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In November 2018, Darlene Medley received a letter in the mail from her doctor saying her 2-year-old twin sons had been poisoned by lead.

Medley, her twins and her seven other children had been living in a rented house on the northside of Syracuse for several months. As part of state-mandated lead testing, the twins received tests that involved a prick on the finger to draw blood.

The Onondaga County Health Department defines an elevated blood level of lead as anything higher than five micrograms per deciliter of blood.

One twin’s test showed nine micrograms, Medley said. The other’s showed 12.

Despite the presence of lead in the paint of Medley’s home, her landlord did not provide her a hotel or another property. Instead, Medley and her nine children remained in the house as the landlord hired contractors to paint over the cracks in the lead paint on her wall.

The family still lives in the house, and the twins meet with a mental health therapist weekly to monitor their development.

“When I was younger, lead poisoning — you heard about it, but it wasn’t really a thing,” Medley said. “So that’s why I wasn’t really worried about it until the health department started showing up and they’re talking about how it affects the brain. … Now I need to pay attention. Now I need to listen.”

About 9% of children tested for lead poisoning in the city of Syracuse in 2020 had elevated levels, according to data published by the Onondaga County Health Department.

The percentage of children in Onondaga County with elevated levels of lead in their blood has decreased dramatically in the past few years — in 2012, the rate exceeded 17% in Syracuse. But throughout the eight years — from 2012 to 2020 — that the data covers, the city shows a significantly higher proportion of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood than Onondaga County as a whole.

In 2020, the percentage of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood was about 4%, less than half of the city’s rate.

Dr. Indu Gupta, Onondaga County’s health commissioner, said young children should be tested regularly to catch higher levels of lead exposure early.

New York state requires the testing of all children for lead poisoning at the age of one and two and a risk assessment at each visit from birth to age 6, according to the county Health Department’s website.

Gupta said high levels of exposure to lead could slow down a child’s intellectual and physical development.

“They are subtle signs,” she said. “It impacts your growth and development, which impacts the brain. So that’s why there’s so much focus on it at this point, and it’s a public health issue.”

While the city’s rate for elevated levels of lead is 9%, levels drastically vary in different areas of the city.

Data published by CNY Vitals, which creates data visualizations for public health issues in the region, shows downtown and urban areas of the city have much higher lead exposure levels than suburban areas. In Census Tract 54, which is southwest of Syracuse University, over 26% of children had elevated levels in 2018.

Ivana Xie | Asst. Digital Editor

Census Tract 54, according to U.S. Census data, has a population of 2,376 — almost 36% of whom are below the poverty line.

Frank Ridzi is the vice president of Central New York Community Foundation, which advocates for specific issues including safe housing through initiatives such as CNY Vitals. The higher rate of lead exposure in downtown areas is a result of older housing, he said.

In 1978, the federal government passed a law banning consumer use of lead-based paint. But homes built before that year are more likely to have lead in their paint, Ridzi said.

“The city is much older,” Ridzi said. “A lot of suburbs have newer housing. Plus, there is a socioeconomic difference in that there’s more poverty in the city.”

Since it just takes a tiny amount of lead to expose a child to dangerous levels, Ridzi said, the community has to do better to eliminate contact points like high friction surfaces that could erode to reveal lead paint underneath.

“We definitely want to see (the percentages of children with elevated lead levels) go down to zero. It’s completely preventable,” he said. “It’s undermining all the other investments that we as a community are making in our children’s future.”

Tenants of housing complexes in Syracuse regularly reach out to Palmer Harvey, founder of the Syracuse Tenants Union, to say their child got sick from issues with their house. But those cases rarely result in holding the landlord accountable, she said.

Harvey said the power dynamic between landlords and tenants, particularly in low-income areas of the city, means tenants are afraid to fight back.

“It’s a fear-based system,” Harvey said. “They’re so afraid they’re going to be kicked out. They’re worried about leaky rooms, but what about that paint that’s chipping on the wall? They don’t know.”

Over three years after she found out her twin children had been poisoned by lead, Medley now works with Families for Lead Freedom Now, an advocacy group in the city. She said the power dynamic between landlords and tenants needs to change, especially when flaws in the property cause irreparable damage.

“(I wish landlords would say) ‘You know what? I would hate for this to happen to my children. I’m sorry,’” she said. “But instead they’re going to keep looking at me as a commodity.”

Published on February 10, 2022 at 12:16 am

Contact Richard: rcperrin@syr.edu | @richardperrins2