CNN
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Milwaukee will temporarily close two more school buildings as the city works to deal with the lead crisis in public schools.
The district also announced an updated plan Monday to tackle the peeling and chalk paint of aged buildings suspected to be responsible for increased blood lead levels among four students in this grade.
The new closure will affect primary schools Westside Academy and Brown Street School. The other two primary schools remain closed: the Starms Early Childhood Education Center and the Lafollette School. In total, the Milwaukee School District announced work at nine schools this year to address the dangers of leads. Students are relocating while work is in progress.
The city’s school district and health department have inspected about 100 buildings built before 1978, and 2018 Reed is banned from paint. They expect work to last until summer.
Coach Brenda Caserius said the district hopes to clean up 54 schools built before 1950. The additional 52 schools built between 1950 and 1978 are expected to be cleaned by the end of the calendar year, she said.
“We want families to stay vigilant and let our children test lead exposure,” and test their children for lead exposure through their family doctors or through city-sponsored pop-up clinics. ” said Caserius.
There is no safe level of lead. At high levels, lead can cause symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and seizures. At lower levels, lead is a neurotoxin that can affect how a child’s brain grows and functions. Children exposed to high levels of lead can suffer from learning challenges as well as attention and behavioral issues.
The new lead plan outlines the process that districts will follow to assess and repair schools. It starts with a visual inspection of each building, and based on that, the building is classified as low, medium or high risk. Middle and high-risk schools may undergo additional lead tests and be subject to full or partial closures for reductions. The school also says it is developing plans to test adults who may be exposed to leads in schools such as custodians.
The city is about to screen more students for leads in blood. When the agency’s lead addiction prevention program was reduced, it was working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Test Strategies.
The CDC also denied the city’s demand for Epiaid, a short-term loan for epidemiologists. This cited the reduction in agency lead programs to guide responses and assisted staff. Rejection of EPIAID requests is rare, but it has happened in the past if the program believes it cannot meet the needs of the requester, said Dr. Eric Pebtzner, chief of the CDC’s Epidemiology and Laboratory Division and its epidemic intelligence agency.
“Obviously, in this case we no longer had the CDC expertise to support that request,” he said.
Last week, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Democrat Gwen Moore wrote to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urging the CDC’s chief expert to recover.
“You have the ability to immediately correct this issue and I recommend doing so,” they write.
The crisis was discovered late last year after children were detected as positive for high levels of lead in their blood and their children were positive. Environmental testing found no large lead sources in the children’s homes or relatives’ homes, but peeled lead paint in the children’s school basement bathroom. We also discovered high levels of lead in the dust around windowsills and floors.
Milwaukee, the city of old homes, has a long history of lead problems. In some areas north, health department data shows, one in five children tested positive for increased blood lead levels between 2018 and 2021.
However, the current crisis is the first time that children’s lead poisoning has been linked to city schools.
One of the most cost-effective ways to control lead exposure from old paint is to leave it sealed under a layer of new paint. The district was lagging behind in its efforts to do that.
In a report to the state legislature last year, the district disclosed postponed maintenance of more than $265 million.
On Monday, Milwaukee City Health Commissioner Dr. Michael Totratis said he was notified of three more students in the district where authorities had raised their lead levels. However, it is not yet clear whether the environmental conditions at the school are the cause.
“As everyone understands, when you receive a referral or complaint, you need to identify whether it is an addiction from home, a secondary address belonging to the family, or it is tied to the school.
He said the health department has considered two types of exposure to children: acute exposure in which the child takes a tip of peeling paint and chronic exposure in which the child takes or inhales dust over time.
Totoraitis said acute exposure would appear within 2-4 weeks of intake. Chronic exposure may take some time for it to become clear. He said it is unclear how much time the kids are exposed to lead at school as the maintenance that led to the program didn’t occur overnight.
“That can be a bit scary, but we have a really good track record of seeing those levels drop if we test them high,” he said.
Usually, babies test lead by finger-guided blood tests at the doctor’s office at age 1 or 2. However, the same type of screening does not usually extend to school-age children.
Totoraitis said the city is considering revising screening recommendations to include older children.
Milwaukee Public Schools and the Milwaukee Department have held several school-based clinics, making lead testing more convenient for families. The next lead screening clinic is scheduled for May 7th.
The Health Department hoped to do many of these with the help of the CDC, but says it will continue to do everything possible with the resources it has.