Comptroller Stringer Investigation Reveals City’s Systemic Failure to Protect Children from Lead Exposure

(New York, NY) — Today, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer released an alarming new investigation revealing the City’s systemic failure to protect children from toxic lead. The Comptroller’s investigation found that City agencies charged with eradicating childhood lead poisoning missed crucial opportunities to protect children by failing to take a proactive approach to prevent lead exposure. Crucial data relating to the location of children with elevated blood lead levels remained siloed in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). As a result, over a five year period from 2013 through late 2018, the agency empowered to inspect buildings and enforce landlords’ obligations to prevent lead exposure, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), never performed a lead inspection in 9,671 buildings where 11,972 children tested positive for lead exposure above the federal action level of 5 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL). Instead of using the data in DOHMH’s possession to proactively seek out lead exposure hotspots, the City’s lead inspection regime was hit or miss and left as many as 63 percent of all buildings under HPD’s jurisdiction with documented cases of child lead exposure entirely uninspected by HPD lead inspectors.

Further, as many as 2,749 children who lived in the uninspected buildings tested positive for lead exposure after other children in the same buildings tested positive. In fact, 503 buildings under HPD’s jurisdiction that DOHMH data showed had three or more children with blood levels above the 5 mcg/dL CDC action level were never visited by an HPD lead inspector. While the City’s standard lagged behind the federal benchmark at the time and did not explicitly require a City lead inspection unless a child registered a much higher blood lead level of 15 mcg/dL, the City’s own Local Law 1 also set a goal of eliminating and preventing child lead poisoning, and the City had powerful tools available – including relevant data in DOHMH’s possession – that it failed to use to achieve that goal.

“Lead is poison – and no amount of it in a child’s blood is acceptable – period. Yet our investigation reveals how bureaucratic breakdowns and a lethargic approach to enforcement allowed children to fall through cracks and become exposed to toxic lead. As a City, we are defined by how we treat our children, but the City is failing in its responsibility to use all available means to eliminate childhood lead poisoning across the city. There has to be top-to-bottom change,” said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. “Any lead poisoning of our children must be treated as a five alarm fire, but the City isn’t utilizing basic tools at its disposal to extinguish the fires – even in the most problematic buildings it knows about. Nearly 3,000 children tested with elevated blood lead levels after the City was aware of a problem in their buildings. That is an outrage. The City needs to fully commit to rooting out lead exposure because half measures and haphazard strategies are failing. Fifteen years ago New York City set a goal to eliminate childhood lead poisoning once and for all – and for the health and safety of every single child – we must recommit to fulfilling that promise.”

In response to the investigation’s disturbing findings, the Comptroller called for an across-the-board overhaul of lead exposure mitigation and enforcement, calling on the City to:

• Proactively inspect all 9,671 buildings that the investigation found to be associated with one or more instances of childhood lead exposure and went uninspected, and do more going forward to coordinate agency responses to identify and remedy lead paint hotspots before more children are put at risk.
• Commit to fully funding the Administration’s LeadFreeNYC plan and equip agencies with the resources they need to fulfill the City’s goal of eliminating lead exposure. Currently, LeadFreeNYC has been allocated only $9 million toward its own estimated cost of $25 million.
• Direct HPD to fully use the powers assigned to the agency by Local Law 1 and to start by issuing violations and fines to landlords who have failed to do their part to remediate lead paint.
• Ensure every child is tested for lead exposure, as required by law. As of 2017, of all children under the age of three who should have been tested for lead poisoning as required by State law, 22,000 children – 20 percent – had not been tested.

