Bloomberg Gets the Lead Out
It has been a breath of fresh air to see Mayor Bloomberg resist the more onerous provision of a lead-abatement bill making its way through the City Council. While the lead-paint issue is one with which observers of public health scares and junk science are quite familiar, the city has done fine without a lead law since a state appeals court overturned the previous lead abatement law, passed in 1999. But given the inevitability that the government is going to abhor this vacuum, Mr. Bloomberg has been doing an admirable job of trying to pass a moderate bill.
The mayor objects to two key provisions: one increasing the number of children covered by the law and the other setting a tight timeframe for landlords to take care of lead problems. The commissioner of health, Thos. Frieden, has complained that making the law cover all children under 7, as opposed to all children under 6, broadens the protected population too much. It is the youngest children, toddlers really, who are most at risk for lead poisoning. Increasing the number of children being monitored by 15% just means less resources where they are needed.
The commissioner of housing preservation and development, Jerilyn Perine, has objected to giving landlords only 14 days to correct a lead-hazard violation. Such a tight timeframe is not needed, and is impractical and arrogant. It barely gives landlords enough time to find a contractor. In Boston, owners get 30 days just to hire a contractor, according to Ms. Perine. They get another 60 days to do the actual corrective work. In Baltimore, she said, owners have months to bring buildings into compliance.
Since the 1970s, lead paint, and other industrial uses of lead, have been under assault by activists who claim that lead exposure is an epidemic threat to our nation's children. While high levels of lead exposure can harm humans, there is little scientific basis for the assertion that low levels of lead exposure being enforced in New York impair children's mental development. There is no reason to use a lead law to make it even less desirable to own property and provide housing in New York City. Or to force abatement actions in low-risk settings, which can cause greater exposure to lead than if the violation had been left alone. It would be nice to see the mayor's fight over lead wake him up to the onerousness of other regulations in the city as he moves toward his re-election campaign.
