We college students, occupying a subsidized ground between someday-working adults and dependents, tend to engage in community service work. For my part, I spent some time exploring Providence this break before going back to classes as a part of Winter Break Projects, a program run by the Swearer Center for Public Service.
There is much more complexity to poverty in the city than I would have imagined sitting on top of College Hill.
Food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infants and Children program are getting more expensive as the number of people eligible to participate grows. Undocumented aliens aren't eligible for nutrition programs while their kids have the right to attend school, a damaging mixed message that allows families to stay while denying them an opportunity to feed themselves. Kids in lead-infected housing — especially cheaper public housing — suffer permanent neurological damage as a result of exposure to the harmful metal, driving up dropout rates. Moreover, poor nutrition, which these kids are more likely to deal with, exacerbates the effects of lead poisoning. The landscape looks like a slew of separate causes to fight for, but they are all incredibly interconnected.
And while it's tempting to include in this column a cry to "get off the hill and learn about the world, which is full of wrongs for us to right!" I won't. I'd like to raise awareness about lead poisoning in particular, a problem that cannot be easily advertised on a poster because of the lack of obvious symptoms. Furthermore, it cannot be treated with a vaccine. But it could be eliminated if the city enforced the existing legislation that regulates paint and building materials.
Providence kids enter school suffering disproportionate levels of poisoning compared with kids in other cities due to greater exposure to lead-based paint and lead in housing fixtures. Poor kids are the most affected, suffering from symptoms like lower IQ, more learning and behavioral disorders like Attention Deficit Disorder, stunted growth and dental issues.
While there are strategies for preventing lead poisoning in at-risk children, and resources like the Hasbro Children's Hospital HELP Lead Safe Center as well as nonprofits like the Childhood Lead Action Project are working to raise awareness about the issue, it is a low priority concern to most organizations. Although in recent decades the nation as a whole has moved away from using lead-based paint, there hasn't been much of an effort to remove lead paint from homes, even in public housing.
Instead, Rhode Island has focused much more on screening for lead poisoning in children under age six than actually treating the causes of the problem in the first place. According to the Department of Health website, if a child is found to be "significantly lead poisoned," the family is offered medical care, case management and a home inspection to identify hazards. While this is good, matters are further complicated in neighborhoods such as Olneyville, which has one of the highest proportions of lead-poisoned children under the age of six in the city, at 14 percent. According to the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, the undocumented families that live there report facing threats of eviction from their landowners if they complain about lead hazards. So, poisoning rates stay up.
It is necessary to do more. We should work to remove this dangerous condition that continues to needlessly affect communities in this city. Kids under age six are more likely to be poisoned because of their tendency to put contaminated objects in their mouths, which leads to permanent damage in their developing brains. Despite the Center for Disease Control's current setting of the "safe threshold" for blood lead levels being 10 micrograms per deciliter, evidence suggests that there is no safe dosage of lead, and symptoms can emerge at any level of exposure."
Meanwhile, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 25 percent of American children are still at a risk of lead poisoning. We as students in a community and also as future members of other communities should take part in raising awareness about this clearly solvable issue that could help so many of those stifled by structural inequality.
Providence's economy is suffering, yes. But ignoring something so obviously preventable and allowing it to affect a whole population of local families is not acceptable.
Camille Spencer-Salmon '14 also supports general world-saving attempts. She can be reached at Camille_Spencer-Salmon@brown.edu.
