If the crisis in Flint, Michigan, has shown that lead poisoning is not a thing of the past, then a recent report from USA Today should stand as a reminder that it is not far away, either.

The report is the latest proof that Maine children are being exposed to lead at levels that can cause serious, permanent learning and developmental disabilities, behavioral problems and a number of physical ailments.

And though we can’t say for sure how many, what we do know should give us pause and raise the question: What are we prepared to do about it?

Or better put: Are we going to pay now, or pay later?

According to the USA Today report, 44 water samples in 26 Maine schools or day care facilities tested with lead levels above 15 parts per billion, the threshold after which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandates corrective action.

However, the newspaper examined only schools and day care facilities that use well water and are thus required to test every three years.

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Schools that are on public water systems have no such mandate. Municipal water systems, of course, do their own testing, but they won’t catch contamination at an old school building unless that site is specifically tested, and often it is not on a regular basis.

More likely than not, then, there are Maine schools with contaminated water that just don’t know it.

The same dynamic is at play with the other main source of lead: left-behind lead paint.

Nearly 30,000 Maine children under age 6 live in housing built before 1950 that is likely contaminated with lead paint. But just how many children have been contaminated themselves is uncertain.

From 2003 to 2013, an average of 130 Maine children a year were diagnosed with lead poisoning, though there is no doubt that many children went undiagnosed.

During the period from 2009 to 2013, only 50 percent of 1- to 2-year-olds and 27 percent of 2- to 3-year-olds were systematically tested. In some rural areas, less than 50 percent of kids received a test before age 3.

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When children with lead poisoning are found through testing, the environmental conditions that poisoned them can be fixed. But it is costly.

From 1998 to 2014, the state paid $22.4 million in mostly federal funds to fix 1,900 housing units. It is estimated that more than 276,000 may be contaminated.

And as testing increases, and once the state’s new tougher lead standards are finally put in place, more housing units will qualify for repair.

But is also costly to do nothing.

Special education needed to overcome learning disabilities and behavorial problems costs $16,800 per year per child. There are also significant lost future earnings, and lost potential, associated with lead poisoning.

We cannot allow a child’s future to be altered because he or she was brought up in substandard housing or used a contaminated water supply.

That will not be accomplished easily or inexpensively, but the realities of lead poisoning guarantee that we will pay, one way or another.


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