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Recommendations to Governor Frank O'Bannon by IKE's Lead Poisoning Prevention Task Force
Finalized on April 26, 2000
Recommendation #4
Encourage school districts serving at-risk neighborhoods to require blood lead testing.
Action: Strongly encourage and support school districts that serve at-risk neighborhoods identified by ISDH to exercise their authority under IC 20-8.1-7-15 and require blood lead testing as a condition for attending school.
The threat from lead has been obvious since the early 1970s. In fact, in 1973, public school districts were given the authority under IC-20-8.1-7-15 to require that all children who attended the school have a blood lead test as a condition for attending school.
In the intervening 27 years, the threat has diminished substantially. Lead is no longer used in gasoline. Lead smelters are under tight controls (assuming IDEM finalizes its proposal not to make the rules less stringent to meet federal standards). And lead was banned from paint. As a result, the current threat of lead poisoning varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. Low-income neighborhoods with older tenant housing in urban areas are at the highest risk.
With its outstanding geographical information system capability, ISDH can identify the census blocks or school districts where children are most likely to have lead poisoning (assuming it has a complete set of positive and negative testing results).
Unfortunately, testing a child in preparation for school is often too late. While lead can continue to cause damage after age six, the most severe and permanent damage occurs while the child is younger - especially before age two. Despite this downside, testing at-risk six-year-olds has the following advantages:
- These children are likely to present behavioral problems for the school district. If a school district is aware that lead may be a cause of the problem, it can better manage the child.
- Testing the child will make the family aware of the problem so they could test siblings to help prevent their prolonged poisoning.
- Testing will allow the school district and the health department to identify housing that presents an ongoing problem so the health department can address it.
- Allow ISDH to better understand the relationship between lead poisoning and school performance and behavior to develop more effective programs.
Despite their authority and the serious nature of lead threats, it appears that no school district is exercising its authority to require testing prior to entering school.
The IKE Task Force believes that Indiana needs to:
- Identify those schools districts that have serious, potential lead poisoning problems;
- Work with the at-risk school districts to help them understand and adopt testing requirements; and
- Provide technical and financial assistance to at-risk school districts including free testing and followup information services.