Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #113353

Catherine Klinger, MPH, Center for Health Statistics, New Jersey Dept. of Health and Senior Services, PO Box 360, Trenton, NJ 08625-0360, 609-984-2649, Catherine.Klinger@doh.state.nj.us, Curtis E. Cummings, MD, MPH, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Drexel University School of Public Health, Mail Stop 660, 245 North 15th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102-1192, and Robert Himmelsbach, BA, Philadelphia Department of Public Health, Division of Maternal, Child and Family Health, Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, 2100 West Girard Ave., PNH Building #3, Philadelphia, PA 19130-1400.

Background: The Philadelphia Department of Public Health's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (CLPPP) initiated a program, dubbed “Lead Court”, that uses the court system to require homeowners or landlords to remediate residential lead hazards in homes with lead poisoned children. CLPPP also provides remediation assistance.

Objective: To measure outcomes of the “Lead Court” initiative, and analyze its effectiveness in improving the health status and lowering the lead exposure risks for CLPPP's clients.

Method: We studied families with lead exposed children to assess the level of environmental and biological risk reduction resulting from this initiative. Properties in three categories – city-remediated, contractor-remediated, and owner-remediated – were compared regarding post-work lead dust loads, and differences in blood lead levels (BLL) within one year after lead hazard control (LHC).

Results: Concentrations of post-LHC lead dust in owner-remediated homes were significantly higher than in contractor-remediated homes (p=0.02), and nearly significantly higher than in city-remediated homes (p=0.08). Owner-remediated homes also had a significantly higher proportion of areas failing to meet EPA standards for lead dust content per home than city-remediated homes (p=0.005) and contractor-remediated homes (p=0.007). City and contractor-remediated homes did not differ significantly in either category. Overall, BLL's decreased significantly after LHC (p=0.018), but the amount of BLL change was not significantly different among LHC groups.

Conclusion: Trained professionals perform more effective, environmentally beneficial lead hazard control than untrained homeowners. This issue has policy implications for future funding of lead hazard remediation and enforcement of other types of health codes through the court system.

Learning Objectives:

• 2. Participants will learn about environmental lead control in residential properties.
  4. Participants will become informed about a unique and innovative initiative to enforce the remediation of environmental health hazards using the court system.
  6. Participants will observe a study design used to assess the impact of an environmental clean-up program using health and environmental markers in an underserved urban community.
  8. Participants will have the opportunity to examine an analysis of the policy surrounding this environmental hazard remediation program.

Keywords: Lead, Healthy Buildings

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.