Officials from the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health went on the offensive yesterday, defending a 2005 study where researchers spread compost on properties in East Baltimore to see if it abated lead in soils.
The institutions released a five-page description of the study, made the schools' top administrators available to the press and discussed whether to launch advertising and lobbying campaigns to promote their case to the public and on Capitol Hill, where the study will be the focus of Senate hearings.
"Right now everything is being discussed. We're not going to let up. We're going to keep educating people and fighting until we clear our name," said Elise Babbitt Welker, a spokeswoman for Kennedy Krieger, which is affiliated with Hopkins.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in yesterday's Maryland section about a study examining ways to reduce lead content in contaminated soil misspelled the name of the study's author, Mark R. Farfel.
THE SUN REGRETS THE ERROR
The NAACP and the Black United Fund of Greater Maryland have scheduled a news conference for 5:45 p.m. today at Union Baptist Church in the 1200 block of Druid Hill Ave. to question the propriety of the $446,000 study. They say it could be seen as an experiment that was conducted at a cost to the health of minorities who lived in the area at the time.
"We want to get a full accounting of what happened," said Marvin L. "Doc" Cheatham Sr., president of the NAACP's Baltimore chapter.
The study, led by Mark R. Frafel, a former researcher at Kennedy Krieger and the Bloomberg School, involved spreading compost on nine yards in a predominantly poor black neighborhood in East Baltimore to see if it reduced the chances of exposure to lead in the soil. A similar study was conducted in poor neighborhoods in East St. Louis.
The compost was made from human and industrial wastes and participants in the study were given food coupons as an incentive.
Civil rights activists questioned why researchers didn't give medical evaluations to the people living in the neighborhood. If soil samples were all that was required, why didn't researchers just spread compost on empty parcels instead, they asked.
"Why is this done in a poor community and why is this done in an African-American poor community?" said Michael Eugene Johnson, state director of the Black United Fund.
The study has generated unfavorable publicity for Kennedy Krieger and the Bloomberg School that began with an Associated Press story published last week in The Sun and in other publications.
"It was all portrayed in a very sensationalist way," said Michael J. Klag, dean of the Bloomberg school.
