WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Kit Bond today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control (OHHLHC) will award nearly $10 million in funding to help eliminate lead-related hazards for Missouri children and families. 

 

“Lead poisoning is a real issue for St. Louis children.  It is compromising their health, blocking their potential, and robbing their futures,” said Bond.  “We should not wait for a child in St. Louis to suffer the irreversible effects of lead paint poisoning to act.”

 

The City of St. Louis will be awarded $4 million in Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration and $3 million in Lead Hazard Control funds to remove lead in 450 and 350 homes respectively.  The funds will also provide for the training and licensing of 30 new lead workers, safe work practices training for 125 individuals, blood lead screening for 3,614 children, and other outreach initiatives to decrease lead poisoning rates.

 

As a long-time advocate of lead poisoning prevention, Bond joined Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland in 2003 to create and fund a new HUD initiative, the Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration, to target lead abatement in cities with the worst lead paint problems. As part of the Bond-Mikulski Lead Initiative, the City of St. Louis has received $14.6 million for Lead Safe St. Louis, the city’s program to make St. Louis lead-free.  The City has also received $9 million in Lead Hazard Control funds since 2003.  Bond pointed out that more than 90 percent of the housing in St. Louis was built before residential lead paint was banned in 1978.  More than 60 percent of the housing in the city was built before 1950, when lead concentrations in paint were much higher, said Bond. Deteriorated lead-paint releases its lead and mixes with dust or soil.

 

Bond stressed that children are highly susceptible to lead poisoning through often putting their hands in their mouths, eating lead-based paint chips, and playing in lead-contaminated soil.  In 2004, nearly one-third of St. Louis children suffered from lead poisoning, noted Bond. Exposure to lead causes learning disabilities and behavioral problems, slows growth, and at high levels can cause seizures coma and death.  Children who go untested may develop attention deficits and irreversibly low IQ levels without parents ever realizing the loss was avoidable, said Bond.

 

Bond also announced that the County of St. Louis will also be awarded $2,070,680 in Lead Hazard Control federal funds to perform lead hazard control activities in 185 units and that Saint Louis University (SLU) will be awarded $356,303 in federal funds through the Lead Technical Studies (LTS) federal program to test new technologies that measure lead in dust. Bond praised local St. Louis officials and leadership for combating lead-related hazards through creating a unique Lead Safe Housing Registry through Socialserve.com, and establishing public-private partnerships to increase the remediation of lead poisoning.

 

Bond continues to fight lead-related hazards as he recently co-sponsored a Senate resolution to designate next week, October 19^th to the 25^th, as National Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. In St. Louis, Bond set up the most ambitious effort to combat lead poisoning in 2004, by providing $15 million over three years to fund a primary prevention program at Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Center. The program was revolutionary in fighting lead-based hazards because for the first-time a government program focused on finding and removing lead paint problems before children are poisoned.