By David Brand

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in April that the city would begin a vast lead-testing initiative in every single NYCHA complex built before lead paint was banned, with priority given to complexes with the highest number of households with children under 6.

But according to data obtained by the Eagle via a Freedom of Information Law request, most of the complexes with the highest number of households with children under 6 have yet to be tested — more than three months after the initiative began.

After the city failed for decades to test and remove lead paint from public housing units, de Blasio said the new testing program would reach all 134,084 city apartments built before 1978 — the year lead paint was banned — by the end of 2020.

See the NYCHA dataset on the number of households with children under age 6 here.

So far, 16 complexes have undergone testing, according to a testing schedule on the NYCHA website.

Population data obtained from NYCHA shows that only three of the 16 tested complexes — Castle Hill and Marble Hill in the Bronx and the Van Dyke Houses I in Brooklyn — were among the top 20 in terms of number of households with children under 6 years old. The data is up-to-date as of May 30.

Edenwald Houses in the Bronx has 280 households with children under 6 — the most of any NYCHA complex — but the complex is not included in the city’s testing schedule. Nor are the Butler Houses in the Bronx, with the second-highest number of households with children under 6 (267). The Van Dyke Houses in Brooklyn, with the third-highest total (262), were tested in the spring.

NYCHA said Edenwald and Butler were exempted from testing by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and do not yet appear on the city’s testing schedule. NYCHA is prioritizing complexes that were not previously exempted by HUD and have the most apartments with children under the age of 6, the agency said. After testing those developments, x-ray fluorescence, or XRF, testing will begin at sites exempted by HUD and sites exempted by HUD where no registered children under age 6 live — namely, senior housing complexes.

See the data obtained from NYCHA below: