Gary Silverman (left), environmental health director, and Hailu Kassa, public and allied health, are working with Toledo's Lagrange community to reduce children's exposure to lead in neighborhood homes.

BGSU teams with Toledo neighborhood group to rid homes of lead

Residents of a Toledo neighborhood are being recruited to reduce the risk of lead in their homes.

Doing the recruiting is a neighborhood group that has joined with public health advocates in the city and at BGSU in an effort to minimize children’s exposure to the dangerous metal.

Together, they’re hoping that 100 households in the Lagrange community will participate, learning cleaning techniques to lower the amount of dust containing lead in and around their homes.

Most of the homes in the economically stressed neighborhood are older, built before 1978, when the federal government banned lead-based paint from housing. When that paint flakes off, it is easily inhaled or ingested by young children, who can suffer developmental, neurological and other acute problems as a result of high levels of lead in their blood, says Gary Silverman, director of BGSU’s Environmental Health Program.

“It’s a huge issue” in terms of pediatric care costs, adds Hailu Kassa, public and allied health, who is working on the project with Silverman.

The Environmental Health Program, part of the College of Health and Human Services, is using a two-year, $49,000 grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Education Fund for the Toledo training effort.

It began this summer with recruitment of representatives from the Lagrange Development Corp., a privately funded community development group. Jennifer Wise, a Lagrange staff member, found three residents to take training on how to reduce children’s exposure to lead.

The primary trainer was Andrea Cook, lead coordinator for the Northwest Ohio Regional Resource Center. Representatives from the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department and the Toledo Department of Neighborhoods were also involved.

The training included demonstrations of how to clean. Because paint rubs and chips when windows are opened and closed, lead is often found on windowsills and nearby, according to Silverman. Windowsills should be cleaned regularly using “common-sense cleaning techniques” to lower the availability of dust containing lead, he says. For example, adds Kassa, surfaces should be dampened before cleaning to keep dust out of the air.

The state and local health departments are helping provide cleaning supplies for the project, and the neighborhoods department is supplying vacuum cleaners with special, high efficiency particle arresting (HEPA) filters. The intent is to provide a vacuum for every house—a goal the organizers may need to meet with additional support from the business community.

The importance of hand washing and other personal hygiene will also be stressed to project participants, as will the role that nutritional vitamins—especially iron and calcium—can play in warding off lead in the body.

When a household agrees to participate, local health department representatives visit the house for an evaluation of environmental lead and blood lead levels in the children living there. If levels are high, the residents are advised what actions to take in conjunction with the health and neighborhoods departments.

The children’s blood lead levels will be tracked for a couple years, Silverman notes, calling that “a very good indicator of how effective this (project) is.”

To participate, individuals must live in the Lagrange neighborhood, in an older house with potential for lead contamination, and have at least one child under age 5. Clusters of homes that meet the criteria have been identified and are being targeted by recruiters.

Research has indicated that one-time lead abatement training hasn’t been effective in other areas, Kassa says. But the Toledo training will be reinforced, and by people the participants know from the community. “With these two key elements added, we think it’s going to work,” he says, calling it a “very good example” both of cooperation among agencies and BGSU’s engagement with the larger community.

If the project is successful, he adds, “it could be a model for the whole country.”