WNY's Paint Problems

AKA WNY Leads in Lead.

Pardon the Rocky & Bullwinkle reference.

I in no way mean to denigrate what has been intentionally done to Flint, MI by its corporate controlled overlords – the deliberate bankrupting of the city, impoverishment of its masses, and then the deliberate poisoning of its people – with lead and Legionnaires Disease. They knew what they were doing. And they (the mis-leadership) need to pay the price themselves to fix it up.

We beat Flint, in a bad way.

We suffer from worse cases of lead poisoning in our children – using NY standards – than Flint does.

It gets worse if you go by the Federal standards, which are much more stringent.

By NY standards (10 micrograms/decilitre):

-Erie County has a 14% rate of infection

-Chatauqua County has 12.3%
-Cattaraugus County has 9.2%

-Niagara County has 9%

Flint's crisis came from a deliberate decision to not treat water from a toxic river before sending it through the pipes to the city.

WNY's lead crisis comes from old housing and pulverized lead based paint. Things that can be breathed in and that children can put in their mouth when we're not looking.

And that is creating our crisis.

Sen. Chuck Schumer wants the Federal government to give home owners a $3000 tax credit to help them with lead abatement costs.

That's probably not going to be enough to cover all the costs. Unless people are allowed to claim it over a period of years. It's not just scrape the pain off and repaint. You need a good air mask and to seal off that part of your house. And there are the disposal costs. (What do you do with lead paint chips?)

What about the associated medical costs? I know there's a medical deduction on income tax, if you itemize and spend enough. Some people don't have the money up front for the chelation therapy and there's no guarantee that medical insurance will cover it.

We need more than what is being proposed.

WNY needs a major project undertaken to get the lead out!

We need to help the home owners get the paint out – professionally. It's not something you can do by yourself casually,

We need medical treatment for those affected by the paint poisoning.

No one has said anything about that.

And that can haunt a person for life.

Update: March 1, 2016

Buffalo is going to be buying lead testing kits in order to test children who might be living in houses contaminated with lead paint. They are also going to be purchasing pamphlets to warn people about the dangers of lead. Many of the houses were built during the Great Depression.

The Common Council also has $65,000 set aside to help with lead abatement projects.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has set aside $364,825 from a lawsuit settlement to help with lead abatement projects. This will supposedly help clean up between 40 to 50 homes.Ok.  What about the rest of the homes?  Especially the ones in rural areas that don't receive the attention that Buffalo receives?

Other sources are stepping up, like True Bethel Baptist Church. They purchased lead testing kits that can be used to test for lead poisoning. This is good. If a person tests positive for lead poisoning, then what? Where do they go for help?

The state needs to help clean up the mess created by lead paint. It also needs to treat those afflicted with damage caused by exposure to lead paint.

Lead-en with Problems

We all know of the problems that Flint is facing with its contaminated water supply. The filthy water makes for “great” (sick) TV and the interviews with the parents of children make heart wrenching/breaking stories.

Less glamorous is another problem with lead that is lurking in the houses that many of the poor and minorities live in. A problem so fine that you would need a microscope to see the culprit. But it's there. It's not as glamorous, but it's just as deadly.

These are older houses that were painted with lead paint. The paint chips, falls off and children pick it up and eat it. Or, as WKBW-TV reports, it's on window sills and is ground to a fine powder when people open and close their windows. Everyone breathes in that dust.

Or out in a field that children play in that used to be a former industrial site that had a hand in lead processing. The children score a goal playing soccer. Who knew they were scoring with potential lead poisoning. And the lot is owned by the city of Buffalo.

If this existed in suburban houses, it would have been properly addressed as soon at it was discovered. No questions asked. It's in a lower class, impoverished neighborhood or in a former industrial zone. Nobody really cares, or it affects so few people that TV can't make it into a great story.

Never mind that we will be paying for this with higher health costs, educational costs, and costs to the criminal justice system. How many inmates are just a little brain damaged from lead?

Mother Jones (on-line magazine) had an article that projected the costs of the cleanup in Flint would exceed $60 million. If the capitalist appointed city manager would have listened to the engineers, this problem would have never happened. Now there's the after-effects cost.

The lines will scale back up according to the article. They suggest that the $60 million be used for lead abatement in homes. Get the lead out of where people spend a great deal of their time.

No matter what, we need the lead out.

We need it out of the water.

We need it out of the houses.

We also need the capitalists and their policies that led to this crisis out of office.

Given the damage that they have done, they need to be put in jail.

Flint Probably Has Bigger Problems Than Lead Pipes

City doesn't tell neighbors about lead dangers

Flint crisis revives lead concern in WNY