For years, Patrice Marshall kept a watchful eye over her four young children to protect them from gangs, drugs and other urban woes in her Humboldt Park neighborhood. But she never suspected the danger lurking in her own home.
In Marshall’s two-bedroom apartment, specks of lead paint chipped off walls, toxic dust particles hid in windowsills and deadly granules blanketed children’s toys. To Marshall’s naked eye, though, the home seemed safe, if a bit run-down.
It wasn’t until a blood-lead testing van rolled into the neighborhood that the 23-year-old mother learned the heart-sinking truth: All of her children suffered from lead poisoning, testing more than twice the limit thought to be safe.
But thanks to the van’s occupants and the community group that sponsored it, Marshall’s children received medical treatment. And the family, which exists mainly on public assistance, moved into a lead-free apartment it can afford.
“I’m just so relieved I could cry,” Marshall said as she sat in her new apartment with her children, including a recent addition, 1-year-old Kendrey. “Lord knows what could have happened to my babies. I’m afraid to think about it.”
Marshall’s relief stems from the efforts of the West Town Lead Project, a community-run program working to make the community free of lead and safe for children.
The $3.6 million three-year project, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is considered unusual. The program and a similar one in Providence, R.I., are the first community-based prevention programs that combine education, lead abatement and medical screening while concentrating on a small portion of a neighborhood, according to local and federal officials.
The community will gather Saturday with local politicians to cut the ribbon on the neighborhood’s newly proclaimed “Lead Safe Zone.”
Historically, health and housing officials took a canary-in-a-coal-mine approach to lead-paint problems–wait until a child tests positive. Then, send government workers into the neighborhood to clean up homes and provide health services.
The West Town Lead Project, on the other hand, uses neighborhood residents instead of public officials to get a head start on attacking the problem.
With the approval of landlords, workers test homes for lead levels, hoping to catch the problem before children become poisoned. If dangerous levels are found, the family is moved to temporary shelter while the home is cleaned up. In some cases, as in the Marshalls’, a new home is found.
“It’s a model program that has been very successful, and health officials and housing officials would like to see these types of programs applied around the country,” said Jerry Hershovitz, a spokesman with the CDC in Atlanta.
By many measures, the West Town Lead Project rates as successful, state and national officials say.
While the City of Chicago has spent between $4 million and $5 million from a HUD grant to abate 83 homes on Chicago’s South and West Sides, the West Town project spent about $2 million to abate 70 in a five-block stretch.
More Top Picks Best Sunrise Alarm Clocks For Heavy Sleepers
The group relocated 60 families into lead-safe apartments, tested 100 children for lead poisoning and helped bring overall blood-lead levels down in the area’s youth, say area health professionals. And the group also employed nearly a dozen people from the neighborhood.
Perhaps as important, though, West Town residents see a ray of hope in a community that has long been clouded by gangs, crime and poverty.
“There’s not a lot out there the community can point to and say, `Look, we’re proud of this,’ ” said Mavis Brown, who lives in the West Town neighborhood and serves as the lead health advocate on the project. “But they can with this project.”
Lead poisoning, caused by inhaling lead dust or chewing on lead paint, damages the brain and central nervous system. It can cause delayed learning, hyperactivity, hearing loss and growth retardation. Children are most susceptible because their bodies absorb lead more rapidly and because they tend to put things in their mouths.
Since the government outlawed lead-based paint in 1978, abatement and blood screenings have been done primarily by government agencies. And that, say lead-reduction activists, has caused problems.
Landlords who rent to low-income families often are reluctant to let government workers into their homes. Tenants, many of whom barely afford their rents, don’t dare complain for fear they will be kicked out. To complicate matters, some parents are scared they will be punished by social service workers if their child’s blood reveals high lead levels.
The West Town project sprung up four years ago when several local groups, including representatives from the Erie Health Center and the Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp., met to find ways to go beyond simply treating kids for lead poisoning.
They wanted a program where families could protect their children by learning about the dangers of lead paint, where grant money would help pay for lead abatement and relocation, and where poisoned children would receive medication. They also wanted the community to take a leading role in the project.
The group wrote a proposal and circulated it to dozens of non-profit groups and state and federal agencies, including the Illinois Department of Public Health.
About the same time, officials from the CDC and HUD had just launched a nationwide search for applicants for a unique lead-reduction prevention program they planned to initiate.
State officials sent in the application, and the West Town Project won the multimillion-dollar grant. With the grant in hand, West Town project officials had to sell their plan to the community.
They went to churches and parks and even door to door. They spent hundreds of hours in a roving van, enticing parents to have their children tested. They talked their way into homes to teach residents–many of whom had never heard of lead paint–about the dangers of toxic material. They prodded parents to bring their poisoned children to the clinic for monthly blood tests.
“It wasn’t easy, but we sold it because we gained their trust, and in the end, we empowered them to take control of their own living conditions,” said Heather Hastings, coordinator for the project.
Marshall, for one, blesses the day West Town Lead workers walked into her life.
“I don’t know a lot about this kind of medical stuff,” she said, “but I think they saved my kids’ lives.”