This week, on Thursday, Oct. 10, I will receive a 2013 Beyond the Call of Duty award from the Childhood Lead Action Project, as “media person of the year,” for having a made a significant contribution to the awareness of childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island.

The agency, which works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning through community-based education, parent support and advocacy, will be celebrating its 21^st anniversary.

I first reported on elevated levels of lead in children’s blood and its direct correlation with poor educational performance in 1986, some 27 years ago – six years before CLAP was created. [I had to search through what my son calls an antiquated data storage system – metal file cabinets – to find a copy of the article.]

Three decades later, as a more “mature” reporter, I’m honored to be recognized for my quixotic talents. I still believe that the ability to ask good questions, to be tenacious and persistent, and to then write an accurate, hard-hitting story can make a difference.

Shedding light on darkness – and supporting the public’s right to know – can hopefully lead to community and government action to take responsibility and do the right thing, even in these ever-cynical times of government shutdowns.

I practice what Studs Terkel called the art of asking “the impertinent question” – asking the provocative question that gets to the heart of story.

Back in 1986, I had uncovered a hidden study that Connecticut authorities had been sitting on for more than three years, showing the direct connection between lead poisoning in children and their poor educational performance.

When I began to dig around and ask questions, the report was finally released. No one could explain – at least in public – why they had delayed releasing the study.

For me, the answer was obvious: the information contained in the study was damning; the educational potential of children in Hartford’s public school system was being threatened by exposure to lead, an entirely preventable condition.

Fast forward to 2010, when I began my stint as the health care and life sciences reporter for the Providence Business News. One of the first stories I wrote about was a Brown University-led study by Patrick Vivier that mapped the incidence of lead poisoning in Rhode Island, using 1993-2005 census data. It showed the highest concentrations were in the urban core centers of Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket, where lead poisoning afflicted as many as 48.6 percent of children under the age of 6.

What the cities had in common were lower-income communities and preponderance of pre-1950s housing stock.

Based on my previous reporting in Hartford, I called the R.I. Department of Education, to ask if they had ever done a direct comparison of the lead poisoning map with a map showing student’s poor educational performance in school and on standardized tests.

The answer they gave, not surprisingly, was no. It was accompanied by a comment under Commissioner Deborah Gist’s name, with her voicing concern for students’ health and well-being.

For the next three years, with each new story I wrote on studies corroborating the horrific damage being done by lead to Rhode Island schoolchildren – I always went back to the R.I. Department of Education, asking what, if anything, they planned to do to address the impact of lead poisoning on students’ educational performance.

Each time, I got a slightly different version of an answer reminiscent of the lyric from a Tom Lehrer song: “The rocket goes up, and where it comes down, ‘It’s not my department,’ says Werner von Braun.

Here’s the most recent example, as I reported in The Providence Business News, following a release of study that documented elevated levels of lead in children correlated to a pattern of suspensions in third and fourth grade:

In August, when asked whether the R.I. Department of Education had conducted any review or study of suspensions and correlated them with lead exposure, whether any follow-up was planned to the studies that found learning difficulties in Providence schoolchildren as a result of lead, or whether the agency had conducted any outreach programs related to preventing lead exposure and educating parents about the dangers, spokesman Elliot Krieger replied: “Prevention of exposure to lead is a very important health issue, but research and outreach on this issue is a little beyond our scope or expertise.” [emphasis added]

The facts are not in dispute

The most recent results from the New England Common Assessment program, known as NECAP, show that only 34 percent of Rhode Island students in grades 4, 8 and 11 scored “proficient” in science. The poorest-performing municipal school districts were Providence, at 12.4 percent, Central Falls, at 12.9 percent, Woonsocket, at 13.5 percent, and Pawtucket, at 15 percent.

The facts – both for the poor performance of Rhode Island students in urban core school districts on standardized tests, and the prevalence of lead poisoning and the long-term damage it causes to cognitive ability and behavior – are not in dispute.

• A Providence Plan study released in 2013 found 20 percent of Providence children who will enter kindergarten in 2014 had elevated levels of lead in their blood.
• A study published in the journal Pediatrics in May linked cognitive problems and reading readiness in Providence schoolchildren to lead exposure.
• A study published in August in the journal Environmental Research found that children in the Milwaukee public schools with moderate levels of lead in their blood during the first three years of life were nearly three times as likely to be suspended from school by the time they reach fourth grade. The study analyzed medical and school discipline records of 3,763 school children

These facts are also not difficult to find. Every year, the facts about childhood lead poisoning are documented by Rhode Island KIDS COUNT data book.

