The City Council will meet to adopt a new lead paint abatement law following a state Court of Appeals decision July 1 that invalidated the current Local Law 38. The council's Committee on Housing and Buildings will convene in mid-September to consider proposed legislation governing lead paint standards in residential buildings.

Speaker Gifford Miller has scheduled a final vote by the committee for October 2, after which the lead paint bill will be considered by the full council.

Local Law 38 was one of a series of local laws that govern how property owners address the health hazards that result from the presence of lead-based paint in residential buildings. Local Law 38, which was passed by the council in 1999 and signed into law by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, replaced Local Law 1 of 1982. New York City was the first municipality in the country to ban the sale of lead-based paint in 1960.

Local Law 38 was aimed at monitoring renovation projects by prohibiting dry scraping or sanding in any dwelling unit; requiring landlords to regularly inform tenants about lead safety guidelines and inquiring about the residency of children under age six; requiring building owners to apply safety precautions when preparing all vacant units; and requiring annual apartment inspections in which families with children under six live. However, the law limited violations to peeling or surface lead paint and was criticized by opponents because it lacked provisions calling for the monitoring and removal of lead dust. Additionally, while an owner was required to correct lead paint conditions, there was no mandatory time frame in which to do so.

The City Council drafted Intro 101A - the New York City Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act - in 2002 to replace Local Law 38 and attempt to correct lead-based paint hazards in housing, schools, day care facilities and playgrounds.

If implemented by the council, the new act would impose tougher standards for landlord inspections, recognize lead dust as a hazardous substance, require that peeling lead paint be removed from public schools and day care facilities, require that lead-painted playground equipment be entirely removed, and require that trained workers in full compliance with federal safety guidelines perform all labor involving lead paint remediation and removal. Additionally, dust clearance tests would be required as part of an owners' certificate of correction of a violation. Inspections would examine underlying causes of deteriorated, peeling paint or evidence of friction or chipping, and require owners to correct those conditions.

The new law, says council spokesman Lupe Todd, is stricter in that it would correct more types of dangerous conditions, and it would make it easier to sue landlords for non-abatement. Intro 101A, she adds, would also raise the age of children covered back to less than seven years of age. It would also require additional action by landlords each year if residents fail to respond to the annual notice inquiring whether or not a young child resides in their unit. For non-compliance with the distribution of notices and inspection provisions, owners could be subject to fines and penalties - including imprisonment for up to six months. Inspections would, in some instances, be required more frequently.

In the Matter of the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning, Inc. (NYCCELP) vs. Vallone, in which Local Law 38 was nullified, the Court of Appeals found that the current guidelines failed to comply with statutory requirements that safeguard both the environment and the health of young children.

In its opinion, the court states that the dangers of exposure to lead-based paint are well-documented as "lead is a poison that affects virtually every system in the body" and is particularly harmful to the normal development of a child's brain and nervous system. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), even low levels of lead in the bloodstream have been linked to "diminished intelligence, decreased stature or growth and loss of hearing acuity."

The court goes on to say, "The numbers of New York City children with elevated blood lead levels remain alarmingly high."

In 2000, over 6,200 children between six months and six years were newly identified as having blood lead levels of at least 10 micrograms per deciliter - the blood lead level that the Centers for Disease Control has defined as "elevated" and associated with decreased performance on intelligence tests and impaired neuro-cognitive development and growth, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene surveillance program on blood lead levels.

"That figure," says the court, "translates to a city-wide elevated blood lead level rate of about 19 out of every 1,000 children tested in that age category."

In its conclusion, the court asks the parties to work cooperatively so that children will not be imperiled by the temporary reinstatement of Local Law 1 and the timeframe necessary for the council to pass new legislation.

According to NYCCELP, the 1990 Census indicated that New York City has the nation's highest percentage of pre-1960 residential housing at 63.5 percent. The city estimates that almost two million units of housing have lead-based paint, approximately half of which are occupied by persons of low or moderate income. Secondly, an estimated 323,000 apartments with lead paint have young children residing there, and of these, some 174,000 are occupied by low income families. Schools are also a potential hazard area, as the Board of Education continued to use industrial grade lead paint in the schools up until nearly 1980, NYCCELP reports.

When lead is ingested or inhaled, it can build up in blood, bone and soft tissue. Lead-poisoned youngsters can suffer from learning disabilities, shortened attention spans, behavioral disorders, anemia and other metabolic imbalances. Experts say that the damage can often be permanent and irreversible. According to New York City Department of Health statistics in 2002, an estimated 4,576 children were reported to have elevated lead levels in their blood symptomatic of lead poisoning.

According to Matthew Chachere, an attorney with the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, who represents NYCCELP in its action against the state, any local law that goes into effect will hopefully safeguard the city's children as existing laws attempted to do.

Intro 101A is in some ways more stringent that Local Law 1, because it not only covers homes, it also covers schools, day care centers and other types of social service facilities, says Chachere. "It has a lot more specificity than Local Law 1 in terms of work practices. It also is a compromise from the current law - Local Law 1 - which as interpreted by the courts requires property owners to remove or cover all lead paint in any condition, whether it's intact or deteriorated," Chachere says.

The council's Intro 101 determines what specific hazards should be monitored, Chachere says. "Intro 101 is a compromise in that while it does mandate strict enforcement by the city for violations for peeling lead paint and paint on deteriorated subsurfaces, it leaves it to a significant extent to property owners to act reasonably with respect to other painted surfaces. It defines lead dust as a hazard," he says, "and requires stricter controls of lead dust. But the objections for a long time from the real estate industry, as I understand it was, that there was no reason to remove or cover all lead paint because some of it wasn't necessarily in a hazardous condition."

"Certainly NYCCELP has put a lot of support behind Intro 101A as a good compromise legislation that is more protective of children and hopefully something that will be properly and fully enforced," Chachere explains. The bill also has the support of many housing, labor, education and children's advocacy organizations, he says.

While it is true that fewer children today are afflicted with lead poisoning, the long-term effects to even one child are staggering, Chachere says. "For over 30 years the lead poisoning rates have gone down in New York City. They've been going down at least since around 1970, according to the health department, every year," he says, but there are many epidemiological reasons for the decline.

"The numbers are going down, that's the good news. The bad news is that over 4,000 kids were diagnosed last year with lead poisoning levels that are considered to be of concern and that's with a screening rate of only one out of three children. So thousands of children being lead-poisoned a year is not a good thing - we know that this is a preventable disease. The costs of lead poisoning, societally, are just phenomenal," Chachere says. "We spend huge amounts of public money dealing with the consequences of lead poisoning and prevention is the only cure."

For a lead paint timeline, click here.