In Flint, Mich., testing has found lead levels of more than 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood in 4 percent of that city’s children. The result is national outrage.

In neighborhoods of New Orleans and Boston, New York and Baltimore, across the country in urban pockets much the same size as Flint, those same levels are regularly found in up to 25 percent of children.

“That hasn’t been getting the same kind of attention,” says Howard Mielke, a professor in the department of pharmacology of Tulane University whose research includes mapping lead blood levels across urban populations. “Maybe what’s happening in Flint will shine a spotlight on the fact that lead risk is everywhere.”

Mielke and other experts agree that the outrage over Flint is well warranted. The fact that the problem was created by one government entity and then ignored by several others makes it particularly heinous, they say. But they would also like to see some of the same call to action for other neighborhoods where Flint-like levels of exposure are the norm.

“I think it’s perfectly appropriate to rally around Flint,” says Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and dean for global health at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “But people need to realize that Flint is not an isolated example and there are places that are even worse. It’s happening all over the country and it’s tightly tied to race, ethnicity and economic circumstances.”

Then he starts ticking off locations: “Central Harlem. Bushwick. Roxbury in Boston. Baltimore is probably the worst. New Orleans, another city that has lead paint and poorly maintained housing.”

Unlike Flint, where the source of the lead is drinking water, the cause in most other places is paint and soil. Until 1978 all paint contained lead, and until 1996, when lead was finally banned in gasoline, car fumes mixed with soil, remaining toxic for decades. Young children explore the world by putting it in their mouths, and both paint chips from the floor and dirt from outside play carry the lead into their bodies. The younger the brain, the more vulnerable it is to toxins, and the damage is irreversible — causing such problems as learning disabilities, attention deficits, reduction in IQ and anger-management issues.

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the invisible damage caused by lead is what happens when the element is eliminated. In several studies around the country, Landrigan says, researchers graphed the drop in lead blood levels in a community after lead was banned in gasoline there, and then graphed the murder rate in those same communities 20 years later (when the children in the original graph reached adulthood). “The slope of the decrease was exactly the same,” he says.

Other studies, he says, have shown that the lead levels in the blood of incarcerated youth are higher than those of non-incarcerated youth from the same neighborhoods.

The demonstrable dangers of lead exposure mean that children living in high-lead pockets of cities today are “condemned by where they live,” Mielke says. His research, he explains, has personal roots, beginning in 1983 when he had recently moved to St. Paul, Minn., and his then 3-year-old daughter had a routine blood test before eye surgery. Her blood levels were high (doctors say there is no safe level; any lead is too much). Mielke was already an expert, having worked on a map of lead exposure while an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore. He was alarmed that even with his awareness he had not been able to protect his child.

To find the source of her exposure, “I followed her through her day, taking samples from play areas,” he says. That’s how he learned “her childcare center playground was basically a hazardous waste site. It was an ordinary residential backyard, but it was close to the thruway, and the fumes contaminated the soil.” He worked for years to have lead banned from gasoline.

That the incidence of lead poisoning in American children dropped from 5 in 11 down to 1 in 11 since the gasoline ban took effect illustrates that prevention does work, he and other experts say. It also illustrates the imbalance between those who can afford to eliminate lead from their lives — using certified renovation contractors, conducting clearance tests of their environments, etc. — and those who cannot.

Landrigan notes that even while offering resources to the city of Flint, the Centers for Disease Control is cutting funding for New York City programs that teach low-income families to recognize and avoid the hazards of lead.

“The answer is more screening, more education, more remediating of lead paint, and instead they are doing less,” he says. (Calls to the New York City Department of Health were not returned.) The resources “belatedly” being showered on Flint, he says, are “what’s needed elsewhere in the country as well.”

CLICK FOR SLIDESHOW: Fred, the handyman at the Shiloh Commons, installs a new water filter in a residence Jan. …

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A massive winter storm that dumped as much as 3 feet of snow on the eastern United States raised flood waters in communities up and down the Atlantic Coast Saturday, closing roads and prompting evacuations.

The first round of flooding came with the morning tide. As water began overflowing into streets in some towns again Saturday night, officials said the nighttime flooding wasn't expected to be as severe.

A string of resort towns was temporarily isolated Saturday morning by floodwater that inundated homes and restaurants.

"A lot of properties have water in them. But it may not be until later Sunday that they can assess the damage," said Diane Wieland, a spokeswoman for Cape May County.

Officials in other states, from North Carolina to New York, expressed similar concerns. By late Saturday morning, some people already had seen enough havoc.

"When the water just started rushing down, it was as impressive as some of the videos you saw of Japan during the tsunamis," said Jason Pellegrini, owner of Steak Out restaurant in Sea Isle City, who was trapped inside by floodwaters. "It came in that fast."

