NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer recently released results of an investigation revealing the city’s systemic failure to protect children from toxic lead. According to the Comptroller, the city failed to use its own data to perform lead inspections in buildings most likely to pose threats to children – never inspecting 9,671 buildings with documented cases of child lead exposure.
According to the data, 35 percent of buildings connected with cases of three or more children with lead exposure were never inspected for lead by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Additionally, the data reveals that 22,000 children, or 20 percent of all children under the age of 3, who should have been tested for lead poisoning were not tested.
In response to the investigation’s findings, the Comptroller called for an across-the-board overhaul of lead exposure mitigation and enforcement, calling on the city to: