Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling a hearing on this important issue. I would like to commend you for your leadership in seeking to eradicate childhood lead poisoning in the United States. I was pleased to co-sponsor your resolution, S. Res. 166, designating October 21-27 as "National Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Week."
My interest in this issue dates back to my days serving in the House of Representatives. When children living in public housing began to get sick in the 1980s, tests revealed high lead blood levels, indicating lead-based paint as the cause. I worked with Senator Joe Biden to ensure that the Department of Housing and Urban Development pursue preventative, rather than remedial, actions concerning lead-based paint in public housing. HUD preferred a "health" approach, requiring lead removal only after illness or high lead blood levels had already occurred, while Senator Biden and I advocated a "housing" approach, which called for preventative action in all public housing regardless of age of inhabitants or signs of illness.
With nearly one million children affected, childhood lead poisoning continues to pose a very serious environmental hazard to America’s children. Childhood lead poisoning is a national health, education, and environmental problem, that disproportionately affects low-income and minority families and cities with older housing stock.
The good news is that childhood lead poisoning is preventable. As the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency have recognized, the presence of lead-based paint does not present a risk to children. Hazards results when lead-based paint has been allowed to deteriorate, typically by landlords who do not maintain their properties. Childhood lead poisoning can be prevented if housing, especially houses built before 1950, undergoes maintenance and repairs to make them "lead-safe," at-risk children are tested, and families and others are educated about preventing childhood lead poisoning.
With high-level leadership, adequate federal funding for HUD, and other lead hazard remediation programs, and attention at the state and local level, this problem can be solved. In Delaware we applied for and received a $2.7 million grant to increase blood screenings and aggressively target problem housing stock. Starting in New Castle county and moving south, we hope to eradicate lead hazards in Delaware homes within five years. Mr. Chairman, I support your efforts to increase funding for the lead abatement.
The solution to lead-based paint hazards is practical, primary action now. The way to reduce the hazards is to educate families with young children about the risks, identify and treat children who have already been exposed to unhealthful levels of lead, and require property owners to make their properties lead-safe. We need to support state and local government efforts by increasing the profile of the issue and increasing federal funding of the HUD lead hazard control programs. And finally, we need Presidential leadership to prioritize and publicize this clearly preventable disease.
I am less certain that litigation is a solution. Former manufactures sold lead paint decades ago when it was lawful. The federal government required that lead based paint be used in federal buildings, including federally funded housing. States and cities followed the federal government lead and also required the use of lead paint in their housing codes.
Lead-based residential paint has not been sold for decades, and was banned for residential use by the federal government in 1978. Lawsuits or the threat of suits can’t be used to change marketing practices or force stronger warning labels to prevent future exposure to a harmful product, as was the situation with tobacco, because this product is no longer being manufactured. Our primary goal now is to fix the existing problem, and I’m not sure litigation is the most effective way to do that.
Mr. Chairman, to solve this problem we need White House leadership and cooperative partnerships with industry, cities and community based organizations. Thank you again for holding this hearing. I look forward to the witnesses’ testimony today. Their testimony describing state and local solutions to the problem of lead-based paint poisoning, as well as the views of Duke University Professor of Law Walter Dellinger, will be useful as this Subcommittee considers how the federal government should respond to this problem. Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this hearing; I look forward to working with you to eliminate childhood lead poisoning.