Medical Experts: it's the "Vallone Realtor Protection Bill" Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - tenant@tenant.net Tenants Online 6/10/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- In this issue... * Thursday Update on Peter Vallone's Lead-Paint bill. * Letters from medical professionals on the Vallone bill UPDATE The "Peter Vallone Lead Paint Bill of 1999" may possibly get a hearing at City Council next Thursday, June 17th. As bad as the Vallone bill is, we hear that Rudy's people want an even weaker bill, making city action against recalcitrant landlords entirely discretionary and allowing the city to have no liability whatsoever. But opposition to the Vallone Bill remains strong. Even Councilmember Stanley Michels (who normally would be running for the hills by now) reportedly is standing firm with a good bit of back-bracing from some of his colleagues. The Black and Latino Caucus, under Councilmembers Linares and Marshall, are also very much opposed to the "Vallone/Landlord Lead-Paint Bill." There will be a Press Conference at City Hall on Monday, June 14th at 11:30 a.m. by tenant and public health advocates. Advocates still are trying to get the Michels' Bill, Intro 205, released from committee where it's been held back by Peter Vallone. Even with the current limitations of City Hall press conferences, all are invited to come and show support. Peter Vallone had been caught lying to demonstrators at his Astoria office on Tuesday where he denied he had his own weaker bill, but everyone had seen a copy of Vallone's bill. Vallone later reportedly went to Michels and asked him to stop callng it the "Vallone Bill." Perhaps Vallone doesn't want to take the blame when he runs for Mayor in 2001. Medical experts are expressing their displeasure at the Vallone bill. Below are letters from: * Herbert L Needleman MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics * Morri Markowitz, M.D. Director, Pediatric Environmental Sciences Clinics, Montefiore Medical Center * Paul Mushak, Ph.D., DABFM, Principal, PB Associates & Visiting Professor, Pediatrics Albert Einstein College of Medicine Doctor Markowitz refers to the Vallone Bill as a "Realtor Protection Bill." When reading the letters, remember these medical professionals are opposed to the VALLONE BILL -- not the good lead bill, Intro 205. You too can write and fax Dr. Neal Cohen, Commissioner of the Department of Health. His fax number is 212-788-9232. (we hear that's a working fax). Of course, continue calling Vallone at 212-788-7210 or fax 212-788-7207 telling him to pull his Landlord bill and allow Intro 205 to have a hearing and vote, and also to Stanley Michels at 212-788-7700 (or his district office at 212-928-1322) and tell him to stand firm. ---------------------------------------------------------- Commissioner Neal Cohen 125 Worth Street New York NY 10013 June 10, 1999 Dear Commissioner Cohen: I have reviewed the proposed changes to the lead abatement regulations issuing from your office. I have been a researcher into the effects of lead on children's brains for 25 years, and have treated lead poisoning since 1957. I know this area and I am certain that if the regulations are weakened, more children will be endangered. Deleading housing is dangerous business; without careful controls it directly increases the danger to the occupants and the workers. New York City has had regulations that were a model for many cities. To weaken them in order to pacify real estate interests is to directly put thousands of children at imminent risk. Your own department of health reports that 13,000 children in 1997 had unsafe levels of lead in their blood. If you relax the cleanup regulations, you can be sure that the numbers will increase. Do not let this happen. Sincerely Herbert L Needleman MD Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics cc Speaker Peter Vallone ---------------------------------------------------------- June 7, 1999 Neil Cohen, M.D. Commissioner of Health NYC Dept. Health Dear Dr. Cohen, This is a summary of some of the points we discussed in our phone conversation last week. There were two main problems with the small portion of the lead paint abatement bill that I've seen: its generic approach and its specifics. Generically, the Department of Health, where the scientific expertise resides, should set the health and safety rules, not the City Council (and certainly not if the bill is the product of unopposed advice from the real estate industry). This bill, to the contrary, describes in detail the safety steps to be taken in order to be compliant with an abatement procedure. Furthermore, the language in the preamble to these specifics (page 7 line 14 of my copy) states "the owner shall perform only the following exclusive interim controls". I'm not a lawyer but I read this as you can only do the steps that are written after this statement. Those actual steps themselves are inadequate to protect the family during the abatement process. The current DOH regulations guiding abatement are based on HUD and EPA tested methods. These are aimed at not only removing lead from the painted surfaces but doing so without spreading lead dust throughout the house. The current bill demands that much more limited controls be used during the scraping of lead painted surfaces. The method in the bill is likely to result in dissemination of lead dust throughout the room, if not the entire apartment. Why are health regulations being promulgated in an administrative bill? I can understand if penalties for noncompliance are spelled out here, not health code. Since our phone call I've learned of other deficiencies in the bill, some of them were addressed by your predecessor Dr. Hamburg, when a similar bill was submitted 2-3 years ago. For instance, this bill does not appear to have any enforcement mechanism, nor is there a mandate for dust lead level determinations to define the success of the intervention. The length of time allowed for removal of lead to be accomplished is intolerably long. This is a realtor protection bill. It vitiates DOH