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A closer look: one-on-one with Sandra Lane.
What are the most important things to know about the lead poisoning crisis in Syracuse?
SL: That it is still a crisis. Many people think that the lead problem went away a long time ago. It didn’t entirely go away. It decreased for a lot of people who were in well-maintained houses, even houses built before 1978. But for poor people who live in dilapidated rental properties— especially, say, in Syracuse but also in other cities—children are still very much poisoned by lead. Many people worry about lead in the water like in Flint, Michigan; they had a terrible problem.
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People wrongly believe that mothers are allowing their children to eat paint chips. While that may occasionally or rarely happen, it is not the main way that children get poisoned. Children get poisoned from the dust… If you have enough [lead] dust that would fit into a packet of sugar, that would be enough to poison 100 rooms. So, this lead dust is potent, and children especially under the age of 3 who tend to have wet faces—their noses run, they pick their nose, they suck their thumbs, etc.—they could get lead paint dust on their thumb and put that in their mouth. If they did that just a couple of times a day, that would be enough for many children to have an alarmingly elevated blood-lead level.
What is being done to combat this crisis?
SL: There was an ordinance passed in August 2020 that would allow the houses to be inspected before they are rented. The inspection would be a visual inspection with a dust wipe. Right now, even though it has been over a year since the law was passed, that is still mostly not happening. We have been in touch with the City of Syracuse, and they said, “Yes, we plan to do that, but we have all these problems…” To me this is an emergency, and there is no more time for dragging their feet. Children’s brains are at risk. We could make houses lead safe, which would be encapsulating paint on the walls and then removing the friction surfaces in the double-hung windows and covering them up with something that would prevent the paint from being pulverized.
Why should Syracuse University students care about this crisis?
SL: Students are in the reproductive ages and presumably within 10 to 15 years many of the students who are undergraduates will eventually become parents. This is something to know about. And students are taxpayers, or they will become taxpayers. Our tax dollars pay for this not being fixed. Our research team showed in 2008—so it is more expensive now—that the City of Syracuse pays a half a million dollars a year just to cope with the lead poisoning of the children. And that doesn’t even count future earnings lost.
The other thing is that Syracuse City School District has a terrible problem. Their third-graders in 2018, right before the pandemic so we are not talking about pandemic times, only 23% of children were reading at or above grade level. And, we know that lead poisoning is a risk factor for senile dementia. So, it’s kind of like through the lifespan. Childhood lead poisoning under the age of 3 can change a person’s life from almost cradle to grave.
As members of the Syracuse University community and therefore members of the city, do you think students owe it to the greater Syracuse community to actively work to combat this crisis?
SL: I have faith in my students. I have found that your generation of students are incredibly idealistic and really wants to help people. And lead poisoning is something that has its tentacles in so many public health and social problems… If we fix lead poisoning, we would be a lot better off as a society. We would be able to spend money, instead of on violence and other things, we would spend more money on education. And the education we did spend money on would be more successful. And we have known about the problems of lead for well over 100 years.
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