By Will Atwater and Anne Blythe
Durham resident Midori Brooks is fighting a decades-long battle to free her family from lead exposure.
The 55-year-old’s struggle with this environmental issue traces back to the mid-1990s when she and her family lived in a rental house in west Durham. It was there that her three children came into contact with lead-contaminated dust.
When her oldest son was a toddler, she learned that he had a blood lead level of 28 micrograms per deciliter, she told NC Health News in 2022. Doctors described her son’s reading as “quite high,” requiring “quick action.” The Centers for Disease Control states that a child’s blood lead level of 3.5 to 5 micrograms per deciliter requires prompt attention.
“The summary report came back and said he would struggle the rest of his life with school and into the workforce,” Brooks said.
Three decades later, she’s still fighting lead — this time in a different house as a low-income homeowner. Her oldest son, dogged throughout his life by the effects of his early exposure to lead, has four children of his own. Three of them live with Brooks.
Lead, which can enter the body through inhalation or ingestion, is a neurotoxin that migrates to the brain, liver and kidneys after entering the bloodstream. The element eventually settles in bones and teeth, where it can accumulate over time. It can be especially harmful to young children, causing irreversible brain development problems, lower IQ and damage to the kidneys and nervous system. Very high lead levels could lead to seizures, unconsciousness and even death, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Several years ago, Brooks discovered that her home on the corner of Holloway and North Driver streets in downtown Durham has lead and asbestos contamination. With limited resources, she has turned to assistance from nonprofit organizations and government programs for renovation and remediation work. Thus far, this process has been riddled with delays.
New lead standards
Brooks continues to wait for assistance as stepped-up efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to rid the country’s infrastructure and homes of lead pipes crawls ahead. Just last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted a new rule that should result in the removal of lead dust from millions of homes across the country.
Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, came to Durham earlier this year to highlight the administration’s efforts to rid the country’s infrastructure and schools of lead water pipes and paints that continue to pose dangers for young and old, alike.
Some of these actions were highlighted during National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. The EPA announced its new standards on Oct. 24 for allowable levels of lead dust in homes built before 1978.
The final standards will minimize the lead-exposure risk of more than a million people annually, and as many as 326,000 children “under the age of six [and provide] public health and economic benefits up to 30 times greater than the costs,” according to a statement by the EPA.
“Too often our children, the most vulnerable residents of already overburdened communities, are the most profoundly impacted by the toxic legacy of lead-based paint,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.
“We can breathe a little easier now that the EPA has significantly lowered its dust lead standard to protect children,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a New York-based advocacy group.
Falling between the cracks
Despite the Biden Administration’s sustained effort that has poured hundreds of millions of federal dollars into programs targeting schools, childcare facilities and homes, people such as Brooks — low-income homeowners — find themselves caught up in the slow grind of government grant selection processes. Sometimes, they fall through the cracks.
The EPA estimates that there are “31 million pre-1978 houses that still contain lead based paint, and 3.8 million of them have one or more children under the age of six living there,” the release states.
The current initiatives advance the Biden Administration’s 2021 Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan, which was established to protect children from lead exposure.
During that year, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and the General Assembly approved Senate Bill 105, which allocated “$150 million of nonrecurring funds to address lead in water, asbestos, and lead-based paint inspections and abatement of hazards in NC public schools and licensed child care facilities.”
Under the EPA’s final standards, the allowable levels of lead paint dust have been lowered from the previous standard. The rule reduces the amount considered hazardous in dust to “any reportable level measured by an EPA-recognized laboratory,” according to the release. The release also states that the final rule lowers the level of lead dust allowable on floors, window sills and window troughs.
For instance, the current standard lowers the allowable amount of lead dust on floors from 10 micrograms per square foot to 5 micrograms per square foot. The allowable limit for window sills is 40 micrograms per square foot, down from 100 micrograms. The largest reduction from the previous standard to the current one is in window troughs. The previous level of 400 micrograms per square foot was reduced to 100 micrograms per square foot.
Road blocks
In 2019, the federal government awarded the City of Durham funding to perform lead abatement at high-risk sites throughout town. The funds, totaling more than $3 million, were earmarked for the city’s Lead-Based Paint Reduction Program and consisted of federal and city dollars.
To qualify, people had to be low-income Durham city residents, who owned or rented a home “built in 1978 or earlier, where children (ages 6 and under) reside or spend significant time,” according to a program information sheet posted by the city.
Unfortunately, the program only ran for one year (2020-2021), and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development did not renew the funding. It’s not clear how many of the 116 eligible homes received services.
What’s clear is that Brooks’ home was not one of them.
In 2023, Brooks contacted NC Health News and was excited to share that the city had found a contractor to do lead abatement work on the home that she’s lived in since 1995. However, the project was put on hold when Brooks couldn’t find affordable temporary housing for her family.
But she pressed on and started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to cover temporary housing for four weeks, which is the amount of time the contractor estimated for the job, Brooks said.
In July 2023, NC Health News reached out to Brooks to find out how things were going. In a text message, she said things were looking up. When asked if she knew when the work would start she said, “I don’t know. All I know is I got a safe space for me and my family.”
However, more roadblocks followed, and Brooks is still waiting.
Recently Brooks said she was told by City of Durham officials there was a problem with the work permit process and once that is resolved the project would move ahead.
It remains to be seen whether the Biden Administration’s latest initiative to lower the risk of lead dust exposure will help Brooks.
In February of 2024, Brooks shared the following with NC Health News about her current struggle. “We’ve been trying to get work done on this house way before the pandemic.”
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