control. The problem with the old bill is not the safety measures engineered into it but lack of enforcement of all the provisions. It cost a lot. The current bill shifts that "cost" back to the tenants, who will pay with their health. Thank you very much for taking my call and the time to read this. Sincerely, Morri Markowitz, M.D. Director, Pediatric Environmental Sciences Clinics Montefiore Medical Center ---------------------------------------------------------- June 10, 1999 By Telefax The Hon. Neal L. Cohen Commissioner of Health NYC Department of Health 125 Worth St. NY, NY 10013 Re: Proposed Revisions a/o Revocations of NYC Lead Paint Laws Dear Commissioner Cohen: I am writing to urge that the City's health apparatus NOT support proposed changes in NYC laws and regulations regarding lead paint abatement of hazardous residential units. Proposed changes will result in increased childhood lead poisonings for reasons that are stated below. I am currently director of an international toxicology and health risk science practice, in Durham, NC, and am Visiting Professor of Pediatric Environmental Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Bronx. In my role as faculty at Einstein and during my many years involved with many colleagues among NYC's major medical schools, I am intimately acquainted with the lead paint problem in NYC and I don't write as an "outsider meddling in others' business." I do write as a nationally and internationally active toxicologist and health scientist in the area of toxic metals, particularly lead. My research and State/City/Federal/international advisory work has spanned over 32 years and has provided me with extensive experience and expertise in the area of lead paint poisoning of children. My expertise includes having been a principal co-author or senior author of virtually all of the main expert consensus public agency documents in the U.S. and includes peer review advisory roles on those that were not directly co-authored by me. A number of the proposed changes --as I understand the nature of these proposals-- is such that, in my informed opinion, they will strongly add to real childhood lead poisoning risks among infants and toddlers in the city's jurisdiction. In so doing, they will significantly increase the adverse health toll on vulnerable children, individually and collectively. Equally distressing, the added health and health delivery cost burdens on the city's taxpayers with assuredly increased poisoning prevalences will be considerable. The cost of an individual hospitalization and treatment regimen is enormous relative to the much lower costs of retained effective lead paint abatement and control. In my report to the U.S. Congress on childhood lead poisoning in America, done for the U.S. CDC/ATSDR back in 1988, 11 years ago, I noted the enormous costs of multiple hospital admissions for treatment of lead-poisoned kids. On p. IX-22 of my Congressional report, for example, the cost in Baltimore for several admissions in just a single year of just a single child in a year in 1986 dollars was about $16,000. In the intervening years, this cost figure has sky-rocketed. To this direct medical-management cost, must be added remedial education and justice system costs for brain-damaged children committing crimes, and lost tax revenues to the city from lowered lifetime taxable incomes, all cost econometrics that have been published in heavily peer-reviewed journals. Again, both the quantifiable social costs and the social resources costs of this planned roll-back of currently effective lead paint poisoning argue compellingly such regressiveness would be tragic while being totally avoidable. The proposals include elimination of the dust lead from paint as a factor. This is scientific nonsense and it would be professionally irresponsible of any health apparatus to do this. Extensive scientific documentation shows conclusively that interior dusts, and exterior dusts, from chalking or weathering lead painted surfaces are a major component of childhood lead poisonings. Many infants and toddlers with no X-ray diagnostic evidence of paint chips in their gut still have serious lead paint poisoning from normal mouthing of lead-paint dusts. These paint dusts are especially small in size and are documented to stick to hands of infants and toddlers, from where they get swallowed. Abrasion surfaces are well known to produce high lead exposures for infants and toddlers. Their natural curiosity or oral exploratory behavior places them at window sills, where abrasion lead paint particles are most pronounced and available to them for ingestion. The amounts of lead in these abraded particles are enormous. For example, in the 1996 U.S. EPA document on soil lead abatement demonstration projects, Table 4.2 shows that window sill abrasion dusts are about 20,000 parts-per-million lead. That's equal to two percent!! A child ingesting 100 milligrams daily of this sill dust gets two milligrams of lead, a fatal dose. The revisionary argument, in my informed opinion, that only a lot of peeling lead paint is really an issue for child lead poisoning is totally wrong. The U.S. EPA, in June, 1998, issued some preliminary proposals (not final) to do something like what has been proposed in NYC. That proposal was so badly criticized by America's lead scientists that it is unlikely this ruling will ever appear in anything resembling its original form. I would certainly hope NYC is NOT placing any reliance on this EPA regulatory nonsense. I will be happy to provide further information or lend any expertise pro-bono in this matter. Thank you. Sincerely, Paul Mushak, Ph.D., DABFM Principal, PB Associates & Visiting Professor, Pediatrics Albert Einstein College of Medicine cc: Hon. Peter Vallone ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tenant Network(tm) for Residential Tenants TenantNet(tm): http://tenant.net email: tenant@tenant.net NYtenants(tm) Discussion List: email to majordomo@list.tenant.net and in the body of the message put "subscribe nytenants". 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