lead poisoning

Prosecutors say the original criminal investigation into Flint's drinking water scandal was compromised by a failure to pursue all available evidence.

A national civil rights organization says Cleveland’s water department applies tax liens for unpaid bills disproportionately in majority-black neighborhoods in Cuyahoga County. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said its full report, which is expected to be released in June, will examine what it calls a crisis in water affordability in black communities. The organization released a summary report Wednesday showing 11,000 liens were attached to properties between 2014 and 2018. In most years, around two thirds of the liens were in majority African-American census tracts.

Cleveland’s coalition to prevent lead poisoning says the city should require landlords to protect tenants from lead paint. The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, which the city announced in January, plans to submit its recommendations to City Council on Wednesday.

"In some ways we're better," says activist Melissa Mays. "In other ways, we're forever poisoned, damaged, traumatized ... that's not gonna ever be better."

About a year ago, at one years old, Eden Tobik was found to have a blood lead level of 19. Any amount of lead is harmful to young children; five is the threshold of concern. Her mother, Casey Tobik, was devastated. “Shock, guilt, shame, fear, despair, terror, sets in,” said Tobik. “And then you Google it and it gets even worse.”

In 1985, Darrick Wade was living in Lakeview Terrace on Cleveland’s near west side with his family when he first started noticing something was off with his son, Demetrius. "When he was about two years old, I believe he had an episode of an attack of the lead, that toxin," Wade said. "Because he shook a chair real angrily, and I didn’t understand where that anger came from at such a young age."

Children with toxic lead exposure will soon have fewer roadblocks to qualify for Ohio’s Early Intervention program. State lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review today paved the way for the Department of Developmental Disabilities to automatically include children with elevated blood levels in the program. This will include children with a blood lead level of 5 micrograms per deciliter or higher, said Gabriella Celeste, the policy director of Case Western Reserve University’s Shubert Center for Child Studies.

In Governor Mike DeWine’s first budget due later this week, he plans to allocate $10 million to the State Child Health Insurance Program for lead cleanup projects, the same amount as in the previous budget. He’ll also call for a $10,000 tax credit to homeowners for lead abatement projects. DeWine laid out the new measures to address lead contamination in Ohio during a visit to University Hospital’s Rainbow Center for Women and Children Wednesday.

On a Monday morning, Mound Elementary School Nurse Angelique King walks kindergartener Darrell into a small classroom, sits with him at a knee-high table…

Lead exposure is known as "a silent pediatric epidemic" that many children in Flint, Mich., will struggle with years after the water crisis is resolved, says pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha.