Rate of Lead-Poisoned Children in Cleveland Has Declined in Past Decade, City Says

The rate of lead-poisoned kids across Cleveland has declined in the past decade, according to a new report from the Department of Public Health.

But the city still faces challenges.

While the number of kids under 6 with moderate traces of lead poisoning has been halved since 2015, severe cases —the number of children with rates higher than 10 micrograms per deciliter—stayed roughly were they were ten years back.

Yet, after ten years of legislative progress, nonprofit work, advocacy campaigns and door-to-door remediation work, the number of young Clevelanders testing positive for traces of lead (13%) is still at least twice as high as kids living in Akron, Toledo, Columbus and Cincinnati. (It is less than East Cleveland, however, where the number is 30%).

Vinh Trinh, an epidemiologist at the Department of Public Health who worked on the report, believes Cleveland’s aging housing stock plays a big role. Lead paint wasn’t banned from residential use until 1978, when most of Cleveland’s homes were about a half century old.

“The whys are a little bit harder to explain,” he told Scene in a phone call on Tuesday. “It must be that the sources of lead poisoning are still present and in such a way that kids are still being exposed to these sources of lead.”

A new lead report from the Department of Public Health showed high rates of infection in children, and lower rates of testing, in Cleveland’s east side neighborhoods. Credit: City of Cleveland

But progress has been made. In 2015, Cleveland’s lead poisioning rates were among the highest in the country. Remediation—stripping a home of its lead-based paint—came mostly after a family’s kid tested positive for elevated blood lead levels.

A law forcing landlords to check their properties for lead wasn’t passed until 2019, the same year the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition formed. In early 2021, the city rolled out a Lead Safe Certification, requiring those landlords to prove their homes were lead-free before they could legally rent to tenants. That program was completed in 2023.

But what the DPH lead report does is show the complexities of the decades-long attempt to right the mistakes of the early 20th century. The city and a handful of nonprofits face hurdles in convincing homeowners to remediate their homes — funding, access to information, demographics, etc.

The Department of Public Health’s reports highlights some of those issues: Fewer kids in Cleveland’s Black-majority neighborhoods are tested but a higher percentage of those tested show high lead levels. Trinh ties that fact to a distrust of, or inability to afford, proper healthcare. Glenville, Mount Pleasant, St. Clair-Superior and the Stockyards were the top four in this classification.

Trinh posits a link to the 2008 Great Recession.

“The home foreclosure crisis might’ve affected Cleveland differently from these comparable cities,” he said.

“In those cities, people were able to rehab their homes more frequently,” he added. “But whereas, for our residents, they have not been able to invest the same amount.”

DPH’s lead report will be presented with analysis to City Council when their regular meetings resume later this year, public health chief Dave Margolius said. It’s likely Cleveland’s new lead czar, Rebecca Maurer, will be in attendance.