Lead makes us sicker and less safe. So why do Memphis leaders overlook it?

Denedra Levy’s two youngest children play in the yard of their new rental home in Frayser. In 2022, both were diagnosed with elevated blood lead levels. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50

After Denedra Levy and her family moved to South Memphis in 2022, her 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son kept getting sick – vomiting, loss of appetite and headaches.

One October morning, she and the two children took the 36 route Downtown and transferred to the Poplar Avenue bus that would carry them to their pediatrician’s office. There, the doctor decided to test the kids’ blood lead levels. Levy thought little of it; they’d been tested before and were fine. But the doctor returned with bad news: Her kids had ingested an alarming amount of lead.

Levy’s mind raced. She thought of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and the news reports about the affected kids. She asked the doctor if she could prescribe medicine, only to be told there was none.

The pediatrician started to explain the toxin’s long-term effects and told her to move from her aging rental home. Immediately.

“It hurt because (my kids) are all I got,” Levy said. “I cried.”

In 2023, 389 kids in Shelby County tested positive for lead poisoning, according to state data, which is likely a significant undercount since only 17% of young kids were tested. Most of these kids live in the city’s older, lower-income neighborhoods, and they ingested lead primarily through dust in their homes and yards from old lead paint and other sources.

Because most lead-poisoned children don’t have levels high enough to cause immediate health issues, elevated levels often go unnoticed, undiagnosed and untreated. But the consequences are lifelong.

The research is clear: Lead can throw children’s brains off track, especially children under 6. Kids who have elevated levels of lead in early childhood perform worse in school than their peers and face a higher risk of developmental disabilities, mental illnesses and, later in life, cardiovascular disease. The toxin also weakens the brain’s ability to control impulses. Without that internal safeguard, lead-poisoned kids can be more prone to commit crimes when they reach adulthood.

Lead poisoning undermines local efforts to improve education, health and public safety — some of the most critical issues facing Shelby County. But local leaders invest little attention and few local dollars to address the crisis, though doing so has proven cost-effective elsewhere. Faced with understaffing and pandemic-era disruptions, the City of Memphis and Shelby County’s federally funded efforts to remove lead from homes and test kids’ blood are slumping. In 2018, the city and county removed lead hazards from more than 150 homes. In 2023, that number was 67.

Tavita Conway, who runs the city’s program, told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism that her team has long struggled with insufficient public awareness, funding and assistance from other parts of local government. Forced to focus on the federal grants’ specific, short-term requirements, her team didn’t stand a chance of systematically addressing the public health crisis posed by lead even before the pandemic impeded them.

“We’re putting Band-Aids on,” she said. “It’s certainly frustrating. … I feel responsible for every child.

“There’s no reason someone should be lead-poisoned in this day and time.”

Lower test scores, fewer graduations

Levy’s youngest son, now 5, loves Power Rangers — especially the red and blue ones. He likes singing Cocomelon songs. And he really enjoys school.

Unfortunately, learning is not his strong suit, his mom said. He struggled to pay attention when she taught him shapes and colors. He doesn’t seem to have a major developmental delay — as extreme lead poisoning can cause — but she’s confident lead altered his brain.

Do you live in a home built before 1978 and have children under 6 living with you or visiting often? Call 901-636-5323 to see if you qualify for a free inspection — and possible renovation — of your home. To find out when your home was built, go to the Shelby County Assessor of Property website or Realtor.com.

Students with elevated levels of lead are more frequently diagnosed with intellectual disabilities or labeled “substantially below proficient” at school. And the toxin accounts for part of the Black-white test score gap because Black kids are more likely to live in old homes.

These effects add up and rub off on classmates. One recent study by American University professor Claudia Persico and her colleagues found that the number of lead-poisoned children in any given school has a significant impact on whether their peers will be suspended, graduate from high school and attend college. In fact, having more lead-poisoned classmates appears to have far greater effects on a student than having more low-income classmates.

“Lead poisoning harms everyone's children because pretty much all kids go to school with kids that are lead-exposed,” Persico said. “It's one of those things that is secretly a really huge problem that we sort of overlook and pretend is not really a big deal.”

A major health risk ignored by too many doctors

While a kid’s brain is the primary concern when lead is ingested, it isn’t the only part of the body that can sustain damage.

Studies have shown lead exposure can increase victims’ blood pressure, damage their kidneys and cause a variety of other issues.

U.S. children have far less lead in their blood than in the 1960s, as the removal of lead from paint and gasoline made the country a far healthier place. However, this decline also allowed the toxin to fade into obscurity, which worries experts, given the unacceptable remaining rates of lead poisoning.

If you have kids under the age of 6 who either live in or regularly visit a home, daycare or preschool built before 1978, please have them tested for lead poisoning. To schedule a free test, call the Shelby County Health Department at 901-222-9582 or contact your child’s pediatrician. If you’re not sure when your home was built, it is usually listed on the Shelby County Assessor of Property website and Realtor.com.

Even pediatricians have become less alert to lead’s threat, meaning they test far fewer children than they should, according to Michelle Miller, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes.

“We’ve often heard (from doctors), ‘Well, they took the lead out of paint in 1978, so that shouldn’t be a problem anymore,’” Miller said. “They don't always think about how many older housing units still exist.”

