$50 million taken from NJ child protection fund

The New Jersey government left countless children exposed to lead poisoning in the last decade by diverting more than $50 million away from a health fund to pay routine bills and salaries, a Gannett New Jersey investigation found.

The diversion was approved by Democratic and Republican governors, including Chris Christie. State budgets can supersede laws requiring funding for various programs.

The state also failed to implement a 2008 rental housing inspection law aimed at reducing lead poisoning, the investigation found.

Not spending $100 on a home inspection "will cost you tens of thousands (of dollars), if not hundreds of thousands, for every child who's poisoned" and needs treatment, said Ruth Ann Norton, president and CEO of the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, a nonprofit based in Baltimore, whose goal is to stamp out childhood lead poisoning.

Lead, a toxic metal everywhere in the environment, can cause brain damage and learning and behavioral problems. It has been deemed the state's top environmental health threat for kids. More than 5,000 New Jersey children each year are found to have well above-average lead contamination. Hundreds of those children live in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

Thousands more — mostly minority children in impoverished city neighborhoods — are at risk. The metal is in old paint chips and dust, playground soil and even some imported candies.

But since 2004, the state has steered more than $50 million into its general treasury instead of its Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund as required by the law that created the fund, according to the state Office of Legislative Services, an arm of the Legislature.

The 2004 law tapped sales tax revenues collected for every container of paint or other type of surface coating sold. The money — $7 million to $14 million a year — is supposed to fund a loan and grant program to remove lead paint from homes and rental units.

With $50 million, lead poisoning could be prevented in thousands of children, according to advocates. Recent state legislation (S-1279) to pump $10 million into the nearly empty fund went nowhere. A previous bill (S-2128) died in the state Assembly.

"It's another horrible example of the governor taking money that was designated for an important purpose and putting it in the general fund," said Arnold Cohen, senior policy coordinator at the Trenton-based Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey. The nonprofit network includes more than 250 affordable housing and community development corporations, individuals and other organizations that support the creation of affordable homes, economic opportunities and build strong communities.

Bill O'Donnell, owner of BayHill Environmental LLC in Cherry Hill, has been inspecting sites for lead paint for decades. Inspections involve special equipment, including an X-ray fluorescent gun that detects lead in all the layers of paint on a given surface. Today, most lead paint is "encapsulated," by more recent layers of paint, paneling or vinyl casing on windows and doors.

"Lead paint isn't dangerous, led dust is dangerous," O'Donnell said. "It used to be that the paint around windows would 'alligate,' forming those chips that looked like alligator skin. But that doesn't happen as much anymore. Today, the danger comes from sanding down the paint that has lead, and that causes dust that people breathe. And it goes from house to house."

He said that although much of the existing lead paint is in low-income housing, those units don't get inspected much anymore. Most of his clients now are people in upper-income brackets buying old Victorian homes that they plan to renovate.

Tammori C. Petty, spokeswoman for the state Department of Community Affairs, said "the number of children with lead poisoning has declined dramatically over the past 20 years" in New Jersey while the number of children tested for lead poisoning has increased significantly.

The state sought and received a $5 million federal grant to create a Lead Hazard Reduction Program for people living in housing units flooded by Sandy, she said in an email. The program will fund lead assessment and remediation in Sandy-impacted homes, which are potentially at greater risk of lead poisoning threats due to flooding, demolition and renovation of older homes. The program will complement a state Department of Health effort to test young children, pregnant mothers and Sandy recovery workers for lead, using federal funding.

"At the national and state level, the policy reflected in the rules is one of prevention through lead-safe maintenance," she said.

