Meng calls on city to start lead testing in Queens NYCHA units
/
U.S. Rep. Grace Meng wrote a letter Mayor de Blasio urging the city to begin testing for lead in Queens NYCHA complexes. Photo by Thomas Altfather Good via Wikimedia Commons.
By David Brand
U.S. Rep. Grace Meng sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio Friday urging the city to begin testing for lead paint inside Queens’ NYCHA apartment complexes, especially sites with the most children under age 6.
The city’s lead testing initiative will reach 134,000 public housing units built before lead paint was banned for use in homes by the end of 2020, but has not yet tested a single apartment in Queens. NYCHA said in April that it would prioritize complexes that have the most households with children under 6, but so far, that has not been the case.
The Pomonok Houses, located in Meng’s congressional district, have the fourth-highest number of households with children under 6 in the NYCHA system, according to demographic data obtained by the Eagle via a Freedom of Information Law request. The Pomonok Houses are not scheduled for testing until later this summer.
“While the city rightly prioritized testing in complexes with the highest number of children under 6, the reported backlog on testing and failure to begin testing in Queens is unacceptable,” Meng wrote in her letter.
The Ravenswood Houses, located in Astoria, have the fifth-highest number of households with children under 6, according to the data obtained by the Eagle. They will not be tested until later this summer, NYCHA’s testing schedule indicates.
“In these houses, each of the more than 300 children under 6 are threatened by the dangers of lead poisoning,” Meng said. “I urge you to expedite the testing process throughout the city and begin testing in Queens as soon as possible.”
Meng cited the Eagle’s reporting on the lack of lead paint testing in Queens’ public housing complexes in her letter. Ingesting even minuscule doses of lead can cause lasting brain damage, especially for young children.
“Inspecting approximately 135,000 apartments throughout the city is a vast undertaking,” Meng said. “But that challenge cannot get in the way of testing housing units in Queens.”
A total of 6,528 units have been tested citywide but the results of 4,321 of those tests have not been published. Of the 2,207 apartments where the results were recorded, 1,604 tested positive for lead, according to NYCHA’s data.
NYCHA told the Eagle it still prioritizes complexes with the most households with children under 6, so long as they were not exempted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Pomonok and Ravenswood were not exempted.
The companies contracting with the city to conduct the testing use a tool known as x-ray fluorescence, or XRF.
“The Authority’s unprecedented XRF testing initiative was launched in April so that we could definitively determine whether lead-based paint hazards exist in homes that have not previously been tested and showed no presence of lead,” a NYCHA spokesperson told the Eagle Tuesday. “Not only will this effort allow us to test the homes that most urgently need testing, but it also helps create an accurate roadmap for a lead-free NYCHA.”
