MILWAUKEE — The lead crisis within the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) District has kept Milwaukee Health Department (MHD) officials busy over the past five months.
That includes Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Health Tyler Weber. Weber has been with MHD for four years.
He sat down for a one-on-one interview with Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin Watchdog Reporter Megan Carpenter. She asked Weber how MHD will monitor long-term effects of lead poisoning in MPS students who tested positive.
“We’re a Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, so the majority of the children we work with are from ages 0 to 6,” he said. “When we have an elevated blood lead level and a lead poisoning, state statute says 15 micrograms per deciliter and above, and that is high.”
Weber went on to say that state law mandates children cannot graduate from the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program until they have tested below that level twice, six months apart.
“The challenge is what happens when they’re lead poisoned, but now, they’re 8-years-old or 10-years-old and we don’t have the capacity to help them in that way,” Weber said. “That’s why I think how we’re building this partnership with MPS will become more critical over time.”
Every blood lead test filters through the state and is accessible to health departments.
MHD, Weber said, wants to merge that data with MPS enrollment information to determine which students go to which schools and what their blood lead levels are. MHD is working on an agreement with MPS to have access to enrollment data.
Weber said the agreement will likely be finalized by July.
An initial positive test in an MPS student at Golds Meir this past January spurred remediation work and closures among nine MPS schools in total. The most recent closures happened within the past two weeks.
When asked how many MPS students test positive for high levels of lead in their blood, correlated directly to exposure at an MPS school, Weber said there’s at least one confirmed case.
“There is one case for sure where it was, yes; this child was exposed at school. That was Golda Meir,” he said. “Maryland, we weren’t sure. That was more of a precautionary step in a complicated case, and I can’t say much more. Kagel and Trowbridge were most likely home and school.”
Weber said long-term impacts of lead poisoning can vary from child to child.
“You might see learning delays in a child right away — delayed learning in vocabulary. You might see impulse control challenges,” he said. “Sometimes, it may not be readily apparent.”
Weber said resources to deal with this ongoing problem have been a challenge, as is monitoring the effects of lead poisoning as a child ages.
“If they get above the age of 17, it’s rare that we work with someone of that age,” he said. “There is an adult lead poisoning program at the state level and we may refer them to that and make sure their health care providers are updated.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers lead poisoning to be at 3.5 micrograms per deciliter and above. Weber said on average across the City of Milwaukee, 1,200 children test at that level per year.
“We only have a handful of nurses; we don’t have unlimited staff. We don’t have unlimited resources for abatement. So, it is a resource challenge,” Weber said.
He said additionally, in a given year, 50% of the children who need to be tested in the city are.
When asked if there was a concern that there could be MPS students who have lead poisoning but have not been tested, Weber said, “yes.”
“Yes, there is that concern and that’s why were trying to expand lead testing clinics and communicate with our primary care network to say, ‘Hey, if you have a school-aged child at an MPS school, give more attention to that parent and see if you can get them lead screened,’” he said.
He said since January, about 350 MPS students have been tested for lead, with likely more being tested by primary care physicians.
A major setback came last month, when the CDC denied MHD’s request for an on-site investigation into the MPS lead issue.
Weber said after meeting weekly with those federal experts beginning in February, MHD was told in April that the CDC’s entire lead program had been eliminated. That was part of mass layoffs by the Trump administration.
“We had to look internally and the questions we would ask the CDC, we would ask ourselves and our partners from the state,” he said. “We’re still meeting with our state partners weekly and checking in with them and so, we’re able to come up with answers, but just having that additional nationwide lens and support could have been more reassuring.”
Per MPS and MHD’s Lead Action Plan, they will inspect about 100 buildings built before 1978 starting this summer; 1978 is the year lead-based paint was banned across the country.