However, an the investigation found that:

- The state lead fund is moribund. The Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund received its minimum funding from sales taxes in just one year — fiscal 2006 — since its creation in 2004. At least $77 million and up to $154 million in dedicated sales tax revenues was supposed to go into the lead fund through fiscal 2015. But only $23.3 million went to the fund to date, according to the Office of Legislative Services. Budgets under Christie have provided zero funding since fiscal 2011. The fund was designed to provide loans and grants to owners of multifamily housing and single- and two-family homes to remove or contain lead hazards. The fund is also supposed to help relocate lead-poisoned children to lead-safe housing. A total of $16.2 million was spent on 282 projects in 416 dwelling units, according to the DCA's Petty. The state also spent $4.5 million on grants for lead education and outreach, but relocation programs ended in April 2012.

- The state is breaking the law. The state failed to carry out a 2008 law signed by Gov. Jon S. Corzine aimed at reducing lead poisoning in one- and two-family rental units. The law requires that many one- and two-family rental properties built before 1978 be registered with the DCA (there are exemptions) and maintained in a lead-safe condition. DCA spokeswoman Lisa M. Ryan said in an email "it is unfortunate that legislation that had no clear path to enforcement was signed into law in 2008. It is a monstrous undertaking to register one- and two-family rental housing units" and "we don't have the massive resources it would take to do so."

- New Jersey is trailing the nation. The national threshold for lead, set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012, is 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood. That level is supposed to trigger efforts to reduce children's lead exposure. New Jersey has yet to formally adopt the guideline, but a new state report says "primary care providers and parents should take appropriate action — education and retesting — for children" with 5 to 9 micrograms. Dr. Arturo Brito, a pediatrician and deputy state health commissioner, said "I suspect that early (this) year, we'll have the rules changed in a way that correlates with the CDC's recommendations."

- New Jersey schools are largely unaware of lead poisoning. New Jersey does not require that lead test results be sent to schools. In Rhode Island, schools are required to ensure that children have been screened before they're admitted, according to Christina Batastini, chief officer of health promotion in the Rhode Island Department of Health. To attend early childhood programs in Connecticut, forms that ask for lead test results must be submitted, according to Kelly Donnelly, spokeswoman for that state's education department. Community preschool providers and public schools should identify children who should receive monitoring and referral services if they have at least 5 micrograms of lead.

Dr. Peter Simon, a retired medical director in the Rhode Island Department of Health, said lead poisoning is "a significant part of why poor kids are having such a hard time competing in school and have such an easy time finding their way to prison."

Local lead poisoning

Alexander Lopez Garcia of Long Branch is one of hundreds of children in Monmouth and Ocean counties with elevated lead levels. He lived in an apartment in an old home with lead-based paint and ate tainted Mexican candy.

A 2013 blood test revealed that the then three-year-old boy had lead poisoning, according to Leanora Chojnowski, a public health nurse with the VNA Health Group in Red Bank.

Alex, now 4, stopped eating the candy, the landlord abated the lead in the apartment and the boy's lead level dropped somewhat.

Dennis Green, the director of Woodbridge's Department of Health, said his township has received no funding from the state for lead poisoning, but the township funds the work. His department relies on family physicians to test children under 5 for lead poisoning, and if any lead is detected in a child's blood, his department immediately steps in. Staff nurses work with the parents to address the poisoning and its source.

"We don't wait for actionable levels. We address it right away," Green said.

He said that recent findings have not necessarily been dust or paint from windows, although that is always a concern. Rather, home remedies or ethnic foods have caused lead poisoning. For example, they had a family who was using a food coloring called "sindoor" that was found to have lead in it. In another case, a family was uising roots from an herb that apparently was grown in soil with high levels of lead in it.

"And then there are plates that are not properly glazed that have lead in them," Green said.

In recent years, testing revealed that more than 5,000 children a year in New Jersey had lead levels of at least 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood.

Stacey Bersani wrote in an email on behalf Middlesex County's Office of Heath Services: "The MCOHS currently case manages a total of 30 children who had elevated blood lead levels. For 2014, 11 children with elevated blood lead have been referred to the MCOHS for case management. Of the 11, three cases have been discharged and two required abatement of lead based paint."

