading too. The time length of the payback period could be adjusted to ensure repayment is within specific thresholds.
If the Feds put up the interest free loan, Massachusetts could create the statewide laws regarding property tax and bankruptcy, etc., as well as advertise and run the program. The city or town has to adjust the tax bill and collect the money, and then forward it to the state, who manages the repayment to the Feds. Sure, sometimes there will be delinquent payments to the towns, but they could note that to the Feds, apply the lien, recapture the money at a later date, and true up. Sure, it’s an “unfunded mandate” for the city or town, but frankly it’s not too big a hassle and it directly benefits their own citizenry in a very real way.
End result: safer homes for kids, an easier program for parents of all income levels to use, and a jobs program to boot. Personally, I’d go ahead when this happened and require a minimum of X% of a landlord’s units be deleaded each year into the future, for example 2.5% the first year, 5% the next year, etc. This way small-time landlords have a number of years before their first compliance requirement, and can move slowly on it, whereas large landlords could expect to do the same number of units each year, and each time there’s a vacancy schedule one more unit of compliance. This way the contractors who specialize in apartment units have a steady stream of work for many years into the future, thereby avoiding a boom-bust commercial stimulation.
With the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. It requires buyers of older homes to sign a notice agreeing to have the house deleaded within 90 days. I don’t know if there’s any enforcement followup, but the requirement seems to be having some effect
I agree 100% that deleading housing is a good thing, however we should think about unintended consequences of requiring the buyers of older homes to delead within 90 days of purchasing.
Older homes are typically found in urban areas. Areas like Lawrence, Holyoke, Springfield, etc. These are communities which already have multiple strikes against them. Housing prices are already depressed here. These communities are already having trouble attracting younger middle-class residents mostly due to the school systems. Attaching a big price tag to a house purchase will make those communities even less desirable to live in.
I dispute the “average lead paint removal cost” quoted as $10k. That number is way too low – it is likely a national number which includes the South, its small houses, and its low labor costs. I would assume that $15 per square foot is the average cost in Massachusetts, so a 2,000 s.f. house will run you $30,000.
The average 2,000 s.f. house for sale in Springfield is running around $100k right now – that is in a decent neighborhood. How can you add another $30k to someone taking title of such a property?
Yes, there is aid available, but at best, it is in the form of a 0% loan. The homeowner have to deal with a major hassle (probably can’t live in the house while it is being deleaded) and will come out behind in the transaction when all is said and done.
How about some of the money in the form of a grant – sweeten the pot a bit? That only seems fair, since as a community, we will all be benefiting from the reduction of lead poisoning in our children.
There is a $1500 tax credit for lead removal.
Do you have any sources to substantiate that removal costs are $30K? Also note that the urban areas you’re worried about typically have smaller dwelling units and much more rental property. Landlords who rent to families that include children under six are required by law to get lead certificates, and if they do not, are subject to legal penalties. They are also prohibited from refusing to rent to such families.
I have often seen $15 per square foot of living space as the rule-of-thumb. I believe that the abatement is usually priced on a per-room basis.
In Central Mass, “urban” housing stock usually gets between $700 and $1000 per month in rent for a 1200 foot apartment. That makes the cost of abatement equal to about two years of rental income, which is a price that is usually cost-prohibitive. This can easily amount to more than a third of the building’s overall value. Buildings with a lead problem are therefore more likely to become derelict or blighted properties that impose other costs on the urban fabric.
The $1500 credit isn’t really enough to alter the difficult dynamic.
The link above gives the average cost at between $8 and $15 per square foot. Houses in older cities are actually a bit larger than suburban tract homes built in the 40’s to 60’s. 2,000 s.f. is a common size. Although a good amount are multi-family which may have already been done, a good amount is single family. A lot of rentals haven’t been done yet either.
$1,500 towards a $30k expense is meaningless.
I’m reminded of the law which requires sprinklers in apartment blocks that are undergoing a certain dollar value of renovation. That law simply made landlords skimp on renovations so they would come in under the dollar amount. Those properties are now blighted – and they still don’t have sprinklers.