Lead

Brandon Jennings and Kurt Thomas teamed up to help the Bucks pull within one win of an improbable first-round upset. Jennings scored 25, Thomas drew a charging foul against Joe Johnson that fouled him out with 2 minutes, 15 seconds left and the Bucks stunned the home team with a late 14-0 run, beating the favored Hawks 91-87 on Wednesday for a 3-2 lead in the series. The Bucks' third straight win over third-seeded Atlanta gives them a chance to wrap up the series at home Friday.

While pursuing a public health degree in the 1980s, Mark R. Farfel visited a clinic at the Kennedy Krieger Institute where scores of lead-poisoned boys and girls spilled into the hallways awaiting treatment. There, he reached the central epiphany of his career: Youngsters already harmed by deteriorating lead paint were receiving world-class care. But who was "treating" the inner-city rowhouses that were sickening kids in the first place? "All we were doing was waiting for children to be poisoned," said Farfel, who then spent two decades at Kennedy Krieger and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studying ways to reduce the hazard posed by lead in and around homes.

The Baltimore City Health Department has ordered two city businesses to stop selling children's jewelry found to have levels of lead in excess of what the city allows. The items include a "Gymnastics bracelet," sold at Beauty Zone, 231 N. Eutaw St., and a "Dora" bracelet and earring set sold at Choice Corner Accessories & Fine Gifts, 400 W. Lexington St. Both items were found to have lead levels in excess of 600 parts per million, higher than the city limit. For more information, consumers can go to baltimorehealth.

When the General Assembly convenes January 12, one of itstoughest challenges is to do something about Maryland's lead-paint crisis.A failure to act could cause further havoc, especially in Baltimore's depressed residential real-estate market where aging income properties are often almost impossible to trade because their lead paint poses potential health hazards.An example: At a recent auction, a two-story porch house in the 2900 block Winchester Avenue failed to elicit bids even though it was likely to bring $385 in monthly rental income (after modest repairs)

For much of Friday night's Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference matchup, top-ranked Archbishop Spalding kept No. 6 Seton Keough off balance with its press and traps. The Cavaliers also built their offense around junior guard Maggie Morrison, who dominated with her outside shooting and no-look passes under the basket. Host Spalding trailed only once and finished strong for a 59-42 victory, ending a seven-year losing streak to Seton Keough. "They have a lot of size, and we don't.

Lead can be toxic, even deadly. But results of a new survey of lead levels in Americans' blood demonstrate how concerted efforts to limit exposure can make a dramatic difference in public health.Those results, published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicate that lead levels have dropped by 75 percent over the past 15 years. Whereas in the late 1970s, 88 percent of American children aged 1 to 5 years had levels considered worrisome, that proportion has dropped to 8.9 percent today.

IT'S A SAD spectacle: one branch of city government, the Health Department, imposing fines on another branch, the public school system, for failing to protect children from possible lead contamination. That's what happened last Thursday, when a frustrated health commissioner, Peter L. Beilenson, imposed daily fines totaling about $4,000 against 36 schools, most of them elementaries, for failing to comply with an order to shut off drinking fountains and alert students and staff that sinks are to be used only for hand-washing.

PALM DESERT, Calif. -- Robert Gamez, in the tournament on an exemption, missed some short putts but still shot a 5-under-par 67 yesterday to take the lead after three rounds of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Gamez went to 18-under 198, good for a one-stroke lead over Justin Leonard and D.J. Trahan through 54 holes. Leonard, the 2005 champion, shot a 67 to pull into the tie for second. Trahan shared the lead with Gamez after the second day and shot a third-round 68. Boo Weekley vaulted into contention with a 10-under 62 that put him at 201, three shots off the lead.

A TALE OF TWO CITIESThe Orioles were on the verge of picking up a game on the Yankees yesterday until two three-run home runs (one in Oakland, Calif., and the other in Anaheim, Calif.) hit almost simultaneously at about 7 p.m. resulted in an Orioles loss and a Yankees win. Here's what happened:In Oakland: The Orioles took a 6-0 lead against the Athletics into the seventh inning and a 6-2 lead into the eighth. But Scott Hemond's three-run home run -- his second homer of the year -- tied the game at 6. Oakland went on to win, 7-6, when Rickey Henderson scored on Mark Eichhorn's wild pitch in the ninth.

Baltimore Housing Authority officials yesterday continued to disavow findings in a federal audit that criticized the agency for knowingly exposing families in public housing to dangerous levels of lead paint and dust, a federal housing official said.At the same time, however, authority officials admitted that there were problems in the maintenance of the city's 18,000 publicly owned apartments and houses.During a private two-hour meeting yesterday in the Baltimore office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, authority Deputy Director Eric Brown defended, debated and, at times, agreed with the audit's seven findings, which chided the agency for its $25 million no-bid repair program, for the purchase of Chevrolet Blazers for personal use by top administrators and for awarding contracts to relatives of an employee and a board member.