Newark had 880 children under 6 with at least 5 micrograms, by far the highest number in the state, followed by Paterson (385), Jersey City (372), Irvington (250), Trenton (224) and Elizabeth (183).

Jay S. Schneider, professor of pathology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said "my personal feeling is that I think we still fall way short (nationally) in terms of what we can do to rid this problem and it's still a huge problem."

"Kids are still getting poisoned and I think at an alarming rate," said Schneider, who has been studying lead poisoning for years.

Failing to eliminate lead poisoning

No safe lead level has been pinpointed and officials adopted a New Jersey Lead Poisoning Elimination Plan more than a decade ago.

"While progress is being made, even one child with lead poisoning is one child too many," the plan declared. "Therefore it is our state's goal to reduce the number of children with lead poisoning, at or above (10 micrograms), to zero by 2010."

But the state failed to meet that goal and virtually robbed its lead hazard control fund.

The CDC has seen its own cuts in lead funding. Funding for the states, in turn, has been slashed. New Jersey received $594,000 in fiscal year 2011 for lead poisoning prevention, nothing in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, and $316,643 in fiscal 2014, which ended in September, according to the CDC.

Lead can not only damage the brain and nervous system, it can slow growth and development. It can also cause learning, behavioral, speech and hearing problems, lower IQ, make it harder to pay attention and lead to under-achievement in school, according to the CDC.

Once an elevated level of lead has been detected in a child, the damage appears to be irreversible.

Elyse Pivnick, senior advisor and environmental health director at Isles Inc., a Trenton-based nonprofit community development and environmental organization, said "the evidence is showing us that incredibly small levels of lead are impacting a child's ability to learn and control behavior."

Lead-poisoned children are seven times more likely to drop out of school and six times more likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system, according to the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative.

While lead is ubiquitous, homes with lead-based paint remain the biggest source of childhood lead poisoning, according to the CDC. Homes built before 1978, when lead-based paint was banned, likely have lead. Children can be poisoned by eating tainted paint chips or swallowing or inhaling lead dust. Dust is created when paint peels and cracks and can wind up on floors, other surfaces or in soil. Water pipes and taps may have lead or lead solder. Lead can also be found in toys, toy jewelry, traditional home remedies and imported candies.

In New Jersey, any house built before 1978 may still have lead-based paint, and there are thousands of such homes in each county. The highest risk for children is in houses built before 1950, when paint contained a very high volume of lead. New Jersey has nearly 1 million housing units built before 1950, or about 30 percent of all housing, according to a state Department of Health report.

Hanaa A. Hamdi, health director in Newark, said last year that "we have an estimated 16,235 units of homes built before 1940, which means they have extremely high levels of lead-based paint and all these homes need to be remediated. So far, the city has only abated 839 homes and while that may be a huge feat for us, it's not nearly as many homes as we need to abate."

Deborah Cory-Slechta, professor of environmental medicine and pediatrics at University of Rochester Medical School in Rochester, New York, said lead poisoning "remains an environmental justice issue."

"The fact is they're also exposed to lots of other risk factors that compromise their potential and some of those interact with lead exposure," she said.

Staff Writer Todd B. Bates: 732-643-4237; tbates@app.com

New Jersey childhood lead poisoning

Each year, thousands of New Jersey children are found to have at least 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood — the federal "reference level" that is supposed to trigger public health actions such as education for families and efforts to reduce lead in homes and children's exposure to lead. Five micrograms is about 300 times higher than the estimated pre-industrial level of lead in people, and no amount of lead has been found safe. Here are the latest statistics for fiscal year 2014 (through June 30):

- Less than 5 micrograms: 199,583 children.

- 5 to 9 micrograms: 5,184 (2,245 between ages of six to 26 months).

- 10 to 14 micrograms: 495

- 15 to 19 micrograms: 170.

- 20 to 44 micrograms: 164.

- 45 or more micrograms: 11

Source: N.J. Department of Health, World Health Organization