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Peeling paint is often a factor in high lead levels in children.
Fourteen percent, or one in seven Highland Park children tested had elevated levels of lead in their blood in 2016, a rate higher than any other city evaluated by the state, the Detroit News reports, citing data released Tuesday by the state Department of Health and Human Services.
That compares to Flint where 2.4 percent of children tested had elevated blood lead levels in 2016.
Lead levels can come from such things as peeling lead paint and water.
Karen Bouffard of the News reports:
Though elevated blood lead levels have declined statewide more than 42 percent since 1998, exposure continues to endanger children who live in Michigan’s older urban communities, according to the 2016 Data Report from the state’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.
Elevated lead blood levels were found in 14 percent of children tested in Highland Park, a community of 11,000 residents. Highland Park is surrounded on all sides by Detroit, which had the second highest proportion of kids with elevated blood levels at 8.8 percent.
Both cities have high poverty levels and are filled with old homes with peeling lead paint, a major risk factor for lead poisoning. It’s a common problem nationwide in cities that have large numbers of homes built before 1978, when lead-based paints were banned from use in housing.