As Dr. Peter Simon of the R.I. Department of Health told me: the way that state economists in Illinois attempt to predict the future needs of prisons is by the number of third-graders who cannot read – a cognitive learning problem that can often be directly tied to lead levels in a student’s blood. 

What’s needed to get rid of lead in children

During the last three years in Rhode Island, we have been witness to an unprecedented public uproar – with much noisy media coverage – about the need to improve the performance of our students in order for them to compete in the 21^st century knowledge economy.

Rhode Island signed on to be part of The Race to the Top, already spending about $44 million of more than $75 million in federal grants.

We have seen political forces attempt to put the blame for the poor performance by Rhode Island students on standardized tests onto unionized teachers, or the deficient tests, themselves.

The state is currently embroiled in controversy over the plan to use the NECAP, as a graduation requirement, to hold students, teachers and administrators accountable to new standards.

These rancorous debates miss the target. If Rhode Island truly wanted to invest in the long-term improvement of its students’ performance in school and in life, the answer is apparent: invest in a statewide initiative to get rid of the lead exposure poisoning our kids, mostly from lead paint in non-compliant rental housing.

In terms of economic development, job creation and educational performance, such an initiative would have a high return-on-investment.

These days, every time I hear the Rhode Island Foundation campaign ads talking about “It’s all in our backyard,” I think: “Yes, the problem with lead exposure is in many of our backyards, here in Rhode Island.”

I’m not saying that improved standards and improved teaching methods and improved curriculum are not helpful. Of course, we need work in these areas. But they don’t address one fundamental root cause of poor educational performance: persistent, pernicious elevated levels of lead in our children’s blood.

Rhode Island has lots of well-meaning programs to promote reading skills, science skills, nursing skills, STEM, STEAM, you name it – to help students be more competitive in the knowledge economy job market.

What's missing? A comprehensive commitment to get rid of the lead that’s poisoning our children and creating a permanent economic underclass in our state.

If the Rhode Island Supreme Court had not overturned the lead paint verdict, a lawsuit brought by the state of Rhode Island against the companies who manufactured lead paint, there would have been a program paid by the paint companies for lead remediation to clean up tens of thousands of buildings contaminated with lead.

Instead, lead abatement and removal proceeds slowly, with the city of Providence’s lead reduction program able to clean up about 100 to 150 houses every three years, funded through the U.S. Housing and Urban Development.

The folks at Childhood Lead Action Project have the know-how to lead such an initiative. Despite a loss of federal funding to the state to support their work, they are persevering with money from the state. The R.I. Health Department does great work in screening children and treating those stricken.

The high cost of not dealing with lead poisoning

Any effort to determine the trajectory of future health care costs in Rhode Island needs to look at the modern plagues – heart disease, stroke, diabetes, alcoholism, smoking, drug use, depression, adolescent pregnancy, high blood pressure, and lead poisoning.

Many of those chronic conditions are caused by behavioral choices – but lead poisoning is not one of them.

It is a man-made disease caused in large part by lead paint in dilapidated housing stock in our core cities.

The results of inaction may very well be the creation of a permanent underclass of Rhode Island citizens, destined for underachievement in school, behavioral issues including a tendency toward violence, an inability to achieve economic success because of reduced cognitive capability – hurting a disproportionate share of the poorer, more diverse populations.

We have seen the success of the anti-smoking efforts in terms of great improvement over the past three decades in public health. We have seen the success of the city of Providence’s legal efforts to protect children against the harmful effects of tobacco and the deceitful tactics of the tobacco industry, with the major victory in the U.S. First Circuit of Appeals unanimously affirming on Sept. 30 the validity of Providence’s anti-tobacco laws.

A call to action

What’s needed is a call to action. Here’s one suggestion: let The Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce support the creation of a statewide lead-free initiative, in partnership with the Rhode Island Foundation, at the next session of The Garage, on Oct. 29, a gathering they are promoting by saying: “The Future Begins Here.” Such an initiative will truly drive the state’s Knowledge Economy.

In preparing the Rhode Island’s state innovation model for delivery of health care, why not include “removal of lead from our families’ living environment” as a major public health initiative?

Let’s have RISD and Brown students collaborate on designing a better process to remove and remediate lead paint from pre-1950s housing stock in Rhode Island.

In the new age of health care reform, many health care executives point to the need for citizens to take more responsibility for their own health care. I agree; but let’s make it a shared responsibility.

Whenever our elected officials, business and education leaders speak in public, we in the audience – reporters and citizens – need to ask them the impertinent questions, again and again: “What is your plan to remedy lead poisoning of our school children, which is robbing their educational and economic future?” “When will Rhode Island create a comprehensive program to remove lead contamination?”

Tweet them the questions. Post it on their Facebook pages.