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Coastal flooding from a winter snowstorm inundates houses along New York Avenue, Saturday, Jan. 23, …

Another restaurant, The Lobster House, was partly submerged by the rising tide more than 20 miles away in Cape May.

"It touched everywhere," said Keith Laudeman, the third-generation owner of the nearly century-old establishment on Cape May Harbor. "It even got to the equipment we moved and never thought would get touched."

The water quickly receded and Laudeman said he has a crew of people preparing to clean the place so they can reopen in the coming days.

In Delaware, flooding closed a popular route to the state's beaches and forced about a dozen people to leave the low-lying community of Oak Orchard. In Ocean City, Maryland, Delmarva Power cut electricity to hundreds of customers as storm surge flooding submerged equipment used to power the downtown area.

Gale warnings are in effect through Sunday morning along the North Carolina coast, the National Weather Service said, with winds of 30 mph expected along with rough seas.

Officials in New Jersey were assessing damage caused by the flooding. Firefighters went into a flooded area of Sea Isle City to battle a blaze at another restaurant that may have been linked to the high waters.

___

Finley reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporters Randall Chase in Dover, Delaware, and Ed Donahue in Washington contributed to this report.

Major flooding hits the Atlantic Coast

Surging waters wrought by the ongoing winter storm are inundating seaside towns from New York to North Carolina.
Evacuations, road closings

Fish skeletons, dead birds, and fishing boats sit abandoned on the desiccated stretch of land that was once the second-largest lake in Bolivia. Lake Poopó is now practically bone-dry, leaving species decimated and hundreds of people without jobs.

The lake—once twice the size of Los Angeles—has shrunk down to just 2 percent of its previous size, The Associated Press reports. It was officially declared evaporated in December.

Officials cite a drought fueled by El Niño weather patterns as the primary culprit for the lake’s disappearance. Located in the semiarid Andean plains at 12,000 feet above sea level, the 977-square-mile lake has dried up and rebounded in the past. But this time, experts don’t believe it will recover.

RELATED: NASA: El Niño’s Worst Is Yet to Come

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing the azure mirror of Poopó again,” Milton Perez, a Universidad Tecnica researcher, told the AP. “I think we’ve lost it.”

That’s because El Niño weather events are becoming stronger and more frequent because of rising global temperatures, leaving the lake little time to replenish itself after a dry season. “It’s only going to get worse,” Perez said. The area has seen a temperature increase of 0.9 degrees Celsius over the past 60 years, causing water from the lake to evaporate roughly three times as fast, according to Perez.

As the water has disappeared, so have the people who depended on the lake as a source of livelihood. More than half of the people living in the nearby village of Untavi have left in the past three years.

While climate change has fueled the lake’s disappearance, locals also point to the government’s mismanagement of water sources.

Much of Lake Poopó’s water came from the Desaguadero River, which has been diverted for mining and agriculture. In recent years, the flow of water into the Lake Poopó fell to a trickle.

“Something could have been done to prevent the disaster,” Angel Flores, head of a local group attempting to save the lake, told the AP. “Mining companies have been diverting water since 1982.”

Government officials dismiss this claim, saying climate change is the primary cause of the lake’s disappearance, but are still hopeful Lake Poopó will once bounce back one more time. Bolivian officials have requested $140 million in aid from the European Union in hopes of replenishing the lake.

A UN panel on humanitarian assistance has called for a global tax to support UN activities. The proposal will be discussed at the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit at Istanbul this May.

“Fewer proposals at the UN are more dangerous than this one,” said Austin Ruse, President of C-Fam. “It must be stopped.”

The UN has never had an independent source of income, but has relied on voluntary contributions from Member States from its founding. Donor nations have always had the freedom to withdraw their funding, as the U.S. did for several years over the Oil-for-Food Scandal.

UN agencies and bureaucrats have long coveted a revenue source of their own, without accountability to donor nations. The current proposal, coming under the guise of humanitarian assistance, would provide this uncontrolled revenue stream.

“Having to rely on contributions has been at least a small check on UN radicalism,” said Ruse. “If that check disappears, we will see an unchecked source of funding, taken from regular people all over the world, that will be used for abortion on demand and the spread of the homosexual agenda.”

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The danger lies in the ideological divide between the General Assembly of Member States and the UN bureaucracy and agencies. Even when the General Assembly decides a question, bureaucrats will often ignore it and attempt to impose their own agenda instead, especially on controversial issues such as transgenderism and abortion. Independent funding will only exacerbate this serious problem.

The recommendation for a global tax comes under the auspices of humanitarian assistance, which has become a remarkably elastic term in recent years. The Secretary General has used humanitarian crises to advance abortion even where it is against the law.


(LifeNews.com)