Dozens of children living in NYCHA apartments where the city found lead paint have tested positive for dangerously high levels of the chemical in their blood in the last five years, city records show.

And in most cases, the Housing Authority had the same response: Do nothing.

There are tens of thousands of public housing apartments believed to contain lead paint — including more than 10,000 where children under 6 now live — that NYCHA as a matter of policy leaves untended, a Daily News investigation found.

Instead, the authority takes the position that lead paint is best left alone — except when a tenant moves out. That’s when they swoop in and clean up the apartment, not bothering with nearby units.

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In the last five years, 202 children living in 133 NYCHA apartments tested positive for elevated levels of lead, city records show. NYCHA officials concede that about 48% of those children lived in an apartment “with known or presumed lead-based paint.”

In fact, when the city Health Department tested the apartments where those children lived between 2010 and 2015, they found 63 tested positive for the presence of lead paint.
Leilani's blood test came back positive for high lead levels.
Leilani's blood test came back positive for high lead levels. (Howard Simmons/New York Daily News)

But NYCHA did its own tests and proclaimed that only 17 of those apartments, housing a total of 18 children, contained levels of lead paint considered harmful.

They declined to clean up the apartments where children who had tested positive for high blood-lead levels lived.

One of those children was 2-year-old Leilani McClain, a resident of the Pomonok Houses in Queens, which opened in June 1952 when lead paint was routinely used throughout the United States. Lead can enter the bloodstream by breathing contaminated dust or eating paint chips. Children —especially kids under 3 —are particularly vulnerable. Exposure can lead to learning disorders, behavioral problems or brain damage.

In August 2014, Leilani was spiking a fever, so her mother, Marisa Vargas, 42, took her to Brooklyn Hospital Medical Center in Fort Greene. Doctors there did a routine blood test and discovered an alarming fact: Leilani registered a blood-lead level of 24 ug/dl — a measurement of micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Anything 10 ug/dl or higher is considered harmful.

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The doctors notified the city Health Department, and inspectors soon arrived at her Pomonok Houses apartment. Using an X-ray device known as XRF, workers discovered traces of lead in the paint on two heating pipes in the kitchen. They stamped “LEAD PAINT” in red on the pipes and notified NYCHA as required.
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NYCHA inspectors found lead paint in 21 apartments in the Pomonok Houses, where Lailani and her mother live. (Howard Simmons/New York Daily News)

The authority then did its own test, removing paint chips and sending them to a private lab. The lab declared the level of lead present in the paint was not sufficient to cause harm, and as a result, NYCHA made no effort to abate whatever was present.

That approach appears to contradict the usual protocol NYCHA was taking at the same time in other Pomonok apartments.

Data obtained by Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), chairman of the Public Housing Committee, and analyzed by The News show lead paint all over Pomonok.

In the last two years, NYCHA inspectors — relying on the same X-ray test the Health Department used in Leilani’s apartment — found and then abated lead paint in 21 apartments in 19 Pomonok buildings.

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Ten months before Leilani’s blood test, a sixth-floor apartment in a Pomonok building right behind Vargas’ building tested positive. Four months after the girl’s blood test, NYCHA detected lead in a fifth-floor apartment across the street.

In all of these units, they abated the lead paint.

Vargas’ apartment remains untouched.

Given that Pomonok opened in 1952, years before the 1960 law that banned lead paint in New York City residential buildings and well before the national ban of 1978, there is likely lead paint throughout the development.

For Vargas, the contradictory results are both confounding and frightening.

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“The Health Department told me the Housing Authority cancelled the violation, so I never had any contact (from NYCHA) after that,” said Vargas, adding that she’s twice requested a transfer so her child doesn’t have to live in what she believes is a poisonous apartment.
Red marks on pipes are positive lead readings from the NYC Department of Health.
Red marks on pipes are positive lead readings from the NYC Department of Health. (Howard Simmons/New York Daily News)

”I don’t want to keep raising her in this environment. It’s no good for her no more. That’s why we need a transfer,” she said. “My back is against the wall. We don’t have any help whatsoever on being transferred.”

Last year at the Linden Houses in Brooklyn, tenant Helen Jackson’s 2-year-old daughter registered 18 ug/dl, and the city Health Department X-ray detected lead throughout the apartment. NYCHA’s lab test again found the level of lead detected was not harmful. The building Jackson lives in was built in 1958, when lead paint was used routinely in New York City.

So how is it that the Health Department can register lead in apartments and NYCHA says it’s not a harmful level, but when a tenant moves out and lead is detected, NYCHA immediately moves to abate?

The head-scratching scenario has prompted some to raise questions about whether the testing method NYCHA uses is effective. In multiple cases, the Health Department finds lead present, while NYCHA’s tests come up negative.

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Vargas’ attorney, Michael Lamonsoff, said he’s seen several cases where the Department of Health X-ray test registers lead and NYCHA’s lab test finds the level of lead present in the apartment is not harmful.
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The Pomonok Houses opened in 1952; the city banned lead paint in residential buildings in 1960. (Howard Simmons/New York Daily News)

“I think they are hiding the problem,” he said. “They’re not doing the right test. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is doing the right test and that test should be standard. NYCHA is using a deceptive test.”

“We’re harming our children, that’s what we’re doing, because NYCHA is using a deceptive test.”

The nation’s biggest public housing authority is well aware that it has tens of thousands of apartments with lead paint, but until recently did not pro-actively remove it, even when young children are present, The News found.

For years, NYCHA’s policy was unless they see paint dust or chips during an inspection, even in apartments with children under 6 and the likely presence of lead paint, they don’t abate. And they usually don’t test for lead until a tenant moves out.

As a result, in many of its aging buildings, NYCHA declares apartments where lead paint has been detected are “no risk” because the paint has not turned to dust or broken into chips. There are thousands of these “no risk” lead-tainted apartments across the city.
There are tens of thousands of public housing apartments believed to contain lead paint.
There are tens of thousands of public housing apartments believed to contain lead paint. (Howard Simmons/New York Daily News)

Internal NYCHA data obtained by The News show NYCHA regularly abates apartments with lead paint when tenants move out, but leaves other apartments — next door, above and below — alone, even though they likely contain the same lead paint.

NYCHA spokeswoman Jean Weinberg emphasized that most lead paint in NYCHA apartments is found on “the original primer on components, like radiators, door frames, pipes, and ceramic fixtures — primer, which is beneath the surface. This means far less risk to residents.”

The problem comes when that original layer turns to dust or becomes part of paint chips found on areas subjected to extreme temperature changes such as window sills, heating pipes and radiators. Then it can be inhaled or ingested, and with small children even tiny amounts of lead can affect a child’s mental abilities.

Lead paint is not nearly the problem it once was. There’s been a 68% drop in lead poisoning cases in New York City from 2005 to 2012.

But thousands of homes in New York City still have lead paint, which poses a particular risk to children under 3. That’s because they tend to crawl around the floor and can ingest dust and chips. Also lead is more readily absorbed into the bloodstream at that age.

Dr. Tomas Guilarte, chairman of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, emphasized that although lead paint has faded from the front burner as a public health issue, it is still a threat.

“It is very important to put this out there to erase the notion that it’s a problem of the past. It isn’t. It is a problem of today. It is a problem of future,” he said. “Even scientists think that exposure to lead in children was a thing of the past. It isn’t. It continues to be a very significant issue here in the United States because those homes, people continued to live in them.”