Improving Kids' Environment is a partner in the Citizen's Healthy Homes Initiative with the Concerned Clergy and the Citizen's Multi-Service Center.  As a partner, IKE wrote a Needs Assessment for the Kennedy-King Park Neighborhood on Indianapolis' Near Northeast Side.  The Needs Assessment was published on August 23, 2003. Back to Main Report 

Indianapolis Citizen’s Healthy Homes Initiative

Kennedy-King Park Neighborhood Needs Assessment

Finding #9

Contractors Aggravate Conditions

1.                  A major contractor remodeled the Citizen’s Multi-Service Center and rehabbed an old Indianapolis Public School into a Community Resource Center for the CMSC.  The facilities – and the people that run them – are a true resource to the neighborhood.  By all outward appearances, the contractor did excellent work. 

But an invisible hazard remained.  Unfortunately, the old IPS school had paint with about 1% lead in it.  After the renovation, lead dust was found through the building.  The highest level was 134 times the EPA standard of 40 micrograms of lead dust per square foot of floor.  On the stage where children would play, there was enough lead dust in a square foot to poison four children.  The average level was 19 times the EPA standard.  Only the attic showed no signs of lead dust. 

The Citizen’s Multi-Service Center spent more than $50,000 to clean-up the lead dust so it was cleaner than EPA standards.  CHHI took 69 samples to confirm that the clean-up was properly done.  More than half of the samples showed no detectable levels of lead. 

After one area was cleaned, the contractor arranged for a subcontractor to repair a window.  Unaware of the hazard, the subcontractor also did not use lead-safe work practices to do the work.  An area that had no detectable levels of lead two weeks before now was 6.3 times EPA’s standard with enough lead in a square foot to poison two children.

Many contractors are unaware that Indiana presumes that all paint in a child-occupied facility or a home built before 1960 is lead-based paint unless proven otherwise by a licensed lead inspector or risk assessor.  They are also unaware that Indiana prohibits the use of dangerous work practices such as dry sanding, dry scraping or burning this paint or that Indiana requires that all exterior visible paint debris must be cleaned up within 48 hours of completing work. 

These contractors pose a serious risk to children’s health.  They threaten to undermine the safety and value of a home or building by leaving invisible hazards behind after they leave the job and cash the check. 

The invisible hazard at the Citizen’s Multi-Service Center was only found because CHHI offered a training course on lead dust sampling in the newly completed building.  The hazard remains hidden in thousands of homes and hundreds of child-occupied facilities throughout the City.