Government should not use little kids as walking test tubes, tackling lead hot spots only after little kids suffer neurological damage, she said. The best way to protect them is to remove all the toxic soil, she said.

It sounds so simple. But is it?

Reporters shared their test results with the state DEP, including one for a Fishtown backyard that came back at 9,883 ppm. Patrick McDonnell, the agency’s secretary, replied: “Any time we see sample results like this, it’s definitely cause for concern,” McDonnell said last week.

The state has laws to hold polluters accountable. But as it stands now, the DEP has no regulatory power to remedy what McDonnell calls widespread “historic pollution or contamination.” McDonnell, who was confirmed by the Senate last month, said he is still trying to determine whether the state has any authority to require developers to test soil for lead before disturbing land adjacent to known brownfield parcels.

As for the 82 of 114 properties that tested above 400 ppm for lead, he said: “We’d need to look at specific sites and where our regulatory authorities are. Can we figure out the source of the contamination? Are there still viable responsible parties?”

“We absolutely want to engage and understand the extent of” the problem, McDonnell said.

So does Jack Kelly, an EPA official based here. Kelly has been alerting higher-ups for years about the lead problems in Fishtown, Kensington, and Port Richmond. In a perfect world, residents all over the area would allow him to test their soil and he could map the boundaries of the contamination and make a case to his bosses that backyards in this area should qualify for federal cleanup money.

In the meantime, Kelly has persuaded the EPA, as a public service, to take the unusual step of contracting with a phlebotomist to test the blood lead levels in children, ages 6 and under, who live in the river wards.

The EPA is still working out the details but hopes to begin testing this summer. During a community meeting earlier this year, residents like Jana Curtis, whose child was poisoned by soil, broached the elephant in the room: “Is there any danger of this money disappearing, given the current political climate?”

Kelly struggled to answer the question, knowing that the Trump administration has proposed slashing the EPA’s budget by nearly one-third, more than any other agency.

“This is not, compared to a lot of work we do, a big-ticket item,” Kelly told Curtis. “I don’t think we’re going to lose the money for this.”

David C. Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is tired of inertia. He and fellow clinicians and scientists recently formed Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neurodevelopment Risks). Last month, the group, in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, called for “remediation of lead-contaminated soils from former industrial sites in residential areas” and for “federal, state and local governments to provide a dedicated funding steam to identify and eliminate sources of lead exposure.”

Bellinger said the findings by reporters that high levels of lead lurk in the soil in these neighborhoods, coupled with the lack of government oversight and controls, illustrate what he calls “the silo problem” — each agency focuses on “a narrow aspect of the problem without any integrated effort to stitch all the pieces together.”

Bellinger’s coalition is calling for swift national action. “Further delay,” it warns, “will result in more children experiencing lifelong health problems.”