The bill being pushed yesterday by Council Member Bill Perkins sounds to us like a gift to the trial bar. By defining lead dust as hazardous, shortening the time allotted to landlords to correct lead violations, and requiring that construction workers be certified in lead paint safety measures, the bill would ensure little more than that the only ones who will benefit are the kinds of lawyers whose ads plaster the subway cars.

The city’s health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, told the City Council this bill risks diverting resources from areas with more pressing lead problems, such as central Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. “To divert the focus away from these areas carries the risk of delaying, not accelerating, the problem,” Mr. Frieden said. This sounds reasonable enough given the likely $100-million-plus cost anticipated by both the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget and the Independent Budget Office.

All of this money will be spent to abate a problem that may not even be a problem. As has been noted on these pages before, the research is anything but conclusive linking low-level lead exposure to learning and behavioral problems. The studies that purport to show a link do not deal convincingly with other variables, such as social and economic factors. Before 1970, a person was not considered contaminated unless the level of lead in the blood passed 60 micrograms per deciliter. Today, that number is 10 micrograms per deciliter, set by an overly cautious federal government. Were the millions of people who fell between those numbers in the last few decades poisoned and irreparably harmed? We know what the lawyers would say — but the public doesn’t have to buy it.