After all the preliminary work was properly completed, the researchers tilled the ground and mixed compost with the soil. They also planted grass, so that less dirt would be tracked into people's homes.
And it worked. Beautifully. A year later, researchers found that the amount of "bioaccessible" lead in the soil - that is, lead that could poison kids - was down about two-thirds. The grass cover was healthy, meaning that less lead, bioaccessible or not, could get into homes in the first place.
The results were later published in a scientific paper. The paper is now available to policymakers and communities around the country - and around the world - who are looking for strategies to fight lead poisoning in their neighborhoods.
This completely ethical, highly successful research is only one of the many fronts in the war against lead poisoning of Baltimore's children. And it's a war that, thank goodness, Baltimore is winning. We're winning because of the work of many people, people in the community, people from the city and state and, yes, people from Kennedy Krieger and Johns Hopkins.
Thanks to all their efforts, there was from 1993 to 2005 a 93 percent decline in the number of city children whose blood tested positive for what the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider unsafe levels of lead.
It's important to remember those numbers. It's also important to remember that in this particular effort to combat lead, the researchers' hands are clean - unfortunate comments about "sludge" notwithstanding.
Dr. Gary W. Goldstein is president and chief executive officer of the Kennedy Krieger Institute. His e-mail is goldsteing@kennedykrieger.org. Dr. Michael J. Klag is dean of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. His e-mail is deansoffice@jhsph.edu.
