OAKLAND — Stephanie Avila was shocked when a doctor told her earlier this year that her adventurous 18-month-old son Alexander was poisoned by lead — with an exposure rate 10 times the safe limit. But she was even more shocked when she learned the culprit: the lead paint in the home where generations of her family had lived for years.

Now, the Trump administration is proposing to cut more than $16 million from Environmental Protection Agency efforts to protect kids like Alex from lead paint. If Congress approves the cuts, successful EPA programs that train contractors on the safe way to remove the lead would be axed.

Experts say that would mean more kids end up with lead poisoning. Exposure to even tiny amounts of lead can lead to lifelong health problems for kids, including hearing loss, stunted IQ levels and behavioral issues.

The culprit for child lead poisoning is often old homes. Like many old Victorians, bungalows and apartment buildings that dot the streets in East and West Oakland, Avila’s house on 83rd Avenue was covered in peeling, crumbling paint. And that paint — including on a railing where Alex loved to climb — is full of lead.

An investigation by Reuters last year found that in the 94601 ZIP code, which includes Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, 7.57 percent of kids had elevated lead levels in their blood — a higher percentage than in Flint, Michigan, where dangerous tap water made national news last year. Other parts of East and West Oakland also saw numbers almost as high. And farther south, in Fremont’s 94538 ZIP code, 6.13 percent of kids showed elevated levels.

“Trump shouldn’t cut these programs,” said Avila, 23. “People need help, because it’s not just going to affect us, but our kids — our future.”

Her house was recently renovated through a county program that funds the removal of lead paint for people who can’t afford it, and Alex’s lead levels have gone down, although they’re still higher than the safe limit. So his mom still worries about his future. “It could mean a learning disability, seizures, brain surgery,” she said.

Erik Olson, the health program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the EPA budget cuts would mean more children poisoned by lead across the country.

“The overall cost to society is going to be enormous for failing to actually protect these kids,” Olson said. “They’re going to get lead poisoning, they’re going to need special education, and they’re going to need special medical care — which is going to end up costing way more than any of these programs over the long term.”

More than 85 percent of the houses in Oakland were built before 1978, when lead-based paint was banned in residential construction nationwide, county officials say. Around the country, more than 38 million homes are thought to contain lead paint. As older houses start to fall apart, flaking paint exposes kids to lead, while lead dust accumulates in the ground.

But just painting over the old lead paint isn’t enough, and efforts to remove lead from homes can also be dangerous. If remodelers who remove lead paint don’t take the proper precautions, they can accidentally spread lead dust widely through the home, contaminating almost every surface. Contractors also can end up bringing home lead residue on their clothes or bodies, inadvertently exposing their own children even if they live in a perfectly safe house.

That’s where the EPA comes in. The agency passed a regulation in 2010 requiring that contractors who deal with lead remediation get trained and certified in the safest practices. The rule also came with millions of dollars in funding for training programs, enforcement and public education efforts about the dangers of unsafe lead remediation.

That funding has helped make a difference in the East Bay. In October 2016, the EPA hosted four free training sessions for contractors in Oakland. The training, conducted in English and Spanish, helped 54 people get certified in safe lead-removal practices.

“Some people were really amazed,” said Dale Hagen, the housing programs director for the Alameda County Healthy Homes Department, which helped coordinate the training. Some of the contractors trained hadn’t realized what they were doing was unsafe, Hagen said.

“They were like, ‘This is the way I’ve been doing this for 30 years,’” he said. “For those who have possibly put family members at risk, they really wished they would have known about it sooner.”

The EPA also has made several big lead enforcement actions in the area, leveling thousands of dollars in fines on contractors who did lead-removal work without certification.

According to EPA documents recently revealed by the Washington Post, the Trump administration’s proposed budget would zero out lead-remediation training programs, cutting $2.26 million in direct funding and $14.05 million in grants to the states. The cuts would eliminate more than 70 full-time jobs. In addition, a more than $100 million cut to the EPA’s enforcement department would reduce the agency’s ability to police lead paint safety standards.

The lead-remediation programs are just one part of the buzzcut Trump wants to give the EPA, which adds up to $2.6 billion, or 31 percent of the agency’s budget — a higher percentage than for any other government agency.

In a statement, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman defended the cuts. “EPA is evaluating different approaches to implementing the president’s budget that would allow us to effectively serve the taxpayers and protect the environment,” she said. “While many in Washington insist on greater spending, EPA is focused on greater value and results.”

In Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, which is primarily Latino and African-American, most of the housing stock is rentals, and not every landlord puts in the effort needed to keep buildings in good condition. To make things worse, the neighborhood has few grocery stores, so many families struggle to feed their kids diets with enough iron and calcium, which can help counteract the effects of lead exposure.

Gwen Hardy, an activist with the Fruitvale community organization People United for a Better Oakland, helped organize protests in the late 1980s and ’90s that pushed Alameda County to launch its first lead poisoning prevention efforts. She said many locals worried about their landlords retaliating if they complained about their home’s condition — and that undocumented immigrants were especially reluctant to ask government officials for help. And rental prices are so high in Oakland that it can be difficult to find a safer place to live.

“When you’ve got a place that’s reasonable in your scope of being able to pay, you don’t want to complain,” Hardy said. “People are scared.”