Community-Based Childhood Lead Poisoning Pilot Study in Miami

(Liberty City and Little Haiti) Biological and Environmental Assessment

Source of Funding: Florida International University

Amount: $72,000.00

Period: February-June 2000

Summary of Findings: The objective of this study in Liberty City and Little Haiti was to correlate blood lead levels with environmental lead levels, nutritional and socioeconomic status. It turned out that more than half of the houses (inside and outside) in Liberty City and Little Haiti have unacceptably high levels of lead dust and soil in areas where children live and play. More than 24,000 children in Liberty City and Little Haiti are at risk of lead poisoning. At least as many children in other zip code areas such as Little Havana, Homestead and Florida City are also at risk of lead poisoning. These zip code areas have similar high-risk characteristics, pre-1950 housing with lead-based paint in dilapidated condition, inner city location, low income neighborhood. The study is the first attempt to gauge the levels of lead in older homes in South Florida. Unlike cities in the Northeast or Midwest, which have older housing stocks, Miami has paid very little attention to lead risks because the houses by comparison are relatively new. People tend to forget that soil contaminated with lead is the legacy of decades of use of lead additives in gasoline (for more than 70 years) and paints (for more than 80 years). There is a common misperception that lead-based paints alone account for the amount of lead in the environment. In fact, both sources of lead contribute to the problem as just revealed by the results of this study in Miami. The results of the study have been published in the Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology.