Baltimore Lead Paint Study

Despite knowledge of lead's toxicity, there is a long history of using lead in paint due to its role in maintaining a paint's color and increasing durability. In 1951, Baltimore was the first city to ban the use of lead paint in new housing, starting a move towards abating the amount of lead use in homes. Twenty-seven years later, in 1978 the Consumer Product Safety Commission laid down a nationwide ban of lead-based paint for residential use in the United States. The Kennedy Krieger Institute is a branch of Johns Hopkins that provides medical care, rehabilitation, and research, especially emphasizing research geared towards children with learning and physical disabilities arising from neurodegenerative disorders. Lead's effects on the nervous system manifests into reduced cognitive ability, especially in children. Once lead paint was made illegal, many properties that were painted with lead still remained, especially in Baltimore, eventually leaving the painted walls that were not properly remodeled to decay and thus allow lead to be released as chips or dust, increasing risk of ingestion for future renovators and inhabitants. Thus it became of interest to study how residential properties with lead could be removed, and inevitably how to abate lead without incurring high expenses for removal. The study was funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. == Study description ==

To investigate how well various techniques in abating lead content reduced the prevalence of lead poisoning in low income neighborhoods, KKI sought to treat properties with these different methods and observe how much lead accumulated in young children when living in these properties. In total, several housing properties were categorized into five levels of abatement. Starting in 1993, KKI helped landlords abate apartments partially or with less expensive techniques graded by these levels. In total, 107 properties were categorized into five groups by degree of repair made to the property. KKI also actively found new families to live in these apartments, bringing the total number of children evaluated to 140, and even offered incentives for doing so. To quantify the effectiveness of each level of abatement, the researchers measured lead content of homes and took periodic blood tests over a two-year period. If the repairs were effective, the lead concentration in properties with higher degrees of abatement or built without lead would be less than properties with less repair and the lead content in young children would not increase as much or at all. Follow up measurements were to be made every couple of years after to track how the lead concentration changed in children. == Aftermath ==

After the study ended, many poor, African-American children ended up with neurological disabilities as a result, often incurring permanent nervous damage. In addition to having to cope with the impacted health of their children, parents also felt deceived by KKI team by being shown housing without full details behind the lead treatment quality of the properties they stayed in. Thus, criticism was made that both the children and parents were exploited by the study. Comparisons were made to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study due to the similar affected demographic groups, in terms of race and class, lack of clear and explicit consent to participate in each study, lack of adequate care provided during each study, and the long-term, devastating impact of the study's condition on the subject's quality of life. KKI saw extensive repercussions over the study. A class action lawsuit for deliberate exposure and negligence was filed against KKI in 2001. == See also ==