Paint Poisoning

Lead poisoning, once widespread, appears on the way to becoming a rarity among children living in old rental housing in Baltimore and the rest of Maryland. But the problem is growing among youngsters who live in owner-occupied and newer rental homes, and that is prompting state officials to look for new ways to fight the longtime health scourge. State environmental officials reported Tuesday that the number of Maryland children found last year with harmful levels of lead in their blood declined to 531, down by 22 from the year before and less than 0.5 percent of all youngsters tested.

Maryland's pioneering effort to prevent children from being poisoned by lead paint has been stalled nearly a year by a tug of war between health advocates calling for tougher regulations and landlords resisting measures they fear could force them out of business.After months of searching for a middle ground to implement a state law passed last year, environmental officials have devised new regulations for owners in the cleanup of properties deemed hazardous. But debate remains heated over how to balance children's health with the need to provide affordable, lead-safe housing.

In a city where more than 20,000 children have been exposed to brain-damaging doses of lead paint in the past two decades, officials acknowledged last week that no effort has been made to track them - and that many have likely passed into the prison system unnoticed. Unaware of the mental deficits of the defendants who appear before them, judges routinely shuttle lead-poisoning victims into the criminal justice system without educational or medical treatments that might help them overcome their affliction.

Maryland lawmakers, cautious throughout this election-year session, played it safe to the end last night, passing a bill to get tougher on violent criminals but killing or watering down virtually every other important measure that might offend one interest group or another.Showing no mercy for Gov. William Donald Schaefer in his final legislative session, the lawmakers killed three of his major proposals: bills to regulate gambling, to raise the tax on cigarettes and to speed up the death penalty appeals process.

When a routine blood test in 1995 showed that 2-year-old Reggie Smith was suffering from severe lead poisoning, his mother, Renee Kennedy, was astonished. The family's rented East Baltimore rowhouse had peeling paint and holes in the drywall. But Reggie seemed to be an active, healthy toddler."He had no symptoms," said Kennedy, 26, a single mother of three who works as a private-duty nurse. "But they said another week in that house and it could have been life-threatening."One month in intensive care and another five months in three hospitals saved Reggie from mortal danger.

LEONARDTOWN -- Like most couples buying their first home, Christian and Melissa Solms envisioned their white frame house on Washington Street as a haven for their family. Instead, it poisoned their daughter and left her with possible brain damage.The terrifying discovery that dust from lead-based paint had attacked little Carolina's nervous system came four months after they moved in. Other numbing revelations followed.The county health department said the family would have to move out until workers were hired to remove the paint.

The chairman of a City Council committee says he will ask federal officials to push Baltimore's public housing agency to pay a six-figure judgment for lead-paint poisoning, saying the agency had effectively stuck its tongue out by refusing to budge on the issue. The dispute is the latest development in a story that came to light in April, when housing authority executive director Paul T. Graziano said the cash-strapped agency could not, and would not, pay nearly $12 million in court-ordered lead poisoning judgments against it. Councilman James B. Kraft said Thursday that he was "very dissatisfied" with Graziano's refusal to seek federal approval to pay one judgment in particular — a $200,000 consent judgment involving a former public housing resident named Daron E. Goods.

WHEN THE federal government outlawed the widespread use of lead paint in 1978, many Americans may have thought lead paint poisoning went away. It didn't. Thick layers of lead paint cover the walls in 75 percent of houses built before the late '70s, according to a 1990 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report.The Centers for Disease Control calls lead poisoning the most serious environmental threat to children. Even low levels of lead in children can cause life-long learning and behavioral problems.

Fourteen Patterson High School juniors and seniors have blown the whistle on 18 landlords in Northwest Baltimore's Park Heights neighborhood who have not registered their property with the state for lead-paint testing as required for homes built before 1950. The high school students worked on a lead-paint poisoning project with six University of Maryland law students as part of a national youth leadership and advocacy program affiliated with the law school. The students presented their findings Wednesday to university staff and parents at the law school.

In a class action lawsuit filed Thursday, Kennedy Krieger Institute is accused of exposing poor black children to "dangerous levels" of lead as part of a housing experiment in the 1990s. The suit, filed Thursday in Baltimore City Circuit Court by attorney Billy Murphy, accuses the instituteof negligence, fraud, battery and violating the state's consumer protection act. It seeks damages, interest and unspecified attorney fees. The hospital "used these children as known guinea pigs in these contaminated houses to complete this study," the suit states.