But the numbers are deceiving.
Look closer, and the statistics reveal that more than eight out of 10 of those children live in Baltimore. Look again, and it quickly becomes apparent that the vast majority of them, the most imperiled children in the state, live in three enclaves on the city’s east and west sides.
Few slums in the country are more efficient at poisoning children with lead, experts say.
In a section of East Baltimore known as “Zombieland,” around Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School, seven out of 10 children tested have elevated lead levels in their bloodstream — and one out of every five has been poisoned, according to records from the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Many will suffer mental disabilities that will last a lifetime.
“And it’s happening in a state with some of the strictest lead-control laws in the country,” said Stephanie Pollack, a senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston and one of the nation’s foremost experts on lead.
“The problem is, they’re not enforcing their own laws effectively. And they haven’t figured out yet how to clean up the economic disaster that is Baltimore’s housing stock. It takes will, serious will, to dig yourself out of a hole as deep as the one Baltimore is in. And until you do, you’re going to continue poisoning your kids.”
Such assessments followed an article in The Sun last weekend detailing how slumlord James M. Stein — the silent real estate partner of convicted drug lord George A. Dangerfield Jr. — exploited gaps in the city’s antiquated enforcement system to reap a fortune from more than 1,000 houses he controlled through some 70 corporations.
On Wednesday, prosecutors filed the first of five civil housing cases against companies owned by Stein, alleging he has left a slum shell in the 1800 block of N. Regester St. open and vacant for more than two years. The case is scheduled to be heard Jan. 4.
More than 80 children were poisoned by lead at addresses owned or rented by Dangerfield and Stein, but neither was prosecuted. Amid mounting revelations this week, their case has been cited as emblematic of the breakdowns in Maryland’s lead protection system at every level of government.
Mayor Martin O’Malley responded by ordering three of his deputy mayors and his entire Cabinet to conduct an intensive review of the city’s enforcement system aimed at overhauling it “from top to bottom.”
“Absolutely, we have not prosecuted cases as we should have, we have not had the level of cooperation between city agencies that we should have, and we have not done nearly enough to protect the city’s poorest children from lead poisoning,” said city Health Commissioner Dr. Peter L. Beilenson. “But that is about to change, and change dramatically.”
Records from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Centers For Disease Control suggest much needs to be fixed.
The state has one of the most thorough rental registration and lead inspection laws in the nation, but the attorney general’s office does not have a full-time staff lawyer assigned to prosecute landlords who fail to comply.
And the State Department of the Environment employs just five inspectors to patrol Maryland for violators, producing fewer than 100 legal actions last year and $15,000 in fines for landlords who failed to register.
The result: Less than half of the landlords in the state have registered their units or had them certified as safe for children to live in. Among the most seriously harmed children in Maryland — those with more than 20 micrograms of lead in a unit of their blood — more than 80 percent were found to be living in unregistered rental units.
“It’s great that we have a law,” said Ruth Ann Norton of the Maryland Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. “But if we don’t enforce it — if we’re still poisoning an average of a thousand kids a year in Baltimore — do we really have a law at all?”
In a city with more than 15 times the national average of lead-poisoned children — a city in which slumlords have been cited for major violations of lead laws more than 1,100 times in the past decade — few property owners, if any, have been prosecuted.
The reason: The Baltimore state’s attorney’s office has never had a single prosecutor assigned to the cases. And the backlog of unanswered criminal complaints from city health inspectors extends for years.
In the city’s three worst slum neighborhoods, more than 60 percent of the housing stock is owned by speculators — including drug dealers, bankruptcy and mortgage fraud artists, and out-of- state corporations. The enclaves produce about half the lead poisoning cases recorded in Maryland every year.
But neither the city nor the state conducts pre-emptive lead inspections in the neighborhoods. Rather, houses are inspected only after a child is reported poisoned, and only on a case-by- case basis. Even when a landlord is known to have repeatedly poisoned children, no attempt is made to target his properties or corporations for enforcement.
And a review of Health Department records shows that almost half of the 2,870 addresses cited for lead violations in the city in the past decade have gone unrepaired. In short, one of two houses confirmed to be hazardous to children has not been fixed.
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Faced with similar problems, Milwaukee, a city of similar size, passed a groundbreaking ordinance this year that requires the owners of more than 600 substandard rental units on the city’s north and south sides to get rid of lead hazards by May or face prosecution.
As an incentive, contractors hired by the city strip, repair and repaint their windows free under a $3 million grant from HUD. The reason: Windows are the most hazardous and expensive components to repair on houses covered with lead-based paint.
“We’ve been at it for about seven months now, and we already have 300 houses completely certified,” said Amy Murphy, director of the Milwaukee Health Department lead prevention program. ” And we’ve got the average cost per house down to between $1,600 and $1,700.
“When you consider the money we spend on special education, medical care and everything else on one lead-poisoned child, this program will pay for itself many times over. The whole point is to target the worst component of the worst houses in the neighborhoods that are producing the most cases — and throw everything you’ve got at them.”
Sun research librarian Robert R. Schrott contributed to this article.