Comptroller Stringer’s investigation found:

The City Failed to Leverage Its Own Data to Protect Children

• From 2013 through late 2018, despite the City’s having access through DOHMH to blood test evidence showing the exact location of children with lead exposure, the City never coordinated with HPD. As a result HPD never performed even a single inspection for lead paint in 9,671 buildings where one or more lead-exposed child resided. As many as 11,972 children tragically suffering from lead exposure lived in those buildings.
• 2,749 children tested positive for lead exposure after the City was made aware of a lead-exposed child in the same building.
• By responding only to resident complaints rather than proactively seeking lead exposure hotspots, HPD’s inspections never reached two-thirds or 63 percent of the buildings that were under its jurisdiction and associated with a case of child lead exposure.

Map 1: Uninspected Homes of Lead-Exposed Children
(In Buildings Subject to HPD Jurisdiction)

Due to their reliance on tenant complaints to initiate an investigation, HPD’s enforcement resources did not align with areas of high lead exposure. HPD’s Manhattan rate of inspection was 13 inspections per child with lead exposure, versus four inspections per child in Brooklyn – despite Brooklyn’s having six times more lead-exposed children than Manhattan in that time period.

Table 1: Top 15 Community Districts with the Highest Numbers of Children with Elevated Blood Levels

Table 3: Inspections per Documented Child-lead-exposure Case

City Does Not Adequately Test Children for Lead Exposure

• The City’s response is based on blood test results, but the City is likely undercounting lead-exposed children by failing to sufficiently test.
• As many as half of children are not adequately tested for lead exposure as required by State Law before turning three.
• 30 percent of children receive only one out of the two required tests.
• 20 percent of children have not been tested at all by age 3.

Table 4: Children Tested for Lead Poisoning Turning Age 3 in 2017

The percentage of children who have not been tested has increased over time.

Table 5: Percentages of Children Never Tested By Age 3, 2006-2017

City Fails to Enforce and Utilize Local Law 1

• Local Law 1 relies on the City’s landlords, overseen by HPD, to continually investigate for and safely address any lead-based paint hazards in their rental apartments “to prevent a child from becoming lead poisoned.” HPD has failed to utilize its substantial statutory authority to enforce and investigate landlords’ compliance with the law or take proactive measures, therefore leaving children exposed to lead poisoning.
• During the time covered by this investigation, HPD did not issue a single violation for landlords’ failures to make required annual notifications and inspections, and HPD did not conduct any audits to check landlords’ compliance under the law.
• HPD also did not issue a single violation to landlords who failed to comply with lead-based paint hazard control requirements during turnover between tenants.

In order to better protect children from lead exposure and ensure complete remediation of any lead hazards, Comptroller Stringer proposed a series of comprehensive recommendations for the City:

• Proactively inspect lead hotspots. HPD should leverage DOHMH data to proactively inspect all of the uninspected 9,761 buildings already associated with past instances of lead exposure. HPD should also better target buildings with presumed lead paint content in high lead exposure zones, and buildings with known histories of lead-based paint hazards.
• Fully Fund LeadFreeNYC. By following through on the many provisions of LeadFreeNYC, the City can likely drive the number of elevated blood lead level cases closer to zero. However, for the ambitious program to function, the City must provide the participating agencies with the funding they need to carry out their new mandate. For instance, HPD is now tasked with doing much more to police LL1 requirements, enforce the law in one and two family home rentals, and proactively audit. The City estimates the cost of these enforcement actions at $25 million over FY2020 to FY2023. However, the City’s FY2020 budget includes a total of only $9 million allocated over that period. The City must commit to its own plan and fully fund LeadFreeNYC.
• Dramatically Improve Enforcement of Key Aspects of Local Law 1. HPD must do much more to enforce all aspects of LL1, including landlords’ obligations to annually inspect for, identify, and remediate lead-based paint hazards in the apartments and common areas of the multiple dwellings built before 1960 and other specific buildings; and landlords’ obligations to remove lead-based paint hazards during apartment turnover. HPD should proactively investigate landlords’ compliance with these requirements and issue violations for compliance failures – actions it failed to take over the course of five years covered by the Comptroller’s investigation.

To read Comptroller Stringer’s full lead investigation, click here.

Photographs from Comptroller Stringer’s press conference will be available here.

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