A cause of crime overlooked by public safety leaders

After dozens of studies, researchers consider it settled science: Lead poisoning is a cause of crime.

One recent study found that a moderate increase in a kid’s blood lead level corresponds with a 5% higher likelihood of committing a crime, and another one found exposures to lead place boys at an almost 60% higher probability of facing juvenile detention.

Researchers told MLK50 it’s easy to see why damage to the part of the brain responsible for self-control and aggression causes criminal activity.

“It’s very well established that lead is a neurotoxin and affects …  a part of the brain that’s extremely important for behavior and things like impulse control,” said Kevin Schnepel, an economist studying crime at Canada’s Simon Fraser University. “When we think about violent crime in particular, oftentimes it is (being unable to control a) response to some sort of emotional cue or shock.”

Despite the science, local lead experts say their work isn’t taken seriously as a public safety solution.

Anita Tate, who runs the Shelby County Lead Hazard Control Program, has been trying to change this. In 2022, Tate compiled a bundle of research and mailed it to the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission, pleading with them to meet with her. She never heard back. Crime Commission president Bill Gibbons told MLK50 he doesn’t remember receiving it.

Tate also used her free time one Saturday in 2022 to attend a public safety forum that Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis attended. She asked Davis if she’d considered the role lead could be playing in the city’s crime problems.

Davis brushed the question off.

MPD spokesman Lieutenant Bill Kaiser told MLK50 the police department is “unaware of any research conducted by either the Centers for Disease Control or the Environmental Protection Agency concerning a link between lead poisoning and the crime that occurs within the city of Memphis. Therefore, Chief Davis would be unable to give an informed response.”

Although there don’t seem to be specific studies that examine the link between lead and crime in Memphis, the CDC does list criminal behavior as an effect of lead exposure.

Solutions are cost-effective, see little investment

The City of Memphis and Shelby County invest little in their anti-lead efforts.

The city-owned utility, Memphis Gas Light and Water Division, is in the midst of replacing lead water lines — primarily using federal dollars — but advocates have been frustrated by the utility’s pace. And, research shows that while lead water lines do endanger children — especially infants drinking formula — they do not appear as harmful as lead paint.

Experts recommend having your water tested for lead if you have children under the age of 6 and especially if you are feeding an infant formula. To have your water tested for free by MLGW, please call 901-320-3962 or email waterlab@mlgw.org.

Both the city and county lead paint remediation programs run exclusively off of HUD grants, with no local or state dollars.

The two programs employ fewer than 10 people combined. And the Shelby County Health Department has just four employees committed to the issue full-time, tasked with increasing testing among the county’s more than 70,000 kids under 6.

Each of these teams was hit hard by pandemic-era disruptions.

During the height of COVID-19, the programs didn’t send employees or contractors into people’s homes, and testing by the health department and pediatricians fell off a cliff. Lead removal specialists that the programs had partnered with for years left for other government programs or private opportunities.

For Tate’s program, the pandemic compounded problems created by a regrettable decision in 2019. Back then, county officials briefly decided to close the program. Though they quickly reversed course, the county had to start from scratch and hire a new team, which took until November 2020.

In the last couple of years, the lead paint removal programs have slowly been re-growing the number of homes they remediate each year. And Conway and Tate hope they’ll be able to return to pre-pandemic levels soon.

But even if her program reaches pre-COVID levels, Conway said it won’t be nearly enough to protect the city’s children. To accomplish that, Conway said her team needs help from across the community.

Like Tate, Conway would love help from schools. Additionally, she’d love to get the City of Memphis Code Enforcement involved. Code enforcement officers aren’t trained to look for lead paint or refer properties to Conway’s program. And while code enforcement administrators have expressed a desire to help, they’ve told her they don’t have enough funding to take on this extra responsibility.

The pandemic also affected the number of kids being tested for lead — though it had been falling since 2016, when almost 18,000 of the county’s children under 6 were tested. Since 2021, fewer than 13,000 local kids have been screened each year — or about 17% of the county’s kids under 6.

However, some help is on the way. The Shelby County Health Department recently received a new HUD grant — $1.5 million over four years — designated primarily for lead testing. With it, the department’s lead team will add employees and purchase a mobile testing facility, which they’ll take to health fairs and children’s homes.

“This is a huge step for us,” said Kasia Smith-Alexander, the administrator in charge of the department’s lead testing program.

Catching lead poisoning through testing greatly improves children’s life outcomes, according to a 2018 study by Schnepel and a colleague. When tests reveal elevated blood lead levels, parents are encouraged to feed their kids low-fat, low-calorie diets that have been proven to help and are connected with lead paint remediation programs or encouraged to move. The study found these steps put children such as Levy’s at a far lower risk of facing lead-induced problems than kids whose lead poisoning went undetected.

Schnepel’s is one of many studies that have proven investments in lead testing and prevention to be quite cost-effective.

A 2009 study published by the National Institute of Health found that each dollar invested into lead paint programs like the city’s and county’s saves society at least $17.

“(Investing in lead programs) is almost like a no-brainer,” Schnepel said. “It’s money that’s well spent.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Memphis leaders invest little to address lead-poisoning crisis