Mikaila Bonaparte has spent her entire life under the roof of the New York City Housing Authority, the oldest and largest public housing system in the country, where as a toddler she nibbled on paint chips that flaked to the floor. In the summer of 2016, when she was not quite 3 years old, a test by her doctor showed she had lead in her blood at levels rarely seen in modern New York.
A retest two days later revealed an even higher level, one more commonly found in factory or construction workers and, in some cases, enough to cause irreversible brain damage.
Within two weeks, a city health inspector visited the two Brooklyn public housing apartments where Mikaila spent her time — her mother’s in the Tompkins Houses; her grandmother’s in the Gowanus Houses — to look for the source of the lead exposure, records show. The inspector, wielding a hand-held device that can detect lead through multiple layers of paint, found the dangerous heavy metal in both homes. The Health Department ordered the Housing Authority to fix the problems.
The discovery spurred the Housing Authority to action: It challenged the results.
Rather than remove or cover the lead, the Housing Authority dispatched its own inspector who used a different test, documents show. The agency insisted that however Mikaila was poisoned, there was no lead in her apartments.
5 comments:
Not only did the city's EPA keep the lead tolerance standard 5 times higher than it should be (at 10 ppm from the supposed safety level of 2 parts ppm) but NYCHA "inspectors" also amateurishly redacted their reports with white out.
This needs to be a federal criminal case, so why is A.G. that Trump hired to replace Preet not reacting? It is clear this was ordered by top officials being de Faustio and Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and dutifully executed by their neoliberal underling Shoya Olatoye to quickly exacerbate the further deterioration of apartment buildings setting it up for privatization for RAD funding. All the while the residents get stressed out, children got poisoned and now they all get to freeze waiting for heat.
Demolition by neglect has never been so diabolically exploited like this. And committed by "progressive" "socialist" "liberals"
#impeachindictdeblasio
@ JQ LLC said...
I agree with you %100 !
This is a social/liberal goveremnt caused problem."Cradle to Grave"
If my room had peeling lead paint my family would have painted it. A $20 gallon of latax paint some elbow grease and the child would have been safe.
When possible Self reliance is better than waiting for government handouts !
This is the NYC nanny state at it's best.
Isn't this the same thing that brought down Chicago's public housing? Just curious but would love an answer if anyone knows. Thanks.
Anon:
thanks for agreeing, but these people aren't living there for free you know. Just like other dwelling from regular apartment buildings to the towers of park avenue and even those hideousities in LIC, Greenpoint, Williamsburg and downtown Brooklyn, the landlords and the owners are responsible for them and should maintain them properly.
Not every public housing tenant is a skilled carpenter, glazer, or even painter. They are being given handouts either, the only handouts that are being doled are to the predatory developers and financiers who are finally getting what they have been foaming at the mouth and rubbing their nipples for and that's privatization of NYCHA. And de Faustio (continuing the wretched indifference of past mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg while adding willful ignorance and criminal incompetence) and his vile Deputy Glen, the vampire calimari and Cool Hand Luke Walking Boss of the city plotting dept, made this all possible for her developer allies and her former company Goldman Sachs.
JQ - simple housekeeping like vacuuming would reduce the risk. A paint scraper is not too difficult to master. And simple painting is pretty easy.
In private (i.e. non NYCHA) apartments the landlords are responsible for this.
Sadly governmental agencies are not held to the same standards.
But I think the parents of children need to be held responsible to some degree.
Failure to protect their kids from paint chips is child neglect.
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